[kai]

Hello Alan,

Probably better than 90% of Bali keris are wos wutah anyway, and those that are not are some other pretty innocuous sort of pamor. Be a real clever dukun who could use pamor wos wutah to santet somebody.

Thanks for the observation! One could argue that pamor did seem to have had less importance on Bali than on Java and, thus, it might be less likely to get focused on. (And also possibly less "needed" with the gonjo.)

In fact, I don't know if this "hide the pamor" game even existed in Bali. There seems to be some indication that it did exist in Jawa, but even there, I'm not too sure that it grew out of any belief that it afforded some protection against santet. Rather, I think it possibly grew as a justification by offended persons wanting to save face, when Sultan Agung decreed that only he in the kingdom of Mataram could wear a keris with a pamor gonjo.

We are talking Bali, and there is no doubt at all that in Bali up until quite recently the keris of the common man was a weapon.A plain iron gonjo serves its purpose as well as a pamor gonjo on a weapon, and its cheaper.
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Nobody in their right mind spends more money than necessary, especially in an agrarian based society.

Well, I'm not sure this is necessarily so. Weapons have - due to their very nature and importance - always been associated with a lot of magic, beliefs, rituals, talismans, what-have-you. These definitely served a purpose for the owner but they were not based on keeping the costs/efforts as low as possible. I'd agree that any associated cultural constraints would usually not go so far to compromise the function as a weapon. However, there are obviously a lot of added/changed things which don't have functional consequences and would thus be neutral and open to cultural developments.

If we can hear a logical argument in support of "hide the pamor", I'm more than happy to listen, but I think that before we begin we need to show that this "hide the pamor" belief did in fact exist in Bali.

Ack.!

Regards,
Kai