Hi everybody,
I am actually quite busy right now, but the attraction is too strong for me not to participate, so just a quick one. I am unsure if this makes sense or not. This is just a quick observation, so most likely it wont stand to close scrutiny.
I see the greneng on the kerises presented here in a slightly different way. To start with, IMHO earlier greneng started with a notched ri pandan. This notch was then eroded away and later pandai keris copied the eroded version creating a Dha with a “bump” version Ri Pandan. And to the extreme version, the Dha no longer have a Ri Pandan and it looks like the letter C.
Usually, Dha is placed after a thingil and is cut slightly lower than the thingil. What we are seeing on the keris posted here are probably the Dha with “bump” Ri pandan but were cut at the same level of the thingil and this makes it looks like it is an extra and wide thingil. This is probably a style used by the north coast keris makers. (Figure 1, 2 & 3)
There’s another variant that were normally on much later Javanese keris is that an extra dha were cut on top of the thingil. (Figure 3.1) And on much later Balinese keris the dha is at normal position and the “NorthCoast” higher Dha position gets modified into another thingil (Figure 5) or into another element (Figure 4) making it three elements.
I am unsure if keris in Figure 6 has an notched Dha in the middle or a gap. If it is a notched dha, then what I had said above is probably wrong assuming that the type of Dha used on a keris should be consistently shaped and unless keris in Figure 6 a slightly later Balinese keris.
Sorry if what I write doesn’t make sense.
p/s: Sorry, I have uploaded figures according to the sequence, but somehow it comes out in random order.
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