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Originally Posted by DAHenkel
A reminder to all that while a classic of the literature - this book should be taken with a fair pinch of salt. Gardner was a very interesting man but a bit of a crank with some rather dubious ideas about keris, history, magic and so forth. The book is perhaps the single most important source for many of the misconceptions, strange theories and errors which continue to plague keris knowledge - particularly in the Malay world. Buy the book but remember...it is an imperfect resource.
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Seems to me that just about all written sources are imperfect resources for the study of keris Dave. I am well aware that Gardner's book is perhaps even less perfect than others.I think i also made the "grain of salt" reference in my previous post. I would not, however, go so far as to refer to him as a "crank" and while i don't know much about his views on history i don't find his views on magic to be all that dubious.