SAJEN kerises

A. G. Maisey · 21st May 2009, 12:02 PM

Pak Ganja, you know, and I know, that an immense amount of rubbish has been written about all types of keris.

This "keris Majapahit" nonsense is just one of those pieces of rubbish. However, I feel that when the term originated it may have been thoughtless, unintentional rubbish. The possibility is that the early Europeans who met this keris form recognised it as an early form, and at the same time recognised Majapahit as an early era, and simply matched the two as a matter of providing easy terminology. The real nonsense came later, when others picked up on the term and accepted it as reality.

Then, of course, the dealers in Indonesia started to use the term, and before we knew where we were everybody and his brother was confusing Keris Mojo, with Tangguh Mojo --- and on and on and on.

I think that at the present time most people with any serious interest in the keris understand that "Keris Majapahit" is just a name that means nothing.

As to the interpretation of words in the old inscriptions, and no less in the old literary works, I doubt that we will ever have a satisfactory conclusion to any of the facets of that problem. When people like Zoetmulder and Robson cannot come up with precise answers, I doubt that anybody can. You mention archeology, but I don't think that this is a problem for archaeology, I think it is a problem for the linguists and anthropologists. It would be wonderful if we could find an early Classical Period piece of stone junkmail, complete with illustrations, advertising a sale of superceded teweks and tuhuks, with the first ten buyers receiving a gift of a complimentary kres --- but I somehow don't think that we're going to come across that bit of advertising material.

This mystery of early names is really only a matter of curiosity, in any case. We do have the evidence graven in stone of the Early Classical period existence of something that we would call a keris. We have plenty of evidence of the continued existence of this something right throughout history. There is no doubt at all that the cake did exist from very early times. To know what early Javanese people may have called it would only be the icing on that cake.

What is in my opinion, much more important is the understanding of what the keris was to those early people, and the understanding of the development of its nature through to the present day.

21st May 2009, 12:02 PM	#8
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 7,015	Pak Ganja, you know, and I know, that an immense amount of rubbish has been written about all types of keris. This "keris Majapahit" nonsense is just one of those pieces of rubbish. However, I feel that when the term originated it may have been thoughtless, unintentional rubbish. The possibility is that the early Europeans who met this keris form recognised it as an early form, and at the same time recognised Majapahit as an early era, and simply matched the two as a matter of providing easy terminology. The real nonsense came later, when others picked up on the term and accepted it as reality. Then, of course, the dealers in Indonesia started to use the term, and before we knew where we were everybody and his brother was confusing Keris Mojo, with Tangguh Mojo --- and on and on and on. I think that at the present time most people with any serious interest in the keris understand that "Keris Majapahit" is just a name that means nothing. As to the interpretation of words in the old inscriptions, and no less in the old literary works, I doubt that we will ever have a satisfactory conclusion to any of the facets of that problem. When people like Zoetmulder and Robson cannot come up with precise answers, I doubt that anybody can. You mention archeology, but I don't think that this is a problem for archaeology, I think it is a problem for the linguists and anthropologists. It would be wonderful if we could find an early Classical Period piece of stone junkmail, complete with illustrations, advertising a sale of superceded teweks and tuhuks, with the first ten buyers receiving a gift of a complimentary kres --- but I somehow don't think that we're going to come across that bit of advertising material. This mystery of early names is really only a matter of curiosity, in any case. We do have the evidence graven in stone of the Early Classical period existence of something that we would call a keris. We have plenty of evidence of the continued existence of this something right throughout history. There is no doubt at all that the cake did exist from very early times. To know what early Javanese people may have called it would only be the icing on that cake. What is in my opinion, much more important is the understanding of what the keris was to those early people, and the understanding of the development of its nature through to the present day.