Thank you for the long winded essay Sir!
As you know Zeng He and Cheng Ho are the same Ming dynasty eunuch Admiral who spent much time in Indonesian waters. Ma Huan was describing something that could be a keris but also could be an other weapon such as a wedung or a badek or a glathi and as he saw the natives (like me) as demons I would imagine that he did not bother to even look at them properly or get to know them better or learn their language and again I ask how can you trust a journalist who doesn't even bother to ask the name of the exotic blade he saw? The keris is not the only tosan-aji that could fit the description of the Ming sailing monks.
There are only two famous keris killings: Mpu Gandring's unfinished keris killed Tunggul Ametung, Ken Arok, Anusapati, and Tohjaya but according to Pramoedya Ananta Toer the keris was not a real keris but rather a metaphor for an elite military unit. The second famous keris killing was Trunajaya's execution by the traitor king Amangkurat II Amral: an event that still shocks Javanese today. The keris is now in the Surakarta Kraton (which does not use 11 levels of language) and not thrown in to the South Sea because and only because it was used by a king to personally kill a rebel who very nearly took his throne.
Not only do temple reliefs have keris' being weilded as weapons, the wayang kulit repertoar does also. But if you look closer the reliefs actually depict times from the Zaman Purwacarita just like the wayang kulit does. However the most famous keris deaths in the wayang kulit is also the death of Buta Cakil/Gendring Caluring in the perang kembang part of the wayang performance. Cakil is a bad guy and always gets killed with his own keris. As there are also Prambanan reliefs of monkeys carrying keris would you conclude that Javanese learned about the keris from monkeys?
As for the recent murders using a keris in Sragen I have not heard of them. I come from near Sragen by the way. In 1965-66 the people of Bali had to execute members of their families who were Communist. What weaon was used to stab the hearts of most victims? Not the family keris nor the victims keris but ordinary pig stabbing pisau.
You are welcome to think that the evidence you have touted proves that the keris was intended as a weapon to stab using evidence from Zeng He's monks. But if you take their one paragraph as evidence of keris habitually being used to kill please also accept that racist ethnography and journalism produces valid accounts of the culture observed because that was what these Chinese monks were: racists who did not even bother to say hi what is that thing called? Please add to your theory that Javanese learned to make keris from Indian monkeys! Plus Amangkurat Amral who bent over to be raped by the VOC was a good example of Javanese kingship and cultural use of the keris!
Salam Keris
Salam Keris
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