[A. G. Maisey]

Rasdan, what I have written is an over-view, it is taken from a lot of notes made during a phone conversation, & compressed into something short enough and direct enough to be read quickly without the reader going to sleep.

So now, I'll expand a little.

The original use of the word "taksu" only applied to performance art, a performance had taksu when the performer became one with the part he played in the piece, when be actually became the character he was playing, when his mask was not a mask any more, but was the actual face of the character.

Then people started to use the concept of taksu to refer to other art works, and when an art object had become perfect it was considered to have taksu, what my friend actually said was this:-

"--- kalau obyek seni, atau barang seni sudah matang, yah, itulah sudah metaksu ---"

I guess we could say that something like the Mona Lisa or Girl with a Pearl Earring is "metaksu":- we look at the painting and what we witness with our eyes has an effect upon our emotions, however, since not only the creation of the condition of 'taksu' is dependent upon the three pillars of taksu, but also the perception of 'taksu' by the observer, an observer who is deficient in all elements of taksu will not be able to feel the taksu generated by the painting.

So --- "full artistic value"?
Maybe, this is not the way I would describe my present understanding.

Now, as I wrote, everybody has their own ideas on how the concept of "taksu" should be understood, you could have a dozen people who all recognise the taksu in a performance and they could well have a dozen different ideas about how & why the performance is taksu. When the word drifts into colloquial usage and is applied broadly to art works other than performance, the interpretations & understandings can vary even more widely, when it gets into gutter colloquialism and we have some half-ripe kid saying to his mother

"hey mum that soto was really metaksu"

well then we really do have a situation where language is undergoing change.

And this is one of the reasons why the word is so difficult to understand:- it means different things to different people, but its true, original meaning is only in performance art and it only means when that divine spirit enters the performer and he becomes one with his character.

If modern usage of the word corrupts the original way in which it was understood, we just need to recognise that this is one of the characteristics of a living language.

In Shakespeare's England you could get time in the stocks for uttering the word "occupy" in public, it was deemed to be obscene language, during the 17th & 18th centuries people in England avoided using this word.

So, if we want to apply "taksu" to a keris, then it would seem that we need to be able to feel the divine spirit in that keris when we look at it --- just look, not feel, do not forget that for the observer "taksu" is the result of witnessing something, and the effect that the observance has on feelings.

We very definitely cannot confuse taksu with tuah.

I cannot be too definite about that.

Tuah is NOT a Balinese concept, whereas taksu is 100% Balinese.

Tuah of a keris is talismanic in nature and is placed into the keris by a qualified maker.

Taksu is evidence of the presence of the divine spirit.

If some present day Balinese confuse taksu with tuah, this simply demonstrates the penetration of Javanese culture & language into modern Bali. Much of the current Balinese keris understanding has been drawn from Jawa, during the 1970's & 1980's it was almost impossible to find anybody with an in depth understanding of keris in Bali. During the last 20 years or so it seems that we have multitudes of keris literate people in Bali.

Who did they learn from?

Who were their teachers?

Rasdan, we cannot begin to understand a single blossom of a culture or society by only looking at that single blossom, we need to look at the garden it came from. If we want to understand the Balinese keris, we need to look at Balinese society & culture.

Balinese life is intertwined, many would say "defined by", religious observance.

I would strongly encourage everybody who has any interest at all in understanding the Balinese keris to begin by trying to gain an understanding of Balinese culture & society, including the changes that have been wrought by the necessity of forcing Balinese religion into a mould that is acceptable to Islam.

Question:- Has the concept of tuah been watered down in order to reduce elements of Hindu belief?

No, I don't think I'd put it that way. It is beyond doubt that the nature of the keris in Jawa, as it is understood at the present time, has been influenced by Islamic belief. But I don't think "watered down" is the way to think about this, rather understandings seem to have been pushed in a different direction. In Jawa we have this multitude of different pamors and dhapurs, most are able to be interpreted in some way or another, usually talismanic in nature.

Does the same situation exist in Bali? Not really.

In Jawa the keris has been principally a dress accoutrement since about the middle of the 18th century, during this time the talismanic component of its nature seems to have grown, whilst its function as weapon has seems to have decreased.

In Bali the primary function of the keris up until the puputans (only a bit more than 100 years ago) --- and maybe a for a while after that time --- has been as a weapon.

In Bali & in Jawa there is a somewhat different understanding of good & evil and the unseen forces that are representative of these concepts. This single variation in foundation understandings is sufficient to alter the way in which the world is understood, and the keris is an object that does physically exist in this world.