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Old 14th July 2014, 07:49 AM   #9
A. G. Maisey
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Join Date: May 2006
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I suggest that the seller would not have recognised that this carving was a part of something that collectors of keris like to refer to as a "tourist" item. In any case, it is fairly recent Balinese craft work, whatever we call it.

In the Balinese context it would be preferable to regard this as a representation of Bhoma, rather than Banaspati:-

"--- Bhoma, sometimes called Kala, is a representation of the son of Wisnu and Basundari, and thus is the child of water and earth. The joining of water and earth results in the growth of plants, which in a society dependent upon agriculture equates to prosperity. In Sanscrit, Bhoma means "born of the earth".
Thus Bhoma can be taken to represent the growth of vegetation.---"
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