Hi all,
I attach pictures of 2 Bugis kerises from my collection - one Straits Bugis, prob from the Peninsula side, and one Sulawesi Bugis. Both have pretty straight/unbent peksi (in Malay terminology). You could use a ruler to verify the centre line of each peksi remains true from ganja to the end the peksi. I should have some more Bugis kerises from various locations with pretty straight peksi.
However, I have also seen many Bugis kerises with bent peksi.
On the point about chieftain kerises, I cannot pinpoint where I first heard the about it. I do hear my Malay collector friends call such kerises "keris penghulu", which I understand to mean village headman or a chief of sorts. I see the term "chieftain" as a convenient tag to identify such types of Bugis kerises in the Peninsular/Sumatran context, defined by big sampir, broad batang, and typically a short but broad 7-waved Bugis blade. These kerises seemed to be a Peninsular/Sumatran construct, and not found in Sulawesi.
In the Peninsular/Sumatran Bugis context, the bigger the size of the sampir, the higher the status of the wearer. There seemed to be no fixed rule as to how big or small it should be for any given social standing of the chief, and I suppose much depends on the economic wellbeing of the keris owner. That said, I don't see any of this "chieftain" kerises as being really really high class. The epitome of Bugis keris in the Peninsular/Sumatran context is probably the golden keris on the cover of Court Arts of Indonesia, from the Riau-Lingga empire, if I remember correctly. That keris has a normal-sized sampir covered in finely chased gold. I suppose the "chieftain" keris could be a phenomenon amongst the "village head" level of people.
On the orientation of the hilt, even if the few specimens here have had their hilts fixed sideways with resin, it may not prove that it is the 'correct' way, I feel. I turn my Bugis keris hilts that way myself all the time - when I am storing them. I'm not saying that this is the reason for these keris hilts to turn up like that in the original context, but surely for practical reasons, the hilt has to be turned to face forward again when necessary? And as pointed out, turning the hilt sideways could have been to signify a non-aggressive stance, or perhaps it made sense for sea-faring Bugis not to have the hilt get in the way. So perhaps there are a few ways of positioning the hilt, and the correctness of either position may not be that important.
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