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Originally Posted by jonng
That the gesture is a bow is I think probable (and could have evolved later?). That the "arm goes across the belly and the figure is bent over as if sick to the stomach" is to me a bit difficult to accept because I cannot see any in my collection or those that have been put up here having the arm going across the stomach. All of them seems to have the right arm going across the chest (or do I see them wrong?!).
Have the carvers made some mistakes in their carving or interpretation some time in the past? If not, regarding posture I often see these two:
1. squatting or sitting on something (very low) with both knees up, right elbow slightly over or resting on the right knee.
2. semi-kneeling/ half squat position, right knee up with the right elbow resting on it and left knee on the ground.
The right arm looks to be above the stomach in all these forms. Of course I could have seen them all wrong so I'm really grateful this thread came up.
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Jonathan, i am not asking you to accept that the arm goes across the stomach or the chest as i am not making a case for either. It doesn't seem to me that you can really be sure way or another considering the abstractness of the hilt form. My point is that at some time, someone apparently saw the arm as being across the stomach in a stooped over posture, ergo the name Jawa Demam, the "sick Javanese". At least this is what i have been told. This does not in any way prove what the original intent of the body posture may have been. If it is possible we might want to try to nail down when this name for this hilt form first came into fashion and explore what other names, if any, may have been used for it.