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Old 29th August 2016, 01:28 PM   #23
A. G. Maisey
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Join Date: May 2006
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Jean, if this book says that ilining warih is equivalent (ie, the same as) beras wutah, they are wrong.

Sorry, but they misunderstand.

Beras wutah (wos wutah, wusing wutah --- and a number of other spelling variations) is the major random pamor pattern:- you take the material, fold and weld a few times, forge the keris, carve: job done. Result:- random pamor:- beras wutah.

However, that random pamor has a number of variations in form, so we can have different wos wutah motifs; this is so in Javanese wos wutah and also in Balinese wos wutah.

The text in "Keris Bali Bersejarah" was written by Basuki Teguh Yuwono, a young Javanese gentleman who is a product of the Central Javanese keris school of Solo, and this background shines through consistently in his text.

On pages 97 & 98 of "Keris Bali ---" there are photos of various random pamor motifs. These pamors are all named as Wusing Wutah (ie, beras wutah, wos wutah), but then the motif variation is named, and ilining warih is one of these beras wutah motif variations, along with ngulit semangka, pulo tirto. gedhegan, gedhegan bulat, semangka wengkon, ngintip, wengkon.

So ilining warih is definitely not equivalent to beras wutah, it is motif variation of beras wutah.

We can find exactly the same thing in Jawa.

Strictly speaking the pamor motif should be named as "Beras Wutah, ilining warih", but who is so tightly controlled in terminology all the time? Not me, that's for sure, so mostly we just use the name of the motif variation, same as if we are talking about a motor vehicle, we don't always say "Ford Mustang", mostly we just say "Mustang":- everybody knows its a Ford.

Re the pamor being difficult to see. Is it possible that these blades with difficult to see pamors are older blades? Mostly very old Bali blades do not have high contrast pamor, it is often, maybe usually, quite dark, very little contrast, especially in keris that would have been the property of common people.
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