This comment is not directed at anybody's comments in this thread, nor is it directed at any person, nor is it directed at the opinions of any other people.
I am not attempting to generate any sort of debate or conflict or confrontation.
This comment is in the nature of a general observation that may be taken as anybody sees fit.
During my years of keris interest I have had a very great number of keris in my possession. A lot of those keris have come to me direct from the people who collected them in the first place. This started with items that I was given by my grandfather, each and every item he passed to me was collected from its place of origin, not bought from a dealer or other person outside the place of origin.
WWII seemed to produce a lot of items that came from little out of the way places, like fishing villages and poor urban kampungs. I have acquired more than a few keris that were WWII bring-homes, and along with the keris I also got a story, mostly a reasonably believable one, or at least one that a confirmed skeptic such as I am would be prepared to accept as probably true.
My mother's cousin lived for a lengthy period in rural Malaya at the cessation of WWII and he sent several keris to his mother. I saw and handled these keris frequently when I was a child, and through until the death of my mother's aunt when I was in my teens.
Since I've been going to Indonesia --- approaching 50 years now --- I have acquired keris that have been bought direct from villages and direct from the children or grand children of their original owners.
The long and the short of it is that I have had a lot of keris through my hands that were not associated with palace culture, nor with major societal dictates, but rather were keris of ordinary people most often living well outside the area of influence of any major cultural influence other than that of their own village or kampung environment.
What I have found is that these "poor-man's keris" have seldom complied with the cultural dictates of the nearest major cultural influence. In most cases they have given the impression that the original owner tried to upgrade his keris with whatever slightly better component that came into his hands.
So it is that I have had keris with Javanese blades housed in Bugis scabbards and with Bali hilt, but reliably reported as coming from the North Coast of Sumatera. This is just one example that comes to mind easily, but it serves to illustrate the point:- the keris owned and worn by an ordinary person in a village or other lower social strata environment does not/did not necessarily reflect the style of the dominant keris form in that area.
The keris of the ordinary man can be, and often is, a mish-mash of bits and pieces that is sufficient to serve the purpose, and if that purpose is an attempt at display and the possibility of hierarchical challenge (ie, appearing to do better than your next door neighbour), then the bits and pieces will be the best that he could get hold of, no matter where they originally came from.
With a keris that purports to represent a palace or societal tradition, then everything about that keris should conform to the relative tradition, except perhaps for some ruler's keris, because sometimes rulers made their own rules and did whatever they felt like doing.
However, where a keris is very clearly less than one which we could see coming from a palace environment, and is more likely to have come from a lower stratum of society then it is possibly advisable to look very critically at the way in which that keris is presented and if possible consider its provenance, in order to try to determine if that keris has come to us in the form it was used in its last indigenous environment.
Rather than simply saying that such and such a component is incorrect for the scabbard or whatever, we might be better advised to attempt to determine if this keris, in this form was actually used and worn in a particular area at a particular time.
This approach would be a reversal of what most of us now do. We tend to look at styles and forms and say that such and such belongs somewhere or other and then we change components to bring the particular keris into compliance with a particular type. I've done this, and I believe we all have.
A better approach would be to reverse this way of thinking and try to build a case for keeping the keris as it is. The argument against this approach is of course the role of the ignorant dealer, whether in the homeland, or outside it. Many less than admirable dealers tend to gaily mix and match simply to produce more marketable products.
As I said at the outset of this post:- I'm not having a go at anybody, I'm simply putting a few of my thoughts on this subject up for others to think about.
|