[A. G. Maisey]

Kai, I am not at all partial to the "you said" : "I said" style of discussion that you favour, so I am not going to indulge in it. To be frank, I find this style rather annoying and something along the lines of undergraduate debate, I personally prefer discussion to debate.

One could well ask why this is so, and this is a valid question. If we debate, the intention is to destroy the opposing point of view and very often the person or party that holds that point of view. Debate is ideally suited to a situation where one person or party wishes to dominate the other, to gain the recognition of being superior in one way or another. As our politicians so frequently demonstrate, debate is the ideal vehicle for the type "A" personality to create a false impression.

I personally favour discussion, the reason being that in discussion the objective is to put forward varying points of view without the objective of domination. In discussion everybody can win, a completely different situation to debate where it is inevitable that one party to the debate will lose.

The difference between debate and discussion is the difference between aggression and harmony, and I personally regard this Forum as a discussion group, not a debating society.

I'm going to attempt to make a couple of points, and to put them as concisely as I am able, something I'm not very good at. It takes a lot of time to write both clearly and concisely.

In my post #4 my comment "Certainly not for kraton wear" was directed at the complete keris, not the wrongko alone. The atasan of the wrongko is a ladrangan style, and is suited to wear for formal occasions, those formal occasions could relate to something taking place under the aegis of a kraton, or a local center of power, or of national government, or of some commercially generated need, such as the opening of a new factory, or of some private need, such as a wedding.

There is another way in which formal dress can be used also, and that is to indicate the state of mind of the wearer. If a business owner were to visit one of his places of business in formal dress, rather than in his usual jeans and T-shirt, it would be a message to all concerned that today they had better be on their best behaviour, today's visit is serious. However, if elements of keris dress, or of personal attire are mixed, or if motifs used in personal attire are recognised as carrying a particular meaning, that also will carry a message, a message which might intensify the perceived impression, or of ameliorating the perceived impression.

The vast bulk of all formal keris dress is in the care of ordinary people and is used for ordinary purposes, and this has probably been the case since at least the middle of the 18th century. To look at a keris, any keris, and form the opinion that it could be a keris that was suitable for wear in a kraton, or of any lesser court, is fatuous speculation in the absence of a detailed knowledge of the internal regulation of the particular entity that one has in mind.

As to why this particular keris has a quite nice quality wrongko atasan, a pendok that would not normally be associated with this style of wrongko, and a hilt that tends toward the indigenous belief systems of Jawa and Madura, I have no idea at all, and I will refrain from putting forward any speculative propositions in this regard.

In respect of my use of the phrase that has generated such intense attention on your part:- "Certainly not for kraton wear".

I could have used any number of combinations of words to generate the idea that I sought to generate with this phrase, but I did not want to use more than a bare minimum of words --- in retrospect, an error on my part, as I have now written somewhere around 100 times more than I wished to write.

The idea I was attempting to generate was this:-

"In my opinion the way in which this keris is dressed is a style that I would expect to see used by a person who was not a part of the aristocratic elite of any place, but rather a middle class person who was not bound by the dress codes of the elites who held sway in the centers of power."

Please note Kai, I am stating an opinion, I am not hypothesizing, I am not putting forward the foundation of an upcoming paper, I am simply putting forward an opinion, and that opinion is founded upon my experience. Moreover, I do not really care whether anybody accepts my opinion, and I am most certainly not going to try to convince anybody that my opinion is either valid or invalid. Each of us can have our own opinion, and if your opinion varies from my own, I respect your right to hold such opinion.

Your question in respect of "underlying assumptions" seems to indicate that you assume that I have formulated some hypothetical matrix that permits me to slot this keris into its own little box. Not so Kai, no assumptions, no scholarly examination of books written by people from foreign societies, no academic analysis. Simply reliance upon more than 50 years of personal observation.