Thanks for the additional pics Pak Ganja. I think I've seen a copy of the first one, but I don't recognise the second one. I might have have a copy of it, but I don't immediately recognise the style.
The trouble is, I have two filing cabinets full of original and photocopied old books and manuscripts, most have been translated into Indonesian, and I've read them all, but to find or identify something, unless I immediately recognise it, I need to pull everything out of the cabinets and sort through it.
Back 20 years ago when I was accumulating all this printed and written information I was convinced that when I had brought it all together and studied it, I would have learnt an enormous amount about the keris.
In fact, after reading it all, and spending quite a bit of time on some particular sections, what I found was that there is an enormous amount of repetition, a lot of imagination, almost no possibility of substantiation, and none of these writings can be found to go back very far in time.
Effectively, these old writings comprise recitations of elements from a belief system. Yes, they were interesting to read, and yes they do help to educate us in the attitudes and beliefs of the people who wrote them, and for whom they were written, but they do not tell us very much about the core nature of the keris.
I guess their value pretty much comes down to what it is that any individual person wishes to learn about the keris. For some people these writings could be extremely valuable; for others they can be something of only subsidiary interest, by which I mean that they provide additional knowledge on the way in which some people viewed the keris during one particular period of its history.
To draw a modern day parrallel:- Haryono Haryoguritno's "Big Book of Keris" has recieved a lot of criticism from a lot of people who do not view the keris in quite the same way that Pak Haryo does, however, in 50 years time his book will be viewed as an immensely valuable contribution to the art of the keris, whilst it may not recieve the same level of acclaim for its contribution to the culture of the keris.
It may be as well to bear in mind that whenever we read something about the keris, what we are reading is just one point of view of one aspect of the keris. Possibly there are no ultimate, all encompassing, answers.
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