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Originally Posted by Bill
Very cool sword. How many dots total, can you point them all out? I'll throw in my 2 cents of speculation.
The fellow that owned this was very superstitious, so some of the meaning may specific, as to him as an individual. Perhaps he was of some religious status.
Seeing as the first dot is on the gangya & is as close as you can get to holding the sword, he may have felt he was sending his inner power down into the blade. The first 4 dots certainly look as a continuation of his arm right to the center of the blade.
That "repair" is interesting too. I have a blade that was clearly damaged & the tang was replaced. But I have also seen a high % of talismanic blades with what appears to be tang replacements.
Could this blade be made this way deliberately? Some of the work looks like it was sawed/filed in a straight line/box; while some (like yours) are rather uneven (made in the forging process?). The tang being made of some metal of spiritual value (old sword, etc) & being added to the new sword; an old Jin, you might say?
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Bill has an interesting point ; incorporating pieces of known powerful kerises into a new keris is not unknown in Jawa .
Perhaps this was so with the Moro peoples ..
People have said that the power of a keris resides in the tang, or pesi; so you might use the pesi of the powerful kris to enhance the power of the new sword .
Also, if this is the case why not just use the powerful metal in the forging process rather than go through the difficult process of adding it later resulting in weakening the overall structure of the sword ?
Having said that; I still think that these could also be legitimate repairs to weapons destroyed by government patrols . What would it take to bust off the tang ?
Hammer and a cold chisel .
You can't use a sword without a handle and you can't carry off all the confiscated stuff on patrol .
Bill, I hope I didn't foul up your post.
I hit edit instead of quote .