Thank you Marto Suwignyo for explaining some cultural background to the keris.
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Originally Posted by marto suwignyo
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There is ample evidence in the literature to support my assertion that the nature of the keris in the twentieth and twenty first centuries was not the nature of the keris in earlier times. For those who may be interested in discovering this for themselves, I suggest that they may care to start with a reading of :- "Java in The 14th. Century"--Pigeaud, note particularly the Nagarakertagama and the Nawanatya, and Groenveldt`s translation of the Ying-Yai-Sheng-Lan (1416), which can be found in "Historical notes on Indonesia and Malaya compiled from Chinese sources".
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I believe that the keris was only passingly mentioned by the writer in Zeng He's who did not even know the name of the weapon he was attempiting to describe. If nowadays a writer saw something in an other culture and described it without even knowing its name would his notes be reliable? I don't have the Nagarakertagama and Pararaton on me but I have read old texts and Mpu Gandring's keris is the one and only keris used to kill. There is more evidence in literature to support the notion that the Java keris was never intended to kill even before Islam. Look in Bali where the keris/kedutan is also never intended to kill. When the keris left Java/Bali it began to be seen as a weapon to kill. So it is the other way around, the coming of Islam coincided with the use of the keris as a physical weapon.
Salam keris