Quote:
Originally Posted by milandro
I understand that a western blacksmith would chuck the blade BUT an Indonesian empuh probably, beside not throwing away some work done, he probably thinks that the process is only partly in his hands and that he is rather the instruments of a superior being that through him creates the blade and maks it inhabited by a spirit and gives the blade its properties.
I am not trying to make this better than what it is (by the way I was very much thrilled to buy the blade) but when I visited the house (a temple really) of an old Indonesian man here in the NL with a couple of hundreds of krisses , a few were like this and he was telling me how important (to him) these things were.
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Milandro, i believe you are absolutely correct about that. My comments were not intended to disregard your keris and i have been informed by sources i trust that indeed "Acts of God" are what are important a Javanese Muslim in this case. So when a mistake like this happens it can be seen as a mystic circumstance. I am not sure how many actual empus make accidental mistakes like this in their forging technique, but we should remember that most keris are not made by empus.