Thank you Victrix. The Wagner reference is a wonderful one! and I have relied on it heavily for many years, in fact it was probably among my first books back when it first came out (1967).
The fact that this blade is so worn, suggests it was not necessarily a 'trade' blade, which would have been effectively 'blanks' or produced for specific markets. A worn cavalry officers blade from the suggested origins would have come into this Indonesian context through means outside such networks, suggesting this to be more of a 'one off' kind of situation. Perhaps a personally owned old sword or blade which was traded or sold to someone either bound for Indonesia or already there.
If there was some colonial presence of the nation from which this blade had provenance, then this amalgamation into local hilt form would be understandable, but as far as I know this is not the case here.
Truly an anomaly, but whether or not this marraige of blade into atypical hilt is from a historical situation or a modern contrivance is hard to say.
Interesting conundrum!
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