David, what I mean by this "this type of discussion" is the mixing of legend and myth with historical relativity.
Legend and myth are by their very nature flexible entities:- they can and do change generationally, thus the legend that our grandparents heard is very likely different in some respects to the one we read when we throw the question into google. When these differences extend over long periods of time, and are additionally encapsulated within an oral tradition, their value for historical reference is somewhat more than doubtful.
The court babads of Jawa are often confused with legend by some people, and with history by other people, and in fact, seem to be a mix of both, but for the researcher, the big advantage with the babads is that they are written, and can--- to a degree--- be taken back to a point of origin, permitting analysis. We cannot do this with a legend or myth, or other folk tale.
As to affixing a point in time for the development of the keris as a magical object, this would be a good topic for serious research, as I do not believe that this specific topic has ever been seriously tackled. We can get some sort of an idea of this from the old literature. In early Javanese literature the keris seems to be represented as a power object, and with some talismanic properties, but it does not seem to be represented as a "fly through the air, find its own way home" object. My own gut feeling is that this pure magical character of the keris probably did not take hold until well into the 19th century. It may have had a begining during Kartasura---very big "may"--- but I really think that in Jawa it probably did not become "magic" until "Javaneseness" increased during the 19th century in a reaction to Dutch oppression.As I said:- green field for a serious researcher:- I believe that this is something that might be able to be pretty well nailed down.
Jussi, the keris can fulfil a number of roles; it is not just a single thing with a single character, and whatever characters it has can change over time. In early Jawa---C 14th century---- it was referred to as "the symbol of a man". Undoubtedly it was, and remains so, but it was also a weapon. In the hands of a waterfront thug, how much of a symbol was it? In the hands of a palace courtier, how much of a weapon was it?
By the early 19th century in Jawa the keris had become pretty much an item of dress. It was still occasionally used as a weapon, but anybody who could afford to would carry a keris as a part of formal dress.
In my "Naga" paper I looked at the power associated with the keris, and of course here we are talking of the pusaka keris, both royal and of a clan. Briefly it is the power to bond present custodian with past custodians and with the clan members of the present generation.A clan nexus if you will.
In the context of royal gift to a representative of the royal authority, it binds the king--- God's representative on earth--- to the minor ruler or governor, and the governed populace to the governor, and thus to the ruler. The ruler represents God, God is the cosmos, thus it bonds the lowliest subject to God. A bonding agent, thus a power object, and in a different dimension , representative of the Naga Basuki, and perhaps even holding the essence of the Naga Basuki.
The primary power of the keris is its binding character. Relate this to its acknowledged symbolic status as the symbol of masculinity. It is not difficult to understand why the keris became such a power object in old Jawa.
As Javanese society developed and absorbed differing influences, the original concepts associated with the keris mutated from the select knowledge held by the keris smiths and the religious leaders into folk beliefs. These folk beliefs have now replaced the original beliefs associated with the keris. Nothing strange about this:- time changes all things.
I don't think this is the place to produce a list of all the possibilities in respect of the power concept, nor the magic concept, but working from what I have written above, it is possible to find all of these answers in already published works.
|