[kai]

Hello Alan,

I had a difficult time to come up with a response that might help to reconcile the quite divergent takes of Gustav and Bill. Not that these are mutually exclusive - you seem to have offered a bridge here though, Alan!

For better or worse, my comments will dwell more on the technical aspects here.

"keris knowledge is not knowledge as we understand the word, it is belief"

When it comes to classifying a keris according to geographic point of origin, or point of origin in time, we are dealing with a belief system, not all that much different to any system of religious belief. The whole thing depends upon circular reasoning.

Seems we need a healthy dose of "Don't take my word for it - check for yourself if the stuff really works!" here! To paraphrase a well-known historical figure...

What I have witnessed more than once is that with a keris or other item of extremely high quality, a Javanese ahli keris (keris expert) will first attempt to classify the item according to the ruler during whose reign it was made, then if he is required to name an empu, he will assess the level of quality, if it is of extremely high quality, that item of tosan aji will be attributed to the leading empu of that particular era. The foundation is supposition, and all that follows is supposition, but it becomes generally believed supposition, with one supposition supporting the other.

The tombak that I posted and that Gustav has referenced was given as Jayasukadgo by two different ahli keris, at two different times. Neither was Empu Suparman, who had already left us at the time I acquired this tombak. However, the major identifier of this tombak as Jayasukadgo, was a recognised empu of the highest order --- and clearly his identification is at variance with Haryoguritno's.

Sounds like a lot of "balancing" is going on during these sessions.

Considering the traditional hierarchical transfer of knowledge, we are looking at quite a bottleneck situation, assuming that the very few leading experts will almost by necessity have learned from much of the same limited population of high-end blades (and master teachers). This may result in perceived coherence as well as meme drift!

The widely held belief amongst truly keris literate people is that a ron dha is the signature of the maker of a piece. Let us accept, for the sake of discussion, that this is so. Very few people sign their name in exactly the same way each and every time, in those circumstances where a signature becomes a proof of identity, we find that the examiner of the signature does not look for perfect repetition, but rather seeks to compare an overall form. So perhaps it might be the same with the ron dha, if it truly is the signature of the maker, we do not look for perfect conformity, but rather for overall consistency.

This is not a really convincing comparison: A written signature is mainly judged by the flow of lines (done in a single fluid movement) while the greneng are slowly cut. The latter can be approached little by little and perfect "fakes" are way more feasible than with a written signature! (Cp. my earlier comments .)

There can never be a substitute for experience, and the field of keris is no different to the other fields of art. The person who is called upon to verify that Rembrandt was the man who painted that dirty, cracked little painting that turned up in Aunt Jessie's attic does not use an engineering approach in order to form his opinion, he uses defined indicators and his experience.

This comparison seems very pertinent: We have to realize that an "established" art expert may only be able to weed out the more or less obvious chaff while high quality work has successfully fooled specialized experts relying only on stylistical analysis and "time-proven" indicators of age/etc. The many recent issues in falsely validated pieces throughout the art market have clearly shown that full-blown scientific examinations are crucial for reliably evaluating high-quality artwork (including exposure of deliberate fakes which may happen to exhibit better quality than the original artwork).

Still, it is only possible to falsify any working hypothesis rather than proving that any piece is "genuine" for sure. Thus, there always needs to stay a little doubt even with the most convincing pieces believed to be genuine (unless eventually proven otherwise). However, this believe is based on (hopefully) well established data rather than conjecture and/or "authorative" verdicts.

<snip> the bottom line is this:- the opinion of that experienced person will in most cases reflect the opinion of the bulk of other persons who possess a similar level of knowledge and experience, thus it becomes something that most people can believe, in other words, an item of belief.

Seems we need to foster scientific approaches if we really want to break with circular reasoning! I'm game, seriously.

Regards,
Kai