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Old 6th February 2005, 07:54 AM   #16
MABAGANI
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Provenance can also come into question, I've seen many artifacts mislabeled, so how would can they be judged as accurate. Provenanced pieces that are labeled with a year, place and battle are convincing, these are rare, but there are many swords that are mislabeled even by scholars now and from the past. My main point about the era of Buisan and Kudrat is that there was a convergence in the Islamic faith among the Moro Sultanates and of interest in the archaic kris was that there was an uncanny convergence and resemblance in form, generations to follow at later periods I would expect vast regional changes in style and interpretation, which we find. btw I wouldn't expect Kudrat to pick a kris (archaic) over a kampilan...he was Maguindanao after all, but as a royal he would have known the significance of the kris and its unifying symbol among Malay Muslims. Here again, it would have been the royals presenting a form and the warrior class adapting it in battle, tests in fighting itself would have been enough for rapid change. Note re: the Darangen, the kampilan was so revered that even if other swords were present through the ages the Maranao may have not wanted to change their oral tradition, the epic is currently endangered to time til this day because much of its writings go against Islamic ideology but the Moros of Mindanao and Sulu have always been considered different and have long practiced what is considered "folk Islam" meaning practicing a mixture of early beliefs intertwined in the faith.
Back to the dating question, in early Spanish chronicles during the conquest for Luzon it was written that the bladed weapons used in Manila were small and ineffective, could they have meant the early kris? Supposedly the kris and kampilan were known thoughout the islands. Northern Luzon actually has legends about the kampilan written in epics. Also of note during the time of PI revolution the Katipunan among the educated elite began adapting the kris of old into their weaponry.
I'll let my theory rest at this point until I can get an alien to slingshot me back in time to validate my hunches...
At that, here is an odd keris/kris small in size and weight compared to the archaic kris but the same form blade with flat rounded almost oval tang, latter misfitted with a Visayan hilt...could this have been the type made prior to the archaic kris? I could use the archaic kris effectively as a sword but this one is too light and dagger like. I found it online from the PI and thought it was worth examining and studying.
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Last edited by MABAGANI; 6th February 2005 at 01:14 PM.
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