I don't think I fully understand your first comment Kai. However, it is important to understand the roots of tangguh.
Why did the system arise? Was it just to keep people with a very low level of keris education amused? Or was it maybe for some solid socially based reason?
When did the system arise?
Was it always intended to be used as it is used today?
What does it actually do as opposed to what many people believe it does?
You have given examples of :- Mojopahit, Mataram, Blambangan, Banten
Mataram is very well recognised and has numerous sub-classifications. There would be somewhere between "very little", and "no" disagreement on a Mataram classification, but the sub-classifications are a totally different matter, difficult, varied, not a lot of mutual agreement.
Mojopahit, the indicators are probably well known, but the population of blades that can reasonable be classified as Mojo is very small, which means that although the indicators may be widely known, almost nobody has seen sufficient blades of this classification to enable them to form a good knowledge base. In my opinion Mojo is the ultimate expression of tangguh belief, because we will sometimes find blades that on the basis of the indicators, are inarguably Mojo, but on the basis of condition cannot possibly be 500+ years old.
Blambangan attracts various opinions.
Banten doesn't count:- it is not from the Land of Jawa.
Bali, in terms of the Solonese tangguh system, is almost totally irrelevant. It is recognised, but its place is to permit recognition of a Bali keris so that we can immediately disregard it and not waste time on appraisal or opinions.
You did not mention Bugis, but it should be mentioned; Bugis blades are recognised as very functional blades, as it was once put to me:- "weapons that look a little bit like a keris but are not really keris". This was Javanese opinion from a very respected Javanese ahli keris, to him, and others like him, all keris from outside Jawa that had a vaguely Bugis form were Bugis, because these blades were primarily weapons that could never really claim to be recognised as "proper keris". The keris has for a very long time been a weapon with a spiritual nature, to the Javanese keris literate person the Bugis keris lacks spirituality.
Kai, I found out more than 30 years ago, that for tangguh to make any sense at all you need to be able to adopt a Javanese mode of thought, you cannot do that just for keris, you have to be able to do it for everything in your world. If you try to understand tangguh from the foundation of a culture or society that is not Javanese, you cannot, and that makes of tangguh a pretty useless tool for any collector who bases his collecting on non-Javanese ideas.
If one is not Javanese and has not received close personal instruction from somebody who understands the system, the best way to think about the tangguh system is that it provides a relatively easy guide that will permit an older blade to be distinguished from a younger blade.
You mentioned a "Mataram bias". I cannot see this. The second kingdom of Mataram had a very dubious foundation that the early rulers spent a lot of time and effort in attempting to legitimise.They claimed descent of legitimacy from Majapahit, but in fact that relationship to Mojo came through the female line and was rather remote. We probably would not have the Modern Javanese language as it is today if it had not been for the efforts of the early rulers of Mataram to demonstrate that they were in fact entitled to be rulers.
If there is an overall cultural, or societal bias amongst Javanese people, it is a bias towards honour and towards Majapahit. Periods and people identified as honourable deserve respect and are of value. People and periods identified as lacking honour are of little or no value and do not deserve respect. But to determine exactly how to identify that which is worthy of respect requires a Javanese take on the world and on that which has occurred in the past.
When we look at old European collections we are looking at keris that have already been corrupted by commonality and the Islamic influence.
When was the peak of Majapahit?
When did Majapahit die?
When was the first keris brought to Europe?
When were the "very early kerises" brought to Europe?
Where did these kerises come from?
European ideas and values have very little place in understanding how a traditional, keris literate Javanese person considers the keris.
I'm not passing any judgements here, I'm not saying that one approach is right and the other approach is wrong. Rather, I'm trying to say that a collector outside of the keris sub-culture as it is in Central Jawa has a different way of looking at and thinking about keris than does a person who is a part of that Central Javanese sub-culture.
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