[A. G. Maisey]

I cannot comment on katar Tatyana, this was not a part of what I looked at, but it certainly does seem that the same or similar iconography can also be read in katar form.

Tatyana, we cannot take early monumental representations of keris as exact photographic depictions of keris, in addition, we cannot know with any certainty what the people of Hindu-Jawa regarded as keris. It is very possible that what we call a keris had a number of other weapons that shared a common classification, but bore different names. The word "keris" itself is a lower Javanese word (ngoko) in Modern Javanese, whilst in the higher levels of Javanese there are other terms for a keris, and the use of these other terms depends upon the situation. In Old Javanese there are a number of words that are commonly translated as "keris", but we do not know if the original word in Old Javanese is what we think of as a keris. However, it is certain that our Modern Keris was a part of the classification of weapons that could be considered as a "keris" in literary,societal and cultural terms.

In the earliest depiction of a true keris, the relief carving at Prambanan, the essential features of what we regard as a keris are clearly shown, however, in later East Javanese depictions the weapons shown in carvings must be interpreted as "keris" for various reasons. For example, in the case of the Sukuh lingga, the gunungan form and the text does not permit this weapon to be understood in any other way than as a keris, but as I have said, what the Hindu-Javanese people regarded as falling within the classfication of "keris" and what we recognise as a "keris" may not be exactly the same. There is a very well known carving of a monkey warrior in the Panataran reliefs waving a dagger that is probably intended as a keris, but it is perfectly symmetric. Very often when this carving is shown in Indonesian publications the photo is retouched to give this weapon a form that is closer to our idea of a keris.

It is probably unlikely that many of these carvers had ever seen a real keris, let alone held one. In Hindu Jawa the true keris was limited to the ksatriya caste, it was not a widespread object. People along the north coast copied the aristocrats of the kraton, but they did not really understand what they were copying, so what they had was very probably often an interpretation of the keris, maybe not exactly the same as the keris worn within the ksatriya caste. Probably carvers often worked from a description of a keris, rather than an actual keris.

The simple answer is that when we look at early Javanese carvings, or Javanese artifacts, we cannot necessarily understand what we are looking at in the absence of prior knowledge of time, situation, intent, and accompanying texts.

Its pretty much a matter of having to interpret what we see in terms applicable to the time and place of origin or execution. The one thing we cannot do is to use modern terms of reference in attempts to understand carvings created by people in an entirely different cultural and societal setting from our own.