Sunggingans

[A. G. Maisey]

Sunggingan scabbards, and perhaps sunggingan hilts have been in use for a very long time, perhaps even from the very beginning.

There are examples of keris with sunggingan dress that pre-date 1700 in both the Dresden and Copenhagen collections. These are North Coast Jawa keris, and the nature of the ornamentation seems to owe much to a Chinese ancestry, however, when we consider that Javanese temples dating from the Early Classical Period were brightly painted, and that the keris seems to have had a religious association from the time of the appearance of its earliest forms, then we factor in the Javanese inclination for display, it is highly probable that even the earliest forms of keris had painted scabbards.

The word "sunggingan" simply means "painted decoration", but the use of this word, rather than the use of other words referring to paint or decoration, implies a form of decoration that is intricate and skilful.

I have not looked at Jensen's "Kris Disc" for a very long time, but I am sure that if we were to trawl through this we would find examples of early sunggingan dress.