Thread: New Book?
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Old 4th June 2009, 11:29 AM   #11
A. G. Maisey
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Please forgive me Pak Ganja, but I believe it is time to clarify the essence of this discussion.

Your original question was this:-

"Do you think that Sumatran keris, Bugis Keris, Cirebonese keris, Javanese kerises they are Malay weapons?"

To answer this question one must first define what is meant by "Malay".

You did not define this, however, in my response to your question I did define "Malay" as meaning "The Malay People".

The Malay People originated in Yunnan Province in Southern China and began their migration into the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian Archipelago between 2500 and 1500 BC. The waves of Malay migration spread across the Pacific Ocean to the Phillipines, Borneo, what is now Indonesia, the coast of New Guinea, and to Madagascar.

The Malay People are very wide spread, and the peoples of the Indonesian Archipelago are classified as of Malay stock.

I am not positing my own opinion here, but simply repeating what can be found in encyclopaedias and text books.

Thus, people from Sumatra, Sulawesi, and Jawa can all be classified as being of Malay stock, even though that Malay blood is something from ancient history.

This being so --- and it is so --- these forms of keris can be legitimately referred to as "Malay weapons", that is, weapons of the Malay peoples.

Not Malaysians, but people who can claim descent from those immigrants from Yunnan of several thousand years ago.

As for origin of the keris, there can be no doubt at all that it originated in Jawa. Yes, there were inputs from various other sources, but the modern keris that we recognise today did originate in Jawa. If there is a solid argument accompanied by evidence to the contrary, I would love to hear it.

I fail to grasp the relevance a recitation of kings, kingdoms, and temples to an understanding of what the term "Malay" means.

In the book title in question, the writer has clearly intended the term"Malay" to be understood in the scholarly sense of reference to a race of people, rather than in the colloquial sense of our modern understanding a "Malay" person as an adherent of what we regard as "Malay Culture".
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