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Originally Posted by Boedhi Adhitya
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As already stated, no main Javanese Silat school such as Setia Hati Terate, Perisai Diri, Merpati Putih or Tapak Suci has keris jurus, as long as I remember. The Maduras Pamur school, while it use keris as it's school symbol, has it neither. If I were a Javanese soldier in old days, I would bring lance/tombak or firearm, a pedang, and two keris: a sturdy, straight one in front as my last resort, and the old one on my back as my guardian angel  . A good keris then, should fulfill the functional(weapon), aesthetical, and symbolic/spiritual requirements.
There were a murder case in Jogjakarta, where the murderer use his heirloom keris and stabb the victim on the buttock. The victim died after several hours hospitalized. Well, Gentlemen, please use your another 'poisonous keris' when you're fighting with your wife   I shouldn't tell where you should stabb her, should I ?
Best Regards,
boedhi adhitya |
Nuwun sewu, everyone,
There was a couple of years ago a murder in Sragen where the killer used his keris and tried to convince the judge that his keris made him do it but the judge didn't have it.
In my experience there are two ways to poison your blade common in Jawa. The rich-man's way is to us warangan. A friend of mine died within hours after being stabbed in the thigh with a waranganed badik and the hospital refusing to treat him because he had tattoes. So plain warangan seems to be deadly enough.
The other is the poor-man's
cacam way, in which you collect as many venomous reptiles and insects you can get, let them rot in a container, and let you blade soak in the rotting mass preferably untill there are layers of the goo on it. Every time the general elections are near and the campaiging season starts, alot of village and kampung thugs begin to do this.
There are now Western Pendekars who claim to teach Jawa silat and add keris and kujang jurus to their repertoar. However in my opinion this would be most likely be their own invention. As for Jawa Princes studying silat? Of course it happened! Although the name was
kanuragan rather than silat. It was not a good thing to do (politically) though, for if the Dutch found that you were interested in martial arts your career prospects were sorely influenced.
For instance, WS Rendra's father and grandfather were silat teachers in the Yogya kraton in the line of Suryoningalogo. The late Bagong Kussudihardjo's Grandfather was Gusti Djuminah, who would have been Sultan Hamengkubawana VIII had not he been put under house arrest because of interest in silat. The more famous Merpati Putih school traces its lineage back to the times of the traitor-king Amangkurat of Kartasura.
I would like to restate my question about the position of the handle... does anyone have any picture or knowledge of how the handle was positioned in Jawa when the keris was still a weapon? And also, in the Majapahit and earlier eras, what was the keris Bali like?
Thank you all in advance,
Bram.