it's always very enlightening to read Mr Maisey's well thought out arguments...however for "Javanese keris pundits" to say that only javanese and balinese keris are the real deal and the rest are -quote- " for example, Peninsula Malaya as merely imitations of the keris, not genuine keris" is, just well, an opinion among many others...
keris/kris is a unique cultural heritage of ALL Malay related people from Jawa, to mindanao to patani and malaysia (Nusantara). It is not disputed that keris as we know it most probably originates in jawa but that does not negate the fact that other people of various malay tribes (nusantara) do have a keris culture from early on due to intermixing of the people in the nusantara from the earliest of times...so, keris patani or bugis or whatever is as genuine as keris bali or jawa IMO. It is true that Jawa people don't value keris from say peninsula Malaysia , but the converse is also true, Malays in peninsula malaysia don't generally value javanese or balinese keris but consider sumateran and bugis keris as within their 'malay culture'...
With regards to the number of luks, it may well be true in the case of Javanese keris to have the maximum of 11 (+2) luks... but I don't see this is true for the rest of Nusantara.I've seen old antique Patani keris with 31 luks and plenty of others with more than 13 luks and i don't think this is considered as a negative innovation.
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