Once again Ariel, you are absolutely correct.
However you are correct only from the view point of a person who has not yet learnt the elements of the belief system that governs an understanding of the Javanese keris.
In this Forum it has often been repeated that an understanding of the keris is dependent upon an understanding of the belief system that is attached to the keris. The whole thing is based on belief. Everything that is of any importance in the world of the Javanese keris is based upon belief. It is a field of knowledge that has quite specific rules attached to it, rules that are not unlike the rules that govern major religions:- we cannot understand any major religion by reverting to logic. The same is true of the keris, logic has no part in its understanding.
The way in which the waves, ie, luk, are counted in a Javanese keris blade is no less dependent upon this belief system than is anything else in the world of the keris.
Of course, if we wish to step outside the rules that govern this understanding for Javanese people, then we can make our own rules and decide for ourselves how we wish to count those waves. This then would be our own understanding, not the understanding of the people who originated and own this cultural icon, the keris.
However, such an approach would seem to be out of step with the approach taken by collectors in any field of ethnography that I can think of, where the collectors and students who live in societies that are foreign to the society that is home to the object collected or studied, do strive to try to understand the object of their interest in terms that are in synch with the understanding of the people of that originating society.
As an example we could perhaps consider the field of nihonto. Have collectors in this field followed their own guidelines, or have they endeavored to understand the way in which the Japanese people approach the subject?
If we wish to understand the keris we really have no alternative but to try insofar as we are able to understand the perspective of the Javanese people.
But if we only wish to collect the object and divorce that object from any understanding of it, then we can take any approach to its collection that we wish.
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