Bill,
Thanks for your interesting posts.
One thing that puzzles me is the Negrito connection?
As far as I understand the "Moros" are of Malay-Indonesian origin and not related to the original "Negritos" living before them on the islands?
Another influence, especially important related to Kris culture and Folk Islam, is the pre-Islamic Hindu beliefs in this area.
Also there exist some early documentation to be found on the beliefs in the area from the time before this Kris was produced.
On the two avenues it's a classical clash of two schools (f.i. within your field of comparative religion);
- all symbols are universal (Eliade, Jung), and
- all symbols are specific to the local culture (Evans-Pritchard, Geertz).
As usual with two extremes "the truth" is often found somewhere inbetween.
I really enjoyed your Martian example but if the Martian had read about the earthlings before his field work probably he had drawn less drastic conclusions?
I fully agree with you on:
"Still we can glean information from their works and hopefully enjoy a glimmer of understanding."
That's exactly the purpose of this thread. We can probably never find out for sure the exact meaning of this motif. But together maybe we can find some possible explanations of it?
The alternative is to dismiss it as all guess work, which in a way it of course is. But that doesn't increase the possibility of understanding on how to get closer to some of the more probable meanings of this riddle.
Michael
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