Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

David · 3rd May 2023, 04:46 PM

Marco, i want to be very clear about this.
Nothing you have posted pertaining to your keris has been offensive to me. As to your point #2 i will maintain that until now this was something that i had indeed never seen before. Others responded similarly. None of us were lying to you. In all our personal experiences this was new. None of us made any attempt to deny that you had such a keris. How could we, as the photographic evidence was clear.
As to point #3, it does seem to me that other examples that you have shown us mostly appear to be cengkrong or cundrik style blades, not regular keris. I and other still seem to maintain that YOUR keris is not a cengkrong/cundrik. Alan and Gustav seem to have a difference of opinion and experience about how often, if ever, cengkrong/cundrik are mounted in a wrongko in reverse position. To my mind that argument is moot, as it does not apply to a keris blade that is NOT a cengkrong/cundrik. Perhaps you believe your keris blade IS a cengkrong/cundrik, but personally i don't think it qualifies. I could be wrong, but that is my opinion.
So...if your could, perhaps, make and effort to enter MY way of thinking for a moment...
It seems to me that your major complaint about the way this discussion has unfolded has more to do with the fact that not enough members agree with your position, not the manner in which discussion takes place here. Everyone has been patient, polite, and informative as per their own knowledge base and experience. But we have our own opinions supported by our own years of experience collecting and handling keris. Some of us obviously have more years and better connected experience in the world of keris than others, but we still all have our opinions. I am sorry that this is not a place where members will simply go "ooh and aah" and not question or challenge something that seems outside the normally accepted traditions of the Javanese keris society. I personally don't have enough experience with cengkrong/cundrik to know whether Alan or Gustav is correct about how those blades might be positioned in a wrongko. I respect both of their opinions and if this really is more common for that form than Alan seems to believe then possibly Gustav can find something to present that can be seen as more convincing evidence than the very few examples that have been shown in this thread. But from my perspective i have always viewed the cengkrong/cundrik form to be somewhat outside the sphere of regular keris. And again, i do not see YOUR example to be a cengkrong or cundrik. So from my perspective it still remains an oddity in the traditions of the Javanese keris world. I have viewed thousands of keris in my 40 years collecting. Alan, many thousands more. If this were normal for Javanese keris (and i'm talking keris here, not cengkrong/cundrik), then surely we would have seen many more of these. The fact is that we haven't. So i will continue to view this as an aberration until a much larger body of examples can me produced.
But here is my problem with your part of this discussion and where i really do take quite a bit of offense. You have used this thread, and your disappointment with the lack of support for your theories, to launch an attack on this site and attempt to sow discontent amongst it's members. Your continual swipes at the very nature of this forum and the type of discussion that takes place here and your implication that it is the style and manner in which certain members engage in discussion that has driven traffic away from this site is not only unnecessary, inaccurate and off-topic, but rude and disruptive. You have made not just one, but several remarks disparaging this forum. If you are really that unhappy with the site why are you here? Clearly there are other places you can show your keris where they will tell you exactly what you want to hear. I don't wish to shut down this discussion, but i will not continue to tolerate such remarks on these pages. I hope you understand that this is not my way of telling you to go away. I have always considered you a valuable member who brought interesting content to these pages. But i am not willing to put up with you trash-talking this forum.

3rd May 2023, 04:46 PM	#102
David Keris forum moderator Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Nova Scotia Posts: 7,035	Marco, i want to be very clear about this. Nothing you have posted pertaining to your keris has been offensive to me. As to your point #2 i will maintain that until now this was something that i had indeed never seen before. Others responded similarly. None of us were lying to you. In all our personal experiences this was new. None of us made any attempt to deny that you had such a keris. How could we, as the photographic evidence was clear. As to point #3, it does seem to me that other examples that you have shown us mostly appear to be cengkrong or cundrik style blades, not regular keris. I and other still seem to maintain that YOUR keris is not a cengkrong/cundrik. Alan and Gustav seem to have a difference of opinion and experience about how often, if ever, cengkrong/cundrik are mounted in a wrongko in reverse position. To my mind that argument is moot, as it does not apply to a keris blade that is NOT a cengkrong/cundrik. Perhaps you believe your keris blade IS a cengkrong/cundrik, but personally i don't think it qualifies. I could be wrong, but that is my opinion. So...if your could, perhaps, make and effort to enter MY way of thinking for a moment... It seems to me that your major complaint about the way this discussion has unfolded has more to do with the fact that not enough members agree with your position, not the manner in which discussion takes place here. Everyone has been patient, polite, and informative as per their own knowledge base and experience. But we have our own opinions supported by our own years of experience collecting and handling keris. Some of us obviously have more years and better connected experience in the world of keris than others, but we still all have our opinions. I am sorry that this is not a place where members will simply go "ooh and aah" and not question or challenge something that seems outside the normally accepted traditions of the Javanese keris society. I personally don't have enough experience with cengkrong/cundrik to know whether Alan or Gustav is correct about how those blades might be positioned in a wrongko. I respect both of their opinions and if this really is more common for that form than Alan seems to believe then possibly Gustav can find something to present that can be seen as more convincing evidence than the very few examples that have been shown in this thread. But from my perspective i have always viewed the cengkrong/cundrik form to be somewhat outside the sphere of regular keris. And again, i do not see YOUR example to be a cengkrong or cundrik. So from my perspective it still remains an oddity in the traditions of the Javanese keris world. I have viewed thousands of keris in my 40 years collecting. Alan, many thousands more. If this were normal for Javanese keris (and i'm talking keris here, not cengkrong/cundrik), then surely we would have seen many more of these. The fact is that we haven't. So i will continue to view this as an aberration until a much larger body of examples can me produced. But here is my problem with your part of this discussion and where i really do take quite a bit of offense. You have used this thread, and your disappointment with the lack of support for your theories, to launch an attack on this site and attempt to sow discontent amongst it's members. Your continual swipes at the very nature of this forum and the type of discussion that takes place here and your implication that it is the style and manner in which certain members engage in discussion that has driven traffic away from this site is not only unnecessary, inaccurate and off-topic, but rude and disruptive. You have made not just one, but several remarks disparaging this forum. If you are really that unhappy with the site why are you here? Clearly there are other places you can show your keris where they will tell you exactly what you want to hear. I don't wish to shut down this discussion, but i will not continue to tolerate such remarks on these pages. I hope you understand that this is not my way of telling you to go away. I have always considered you a valuable member who brought interesting content to these pages. But i am not willing to put up with you trash-talking this forum.