Reading of inscription
It is Malay in Jawi script.
My suggested reading is "Datuk Bendahara Pahang, Hadiah, Allah Selamatkan yang menyimpan"
I'm guessing it means (from the) Datuk Bendahara of Pahang, A Gift, God preserves he who keeps it (the keris).
The Bendahara of Pahang was the representative of the Sultan of Johor, Riau and Lingga in the swathe of territory that is the modern state of Pahang in Malaysia.
They were from a junior line of the Bendahara dynasty which took power in Johor, after the last Sultan of the old Melaka dynasty was assasinated (the infamous Sultan Mahmud mangkat dijulang)
In the latter part of the 19th century, during the height of Dutch and British intervention in the archipelago, which ended any semblance of the earlier Johor Empire, the Bendahara of Pahang took on the title of Sultan to reflect his independence from the Sultan in Lingga and Yamtuans in Penyegat.
In the earlier years of the 19th century, the Bendahara associated with this keris would have probably been Bendahara Paduka Raja Tun Ali. It was customary that official letters of diplomatic nature to local and colonial counterparts were accompanied by gifts such as keris, which would explain the possible provenance of this keris.
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