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Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey
Satsujinken, you have very accurately identified some of the base problems with tangguh, many, if not most people with some understanding of the system almost invariably align tangguh with age. Only in a few instances can this hold true, by and large tangguh does not necessarily align with age. For the group of people who were responsible for the generation of the tangguh system, the objective of the system was not to determine age, most especially was it not to determine age in the context of Western European ideas of historical time. It is probably not possible to truly understand tangguh unless one is able to adopt a mode of thought that comes somewhere close to the mode of thought of 19th century Javanese aristocrats.
Yes, to learn the basics of tangguh one needs firstly a teacher who is widely acknowledged as skilled in the application of the system, secondly one needs a lot of very, very good examples for that teacher to teach from, and thirdly one needs to have handled a very great number of keris over a very long period of time. Not very many people are able to satisfy all these requirements. In fact almost no collectors are able to satisfy these requirements, the real experts in tangguh will always be found amongst dealers, and only those dealers who have had the benefit of long and open instruction from a recognised authority.
I do agree that a great deal of dedication is required in order to gain some understanding of tangguh, and also more than a little money:- no education comes for free.
One of the problems with tangguh rests in the way that most people try to apply their knowledge in order to form an opinion. It is in most cases a matter of "it looks like Mataram, so it must be Mataram", but if you then ask them to indicate the tells that have allowed them to form the opinion that they are looking at a Mataram keris, what you get back is a muddled mish-mash of impressions, rather than the clear, straight forward analysis that should be possible if the keris truly is Mataram. As I said earlier:- everybody wants to hang a tangguh on everything and that is not at all how the system was designed.
Not a lot of people are brave enough to say that there are insufficient tells to permit a nomination of a tangguh, because that might allow people to think that they do not have a good level of knowledge. In fact, the person with a high knowledge of tangguh will have no problem at all in saying that the keris does not display sufficient tells (or indicators) to permit an opinion to be formed. Tangguh was designed to be applied to high quality blades, not pot boilers from village forges, but how often does the average collector get to see very high quality blades? Very, very seldom.
Tangguh does work, and it works well as a system of classification, but only if it is applied by a person with sufficient knowledge and understanding to be able to substantiate his opinion, and to work within the limits of the system.
Incidentally, you've done a great job with the photos, congratulations, and thank you for making these available to us all.
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