I had a feeling that the 'ganja iras' question would pop-up, true enough.
I believe there are quite a few of us here, who do have 'ganja iras' blades. However, the age of these pieces doesn't go back very far. Most are 19th century or later.
David, I agree with points 1) and 2).
From my limited observation, I found ganja iras pieces, more common to Sumatra areas than any other regions.
My 2 examples of a ganja iras blades. Both est. to be 19th century blades.
http://alamshah.fotopic.net/p32019280.html
http://alamshah.fotopic.net/p32021340.html
Regarding the notion that "gonjo iras blades were probably made this way as a cost cutting method",
can this be elaborated why? Because if this is so, then we would be seeing many of this sort of blades.
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Originally Posted by David
I wonder if by this time spiritual attribution had been assigned to various aspects of the blade. So i wonder what this might mean in terms of these spiritual concepts of this part of the blade to the owner of a gonjo iras blade. Why would he want to have such a blade?
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I wonder too...
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Originally Posted by David
...the seperate gonjo did indeed come to be an important mystical component of the keris.
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I believe so, too. At least from certain Sumatran, Riau and Peninsular esoteric beliefs. Keris outside Java did evolved and have (and still have) its own interpretation, different from the Javanese belief system.