Thanks for your further comment Rasjid.
Yes, the number of tiers in the roof of a meru indicates the hierarchical level of the deity, however, this only applies when the meru is located in a temple complex. When the tiered roof is located on a cremation tower, the number of tiers indicates the hierarchical level of the person being cremated.
Rulers and some other royalty could use 11 roofs in a cremation tower.
A commoner (sudra) was not entitled to any roofs in his cremation tower.
This hierarchical indicator was repeated in the luk of a keris blade.
In Old Javanese, the word or words that were applied to what we now know as a keris included "tewek" and "tuhuk", however, these words probably indicated a method of usage.Tewek occurs associated with weapons other than keris, tuhuk seems to occur only with the keris, or perhaps not with the keris, but rather with a stabbing weapon that is short enough to use overhand.
Other Old Javanese words that can be used for the keris are "duhung" & "kadgo". Tewek is a root word that produces a number of other words. "Curiga" is another word that can be used for a keris, and it has a connotation of something less than sharp --- just as in its other application of "doubt" :- doubt is not a sharp perception, it is still formatively dull.
The short and simple fact is this:- we do not really know what a keris was known as in Majapahit times, just as we do not really know what it looked like. However, Rasdan's suggestion that different hierarchical levels within the society carried different forms of personal weapons, and that these different forms had different names is very probably an accurate perception.
Gustav: there has been spasmodic debate for a long time as to the meaning of Ma Huan's "pu-la’tao", I think most scholars who have looked at this matter are in agreement that he was using a word that he had learnt in another place to describe the daggers worn in Jawa. Ma Huan visited Jawa in about 1413, but he did not begin the write drafts of his book until three years later, and it was not in its final form until some time after 1450. My guess is that he did not know what these daggers worn in Jawa were known as locally, or, if he had heard the word, it got lost between 1413 and 1450-something.
Old Javanese was not structured in the same way as Modern Javanese. Modern Javanese seems to have developed in the Second Kingdom of Mataram. It has been hypothesised that the rulers of Mataram enforced language levels as one of the ways in which they tried to legitimise their right to rule. The Old Javanese rulers did not have the same problems as did the rulers of Mataram, and Old Javanese was not nearly as highly structured as Modern Javanese. There probably were polite and impolite forms of speech, and possibly these forms did extend to the names used for the weapons of commoners and the weapons of nobility, but the name used could just as easily been because of form of the weapon, as because of status of the weapon.
On the use of the word "varna".
"Varna" is a word that is applied to all beings in creation , not only to human beings, and it classifies all those beings into four classes that broadly equate with caste as we now understand caste, but varna is not the same as "caste".
"Jati" is the same as "caste" as we now understand it.
However, caste in mainstream Hindu society was much different prior to the Muslim Mughals, and even they did not have as great an effect as did the British, who used caste to ease administrative difficulties.
I would suggest that since we are writing in English, that perhaps it may be advisable to use the English word caste, rather than "varna", or "jati", as we all know exactly what is meant by "caste".
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