Another Acquisition--Keris style spear
 

This came from a friend's estate. I have little info beyond that.

Michael, this is not a keris so i am going to transfer it over to the regular Ethno forum. This is called a Tombak and it is nice to see such a complete one with the sheath, shaft and end piece intact.

Thanks very much.

Very nice tombak. The relief at the base of the blade was gilded. The technique is called kinatah. To bring it back in its original state the blade should be treated with warangan.

Not to mention, it seems to have a separate metuk which is the iron collar at the base of the blade which I take to be (at the very least) an indication of the smith's skill.

Can anyone read the label on the back of the scabbard?

First word is for sure Tombak! ;) :D

Michael, if you could look carefully at this label , possibly through a loupe, or magnifying glass, and write down the letters as you see them, it is possible that I may be able to give sense to them.

I've run it through Photoshop and sharpened it up a bit, and here is what I think I can see:-

line 1:- tombak = spear, pandan = a type pf plant, the leaves used in cooking

line 2:- - - 00 = unintelligible, possibly a price?

line 3:- pamor = the surface patterning of the blade, rambon = a type of tobacco, this reading does not make any sense; if it were to be "pamor rambut", this might make sense, "rambut" is "hair", and this might have been classified by somebody as "pamor rambut", I cannot see it clearly enough to form an opinion.

line 4:- pake = a corruption or alternative colloquial spelling/pronunciation of "pakai", "pakai" = use, wear, take.

Let me have what you can see and I might be able to do better.

Any idea what alloy the fittings are?

Most likely brass Michael, but you have it in your hand, and by the look of things you have at least as much metallurgical knowledge as I do, so I reckon your guess would be probably better than mine.

Put it this way:- they use gold, silver, mamas, brass. I'll put money on it that the fittings (brongsong, sopal) are not gold or silver, mamas is unlikely, the fittings look too recent and mamas does not emboss well, so brass is most likely.

Tombak Pand o/p? u l/j?

Pamor rambany or kambany

pake or pare

Thanks Michael, but it looks like its not much easier to read in hand than in the pics.

I cannot improve on the word after "tombak" , and the word "pandan" does not make much sense for a blade with waves, if it were to be a straight blade we might hypothesise that to somebody, somewhere it was dhapur (shape) pandan, but it cannot be that with luk.

rambany and kambany do not exist in Indonesian or Javanese, but rambang which can mean "wide" or "extensive" in Indonesian, and about half a dozen things in Javanese, do exist, and kambang which can mean a "threshold" or a "sill" in Indonesian and "to float" in Javanese do exist. In this context, attached to the word pamor, none of these words add meaning.

pake is a corruption of "pakai"

Pare is a town in East Jawa.

Not much gold in any of that, if we can guess , I'd guess it is a collector's label and the collector was not a speaker of the language, he got things mixed up..

I'm OK with Bahasa Indonesia and Javanese, and a bit less so with Balinese. This looks like a Javanese tombak, but maybe we're dealing with a different language here.

Sorry I was unable to help.


Thanks Michael, but it looks like its not much easier to read in hand than in the pics.

I cannot improve on the word after "tombak" , and the word "pandan" does not make much sense for a blade with waves, if it were to be a straight blade we might hypothesise that to somebody, somewhere it was dhapur (shape) pandan, but it cannot be that with luk.

rambany and kambany do not exist in Indonesian or Javanese, but rambang which can mean "wide" or "extensive" in Indonesian, and about half a dozen things in Javanese, do exist, and kambang which can mean a "threshold" or a "sill" in Indonesian and "to float" in Javanese do exist. In this context, attached to the word pamor, none of these words add meaning.

pake is a corruption of "pakai"

Pare is a town in East Jawa.

Not much gold in any of that, if we can guess , I'd guess it is a collector's label and the collector was not a speaker of the language, he got things mixed up..

I'm OK with Bahasa Indonesia and Javanese, and a bit less so with Balinese. This looks like a Javanese tombak, but maybe we're dealing with a different language here.

Sorry I was unable to help.


EDIT

Here is a stray thought that wandered in:- there is some of the label missing, if we can conjure the word "pandowo" out of the word following tombak, then I believe that what we might have is somebody's opinion of the dhapur of this tombak, ie, "Dhapur Pandowo (Pandawa)". Dhapur Pandowo is a 5 luk dhapur in keris, people who do not really understand keris will often grab a keris dhapur and stick it on a tombak, irrespective of whether this is correct or not. In this case it is not correct, but keris terminology is often a different in different places, so I'm backing "Tombak Pandowo", I think.

All we need now is some thinking out of the square for the pamor.
Pamor Kambang? Never heard of it, floating pamor? Maybe that was right somewhere, some time. Who knows?

What is Mamas? An alloy or a local term for a pure metal?

Mamas is an alloy similar to german silver. :)

From an Indonesian friend (Actually, wife of a friend. He's American, she worked at the Indonesian embassy and lives in the US now)

Tombak (spear) Pendawa Lima (orig. five characters/brothers from the Mahabharata Hindu epic. In keris speak, it is the 5 undulations/curves in a keris)
Pamor Rembang. Pamor is the patterns of the blade, created because of the melding of two or more different iron (you are a smith, so I think you know what I am talking about, the pattern can look like the pattern when there is oil in water. Rembang is a small city in the northern part of East Java, it could indicate that's where the smith is, or the "school" or style. Pare is a city in the central part of East Java. It indicates two different cities hundreds of miles apart. The blade is from Rembang, but could be "assembled" in Pare, or it could be that the spear has been residing in Pare. The whole island of Java were once under the Kingdom of Kediri. It doesn't show dates. --Adiati