Hmmm... ok, let's proceeding with caution...
discuss point by point.
Alan, the main reason for this thread is to analyse... not to criticise the authors, most had spent considerable amount of time, effort and passion to present us with good books, not perfect but worthy of reference. For that, I salute these authors.
However, there are parts that are not correct or in the 'grey' areas. These are the one I feel needs addressing... rather than just ignoring it, others might use it as reference and gets lost along the way... worse still if this distorted piece of information is presented as the truth.
Here, we can look at the matter from many perspective... at least we try to find out why the authors wrote it such, in what context... reason... based of fact, folklore, research findings... etc.
Since ganjawulung had brought these up, from MBRAS "The Keris and Other Malay Weapons" (1998), lets start with these...