Greetings,
I have very little knowledge of keris, but I am able to look at it from a design point of view. The greneng seems to me like a fairly complex feature. Shaping the edge of an object in the form of letters is an involved thought process; one has to identify the possibility to shape the edge in an unconventional manner and then realize that a specific contour of that edge may be read as meaningful letters.
I have worked as a graphic designer, I aspired to become an architect, and I am currently following an urban planning profession, and in all of these I have always had a design process. To get to design E I have to go through A, B, C, D first. To get to a legible ron dha on the "tail" end of the ganja, I feel that a designer had to go through a number of illegible steps. I imagine that at first there was no greneng, no ron dha. Then there arose a deformation of the edge of the "tail" area, something uncommon. It may have been a physical need to stop an opponent's blade, or it may have been something else, possibly even accidental damage. My point is that designers realized that the edge deformation was pleasing or useful and could be shaped in a meaningful way, eventually to become the contour of letters, and eventually to acquire a mystical meaning. This must have happened in time and involving considerable trial and error.
I guess this is what David's initial question referred to; what was that initial deformation of the tail edge that prompted the design process that lead to a legible or meaningful greneng.
These are my thoughts and I have no way to support them.
Thank you all for a fascinating discourse.
Emanuel
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