Yuuzan, if we look at older keris we find a very limited number of figures incorporated into their design. The figures that are most frequently met with in older, traditional keris are the naga in various forms, the singo barong, the Bhoma, and I guess we need to include the deer as well, even though that did seem to come a little later.
As we move through time various other figural motifs appear, sometimes we can attribute a meaning to them, sometimes possibly only the maker or the original owner can attribute a meaning. Then there are motifs that have different meanings for different people and places, for example, a flying elephant when associated with a Surakarta keris is supposedly in recognition, or memory, of the move of the karaton from Kartosuro to Surokarto. But for other people in other places it may have a different meaning. Of course, an elephant cannot be read in the same way as a flying elephant, and that elephant motif can be read in several different ways.
As keris become more recent we find meditating figures(puthut), buffalo, tigers, lions, manglar monggo, garudas, in fact a whole menagerie of motifs. A nice foundation for a collection could perhaps be to collect only keris with figural motifs --- what we call "picture keris".
However, once we move away from tradition and from motifs that have a known religious connection, we move into no-man's-land. In most cases the only person who could really say with certainty what a particular figure represents in more recent keris is the maker.
To clarify what I think of as "tradition", I need to explain that within this context of keris development I think in terms the last 1000 years. The foundation tradition lays within the Hindu-Buda period, I regard more recent keris as those which developed under the Islamic domination.
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