Those comments of yours are very pertinent JG. Your own socio-cultural background has permitted you to immediately see one of the major fault-lines in the Knaud argument.
In fact, David Van Duuren delves pretty deeply into the back story of the Knaud's acquisition and gives us a lot of info that we, or at least I, did not previously know. For example:-
Charles Knaud was not a "doctor" in the European sense of the word, he claimed to have trained under a Javanese dukun, and his powers of healing came from a Javanese, not a Dutch, foundation.
Dutch doctors had already attempted to heal the young prince, but had failed, Charley Knaud enters the scene, detects that the prince has been subjected to guna-guna, ie, black magic, and promptly cures him.
What we know of CharleyK mostly comes from his grand nephew John Knaud who wrote an article about CharleyK many years after his death. According to this article CharleyK was an eccentric, a painter, and an art collector who had a very high degree of interest in Javanese beliefs.
The keris itself was brought into the spotlight after Charley got hold of it, then it disappeared, it was commented upon by N.J.Krom, it was rediscovered in 2002.
In his book, David Van Duuren is rather dismissive of the back story, he concentrates on the keris itself, not the embroidery surrounding it. You yourself understand that convention in Javanese society is that reality must never be permitted to get in the way of making a story, or anything else for that matter, better or more interesting than it really is. The truth of something is often so exceedingly boring, one of the reasons why gratuitous truths are never welcome.
So, let us just concentrate on the keris itself. I will continue to call it a "keris", but frankly, when I look at many of the physical features of The Knaud, I am forced to think of it as a "keris-like object", rather than a keris.
What questions can be directed at the physical characteristics of The Knaud?
|