I will qualify my statements by saying that i really have no idea of the inner beliefs of Javanese (or Indonesian) society regarding the keris. I have never been there and have no real direct contacts that can valid anything i might believe on the subject. My understanding of the keris, what a "good" keris might be, is dictated more by my understanding of how international collectors view the keris.
It is clear to me that Islam as it has existed in Indonesia is its own variation on the theme and has absorbed quite a bit of local (both pre-Islamic and pre-Hindu) belief along its doctrines. If extremists are now trying to turn Indonesians away from the keris i am not convinced that is yet the norm and i would rather not turn this into a discussion or debate on current politics and religious extremism. Islam in Indonesia seems to have embraced the keris over the centuries and embed it with its own sense of Islamic mystical thinking. It seems likely that a good deal of the original Hindu-influenced symbolic intent of the keris has been replaced with its Islamic counterparts over the centuries of Islamic influence. So how Indonesians relate to the keris must have certainly changed in some regard over the years because of this.
Regarding the physicality of the keris i am less certain that the establishment of an Islamic culture made that many changes to the over all design. Yes, certainly we saw figurative hilts morph into abstract representation in certain areas around the archipelago. Interestingly enough though, a ban on figurative hilts does not really seem to have been put into effect in Jawa. I don't see that Islamic culture did that much to change the blade itself though. Yes, over the centuries we see the development of more complex pamor pattern, but this seems more a natural evolution than one dictated by religious philosophy. The same can probably be said about dhapurs. If anything affected the blade construction itself i would have to say colonial influence has. It seems to me that it was Europeans like Isaac Groneman who put an emphasis on the desirability of the high contrast silvery pamor he noted on upper level court pieces and made that the bar to be reached for a "good" keris. In 1904 Groneman wrote:
‘The pamor material for the kris smiths connected to the courts of Yogyakarta and Surakarta originates from an iron meteorite that fell to earth at the end of the eighteenth century in the neighbourhood of the Prambanan temple complex. The meteorite was excavated and transported to the kraton of Surakarta. From that time on, the weapon smiths of the Vorstenlanden used small pieces of meteoric iron to produce the pamor pattern in their krisses, pikes and other status weapons. After etching the blade with acidic substances, it is the small percentage of nickel always presents in meteoric iron that causes the characteristic silvery pattern that faintly lights up against a background of iron or steel that has become darkly coloured by the effect of the acids. However, the supply of meteoric iron, already scarce and expensive, will gradually become exhausted. The petty weapon smiths and their assistants who now and then receive a commission from their noble clients – they are becoming fewer and fewer – are poor and consequently can no longer pay for their raw materials. The Javanese weapon smiths are destitute. By making a kris, they do not earn more than starvation wages. Their trade threatens to become extinct if nothing changes. However, the solution of the problem is quite simple: replace the expensive meteoric nickel iron by cheap nickel originating from other sources since it is the nickel component in the kris that provides the contrast in color’
So Groneman seems to be making high contrast silvery pamor a standard to be most desired. I am not convinced that this view on keris pamor was the accepted Javanese perspective of the time. It has been shown that many, if not most old keris don't even have nickels material in the pamor, contrast coming instead from varying levels of phosphorus in the iron used (see studies and articles by Piaskowski and Bronson). Meteorite was only really in use as a pamor material for about a century before this time and only in a very limited number of keris. But Groneman began importing pure nickel to see his own ideal of pamor created in the keris. He was convinced he was saving a dying culture and putting keris production back on track, but it seems to me that he was instrumental in changing our perceptions of what a "good" keris is supposed to look like, at least in the international collector's view. I must admit that i am uncertain if this "ideal" has also become embedded in the native Javanese psyche.
70 years later Dietrich Drescher was instrumental in reviving keris manufacture and culture in Jawa. I am not certain how much his influence affected how keris were produced though he undoubtable brought his own European collector's perspective of what makes a "good" keris into the process.
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