[A. G. Maisey]

Thank you Kai, your opinion was one of the ones I have been looking for, and I will respond to your post before going to the destination I intended when I asked my opening question, which was this:-

What I would like to know is this:-

on a keris blade, where is the beginning of the blade?

Is it the point, one side or another, or is it somewhere else?

It was phrased as a simple, direct question, and during the course of this discussion I have repeated that it was intended in a simple sense a couple of times, repetition that should not have been necessary, because as a part of the question I gave an example that clarifies perfectly what I had in mind. One does not provide physically related examples if one is looking for philosophically based answers.

In fact, there is a correct answer to this question, it is an answer that I have known for many years, I've never wheeled it out before, for the simple reason that it is only one piece of trivia amongst many and I doubt that there has ever been a reason to put the record straight. However, I made reference to it in one of my recent catalogue descriptions, and a friend who saw the catalogue text when I was still preparing it suggested that I should put it up into the Warung. So I am doing that now.

Scroll down and look at the picture I have posted.

This is a copy taken from Ensiklopedi. I think everybody here will recognise this pamor, it is Batu Lapak, sometimes the name will be given as Watu Lapak, but that is just a peculiarity of the Javanese language, "B" and "W" can be interchanged at the wish of the speaker or writer, usually to create a more pleasant spoken delivery.

I cannot remember ever seeing the name of this pamor given as anything other than Batu Lapak. Every keris literate person whom I know in Jawa gives the name as Batu Lapak. There can be no argument about what name we use for this pamor, it is Batu Lapak.

It is a name that is easily understood, "batu" or "watu" means stone or rock in Bahasa Indonesia, Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, it is a word that everybody who has spent five minutes with Bahasa Indonesia knows, probably one of the first words that is learnt when learning any of these languages. "Batu" does not seem to appear in either Old Javanese or in Modern Balinese, so it has probably come into BI, Modern Javanese, and Sundanese from Malay. The form of pamor batu lapak looks a bit like a little rock that has been set into the very base of a keris blade. Batu lapak pamor is only found in one place on a keris blade, directly below the pesi, in the sor-soran.

So that is the "batu" part of the name, but what about the "lapak" part?

Well, "lapak" is not Bahasa Indonesia, nor is it Malay, it does occur in Sundanese, where it is understood as "a mark, or a trace", it does not occur in Balinese.

But in Javanese we do find "lapak", and the meaning of lapak is "saddle", so clearly the meaning of "batu lapak" is "saddle stone".

Or is it?

This name has always troubled me. A saddle stone? What sort of stone is that? Or does it mean a stone saddle? Or a stone that is put into a saddle? I'm not the greatest horseman in the world, but I have spent one hell of a long time on bicycle saddles, and sorry, but I just cannot reconcile the idea of a stone being anything at all to do with a saddle.

So being the inquisitive sort of bloke that I am I started asking questions, and I started to get some different sort of answers to exactly what the word "lapak" means. Certainly it means "saddle", a saddle, the sort of saddle you put on a horse. But it has other meanings as well, the two that I got given back to me most often were that lapak means "after this", or "after that", in the sense that "after I finish this I'll start that", and "a beginning".

Not only am I inquisitive, but I have a tendency to doubt everything, so when I get given explanations and meanings of things, I usually like to check those explanations and meanings, just to make sure I understand what I've been told, and to check that the person who told me is in fact giving me something that is reasonably accurate. So I checked a number of dictionaries to see if I could find this idea of "beginning" or "starting" attached to the word "lapak".

What I found was really quite illuminating. I have access to a number Javanese dictionaries, in most of these dictionaries "lapak" is given the one simple meaning of "saddle", but in the most authoritative Javanese dictionary that I have access to it is given the additional meanings of "after that/this", and "the beginning" ( in Javanese of course, it is a dictionary for Javanese people, see photo).

So now if we consider the pamor name "Batu Lapak" we must consider whether "saddle stone" is the correct understanding or if "beginning stone" might perhaps be a more accurate understanding of this "Batu Lapak" name.

Personally, my vote goes to "Beginning Stone" I think "Saddle Stone" is about as wrong as it can be and has been wrong for a long time.

If "beginning stone" is correct, then of course that name identifies the place where the actual keris, the wilah, the symbol of Siwa and of masculinity begins, and it is right at the point where the pesi meets the wilah.

Now who voted for that?
It was Dr. David I believe, and I do not think that the good doctor knows one word of Javanese, he simply thought about it and applied logic, and presented a straight-forward, simple answer. Even if he does know a little bit of Javanese it is almost certain that he would not know this obscure use of the word "lapak".

I find this idea of batu lapak as an indication of the point where the wilah begins, to be very interesting in another way also. In modern times most keris blades either have the pesi forged in, or cut in, but in old blades the pesi was often attached to the wilah after the wilah had been forged, and this act of attaching the wilah created a batu lapak. So yes, the place where the pesi meets the wilah is indeed the beginning of the wilah.

But pause for a moment and envisage in your mind's eye what an upright wilah that has no pesi looks like. It is a mountain, it is the Gunungan, it is Mount Kailas, it is Mount Meru, it is the iconic Siwa.

And just exactly what is the Keris?