Is gold or suasa 'better'?

[David]

Originally Posted by Maurice

Yes I am fully aware of that. Everything that looks nice, different etc. must be talismanic at those times (and still) in Indonesia.

I thought I answered your questions before. Gold was something everybody wanted to have, even Rumphius is explaining that allready in his very early work! Therefor you can fill pages upon pages with photographs of examples with gold in this context, as anybody wanted to have it. It was luxury property, and probably also talismanic!
But next to the small chapter of gold, he has a larger chapter of suassa, which had to be much more interesting as the gold that anybody owned!
And he stated there that suassa was preferred over gold because of the talismanic properties, not that suassa is on the same level with gold on luxury property.

Maybe it could be, that suassa was so powerfull that not everybody was able or dared to wear suassa?

PS can you show me an old source that gold was preferred to suassa from a similar age?

Maurice, i am afraid that i do not have much access to any old source material from this time. Anything that i have read about the practices of wearing gold come from authors who have gotten their information from such sources. Generally what i have read is that wearing gold dress keris was usually restricted to the court classes, so in those days i would presume that just "anybody" did not own gold and certainly did not dress their keris with it.
I am still waiting to see some examples of these talismanical powerful suasa dressed keris however and no one has yet posted any examples. I do, of course, believe that suasa was used in keris dress from time to time, but i can't say that i have actually seen any examples. One would think that if it were truly preferred as a material over gold we would at least see it's use a bit more in actual examples of keris dress. One would think that if suasa were truly considered more powerful than gold that it would have been used more often in kinatah over the more pure gold we generally see. I certainly don't doubt that Rumphius wrote these things, but that does not necessarily make them true. Frankly, despite his accounts it just does not sound logical to me based on everything else i have been led to believe on how gold is viewed in this society. There are just so many factors that could have led him to a misleading conclusion on this. It is certainly not information i have ever seen elsewhere. So please forgive me if i remain skeptical without some more evidence, both academic and physical to bare it out.