Yes Jean, there is variation in the indicators for tangguh, all these recent publications you mention have drawn on older publications such as "Panangguhing Dhuwung".
I don't use any of the published sources, either recent, or older, but rely on what I was taught by Mpu Suparman, during the 1970's he was the Penangguh for the Boworoso Tosan Aji in Surakarta, that is to say, his opinion in respect of tangguh carried greater weight than the opinions of others.
For Majapahit he named 14 indicators: tanting, besi, pamor, baja, pawakan, gonjo, gandhik, blumbangan, sogokan, ada-ada, kruwingan, eluk-lukan, wadidang, sekar kacang. His descriptions of the indicators he used are fairly detailed, for instance, for the sogokan:-
" well formed and handsome, A rounded bottom and no pamor in evidence. There are keris Mojopahit that have a rather long sogokan, but in these cases the Pajajaran pattern is being followed, normally the sogokan is short"
If your sources use the word "pawakan" to describe the character of the blade, this would be disallowed in Surakarta, in Surakarta the correct word to describe the feeling generated by a blade would be "wanda", with "pawakan" being used for the overall visual appearance. Mpu Suparman describes the wanda of Majapahit as "brave".
So we have lots of variation in not only the indicators for tangguh, but the way in which those indicators are understood.
In essence, the tangguh system of classification is an element of the keris belief system. My personal opinion is that it can be relied upon to a limited degree for fairly recent tangguhs, such as Surakarta and HB, maybe even as far back as Mataram Senopaten, but when we get into the really old tangguh classifications I regard it as pretty untrustworthy as an indicator of age. My teacher would have disagreed with me, but his world view was different to my own.
The tangguh system was developed as a reaction to colonial dominance of the Javanese kingdoms, and the restrictions that colonial power and traditional standards of the aristocracy imposed upon Javanese men of noble birth. It was never intended as a tool to establish the actual age of a keris.
So, for the purposes of this present discussion I feel that we should leave tangguh classifications off to one side.
Perhaps an approach that looks at the sources of information available to us might be more useful than a system devised to help store wealth.
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