[A. G. Maisey]

Thank you for your further comments Rasdan.

Bahasa Indonesia and Modern Malay are to a large degree mutually intelligible, but Modern Malay was preceded by Classical Malay, which was in common usage from about 1400 to about 1800, Classical Malay was proceeded by Old Malay.

So, your Professor is in fact saying that the word "tuah" did not exist in Old Malay, 1600 falls into the middle years of usage of Classical Malay, so what was happening in Malay society during those years from around 1400 to around 1600?

Your professor might be right, because in Wilkinson's original Malay Dictionary(Modern Malay) he uses the spelling "tuwah", the alternate, more modern spelling is used in the abridged version of Wilkinson:- "tuah".

In Modern Javanese the word "tuwah" does not exist, but it can be a regional variation of the word "tuwuh" which means "to grow, to rise to the surface, to increase in rank, to become greater".

In Old Javanese, the form of Javanese that was in general usage up to about 1600, the word "tuwuh" means "to grow, to arise from below".

Now look at Bahasa Indonesia, in this language we do not find "tuwah", nor do we find "tuwuh", but we do find "tuah", which is understood as:-

"1 good luck, good fortune. 2 magic power. 3 respect, honour, prestige."

I am not a linguist, in fact, my ability with languages other than English is pretty limited --- in school I had sufficient French to allow me to roughly understand cycling magazines, but not enough to pass examinations. Nobody could ever mistake my stumbling abilities in a few languages other than English to be representative of competence in these languages --- even in English I consider myself only barely competent. But I do have strong analytical abilities, and applying analysis to the various words & meanings attached to "tuwah/tuwuh" I feel it is not very difficult to understand the relationship between these two words and the word that is spelt as "tuah".

So, although the spelling of "tuah" now has this modern form, perhaps the concept of the modern idea of "tuah" is a concept that did exist in earlier times, but was represented by a word with a very slightly variant pronunciation. In earlier times, the spelling would of course not be a romanised spelling so perhaps these various romanised spellings do in fact come back to a single spelling in earlier scripts.

Just for interest sake, here is the entry in Wilkinson for "tuwah":-

" Luck, good fortune - in that things left to chance turn out well. Bertuwah:- lucky, luck bringing - as an amulet is supposed to bring luck, or as certain coins are believed to be lucky coins., HT.Abd., 58, 78, 486: "sudah dapat gading bertuwah, tandok tiyada berguna lagi: now that he has luck bringing ivory, common horn is of no use to him; now that he is wealthy, simple joys of his poverty please him no more; Prov. V. J.S.A.S.. XI 56, Untong ada tuwah tidak: he get profit but makes no lucky strokes; Prov."

I do think we can say that "taksu" is a purely Balinese idea, but as far as "tuah" goes, I am uncertain, I think the idea might be there, but not necessarily attached to the keris, Modern Balinese came in part from Old Javanese, if an idea existed in Old Javanese it probably still exists in Modern Balinese, but perhaps that idea is represented by a different word.

We still need to look at the idea of "isi" , the understanding of "tuah" is, I believe, essential to the understanding of "isi", but to understand "isi" we need first to understand how some elements of the Unseen World are understood in Bali, as opposed to Jawa.

Does anybody have any opinions on this variance in understandings?