KUDI FROM MADURA / USED IN ATJEH ?
 

I bought this well made Kudi togther with some shields from Atjeh.
Which already gave me the idea that this weapon should be placed in Atjeh.

Than I bumped into an old picture of the "Atjeh display" in the old army museum in Delft.

Are their forum members with additional information / similar examples ?

Best regards,
Willem

In Jawa we would not call this implement a kudi.

If I happened to meet up with it I'd call it an arit, most definitely not a kudi.

However, I have no knowledge of what it may be called in other places.

Hello Willem,

very nice and rare piece. In "Traditional Weapons Of The Indonesian Archipelago" on page 76 it's called "kudi tranchang" and in "Iron Anchestors" on page 159-161 it's called "kudi trantang" but Alan could very well be correct since all shown "kudi" have ornamentation in up of the outer curve. Equal how you would call it, it is very nice, congrats. When you ever get tired of it, you know who will be happy to give it a good home! ;)

Regards,
Detlef

( Jep I suddenly remembered y password !!!) I have always had the idea that Kudi was the name for the heirloom blades that are evoluated from the agricultural tools like the Arit etc.

yeah, the kudi did develop from an agricultural tool.

this implement under discussion is not a kudi, and its not from jawa or madura, so it may well be known as a kudi tranchang

Hullo everybody! :)

Willem, just to remind you:

- A lot of Madurese were soldiers of the VOC/KNIL. So, not surprising if some traditional Madurese implements ended up in the Atjeh theatre.

- Thus supposing a Madura origin, your implement would be a member of the sickle ( arek/arit ) family. Try looking up info under arek/caluk/carok/clurit ( celurit )/kudi ( monteng ). Then decide for yourself what to call it.

- Looking at your blade, I would be very wary of calling it a 'tranchang' anything.

(BTW .... why didn't you get the sword as well?)

Best,

Thank you Amuk, I hoped you would share your opninion on this one.

Yes, I know that Madurese played a rol in the KNIL army.
Based on that, and on the Madurese weapons I found in the collection of Leiden I came to the idea that maybe this weapon is also madurese...

However, Alan writes in his previous post that this weapon is not from Madura. If not from Madura, are there any suggestions from where it could be ?

Best regards,
Willem

I would have to agree with Alan that this weapon does not look Madurese. The crown like features on the long "ferrule" area remind me of design i have seen on sikin panjang and rencong so my first thought was either a Aceh or Sumatran origin. :shrug:

Hello David,

Here is a close up of the decoration.

It does indeed remind of crowns on Atjeh weapons, but not more than that. The style and execution are very different from the atjeh weapons I know.

Best regards,
Willem

You are probably correct Willem, but nothing about this piece looks Madurese to me either. :shrug:

More about clurit
 

Based on the info I have, I'm reluctant to call this a clurit. ::shrug::

From my website:

A Celurit (Clurit, Sabit) is generally a sickle (sometimes other variants include billhook) with a pronounced crescent-blade patterns which curves more than half a circle and a long handle, is widely used for agricultural purposes and also in Pencak Silat. When compared to the Arit, the Celurit is slightly larger. Although the Celurit (or also generally known as Sabit) is widely used throughout the Indonesian archipelago for agricultural purposes, somehow it is strongly associated with the culture of the Madurese and is frequently used by them as well especially by the leaders who called themselves Sakera. It is possibly used as an agricultural tool in the Banjuwangi region on East Java and then conveyed to Madura.

Besides Arit and Sabit, other variations of the Celurit includes the Arek, Caluk, Calok, Bendo Arit (billhook), Bhiris and so on depending on the geographical area and curvature of the crescent blade.

A "kudi tranchang" which has some similar features to Willem's "Kudi", especially the handle decoration. They look like they are from Atjeh - look at the spine decoartion which is pretty close to Atjeh Klewang spine decoration.

PELONG MADOERA
 

Hello Willem,

My initial reply was merely to nudge you in a direction for research.
However, I see that you still haven't classified your item yet.
O.K., I'll play the name game.
IMVHO, it is a member of the TJELOERIT family called PELONG. The angle of the blade makes it a TJOELANGONG variant.
Thus, your implement is a c.18thC-19thC Pelong Tjoelangong from Madoera (allowing for differences in spelling/pronunciation/dialect etc.).

That's my final input.
Hope it helps.

mvg.

P.S. This item was a favourite in CAROK (duel) and banned by the Dutch in the mid 19thC; also by the Indos in mid 20thC

Thanks Amuk,

Tjeloerit, as in celurit / clurit etc... :)
I will try to find similar pieces in Museum collections to get some more references.

carok, I will try to find some info about banning by the dutch.
On the web I found only bahasa websites (Wikipedia) and "bloody" pictures.

I can understand that they banned it.

Best regards,
Willem

Ps, there is still some question about the decoration.
So anyone with an opinion, feel free to post.

I found several examples in the RMV Leiden collection under madurese.

The 2nd one named "Tjalok", the other one just "kapmes" (=machette)

Here 2 with more elaborate decorations in the metal ferrule.

Just a small addition to my post #5, I was feeling a bit off colour when I wrote that post and did not make the effort to clarify something that I should have.

This word "tranchang".

In Javanese and Malay there is no combination of "c+h", the "ch" sound that we know in English is achieved by use of only "c" in these languages, thus "tranchang" should be rendered as "trancang".

In Javanese there is a word "trancang", and this word means "a tray made out of plaited wire" --- this is a very obscure word that only appears in one of my many dictionaries and is unknown to any native speaker of Javanese that I have ever asked.

We also have in Javanese a word: "trantang" which means "having many holes".

It would probably be legitimate to describe the vast bulk of kudis as "kudi trantang", as most kudis do in fact have many holes, however, I have never encountered this usage.

But we cannot describe something that is vaguely kudi-shaped as a "kudi trantang" unless it does have a lot of holes. In short, kudi trantang is a description, it is not a name.

To return to kudi trancang. If a kudi shaped weapon had a wide blade with the grain of the iron clearly showing, it might also be legitimate to describe such a weapon as a "kudi trancang".


In respect of the celurit in Madura. It comes in many forms that can range from pure weapon to a variety of agricultural tools. I've seen displays of this range of forms several times, regrettably I cannot recall any form of Madurese celurit that looks remotely like the item that started this thread. This of course does not mean that the item which started the thread is not a Madurese celurit, but it would seem to indicate that Madurese museum staffs in the late 20th century did not know of this form as Madurese.