The Sendai Keris

[Gustav]

David, just the first two lines in my last post were adressed to you. I thought, the rest is speaking for itself for somebody, who follows this discussion with smallest interest and attention. I wrote it just becouse you mentioned in the post before the initial reason: Barry's speculation on the hilt. This was what I could say about it.

There is a clear connection with the coat of arms of Hasekura Tsunenaga for sure. Yet in he's coat of arms the arrows are pointed upwards, otherwise, when pierced through heart (in christian symbolism), downwards. Actually this is the symbol of Teresa of Avila, who was exaltated to patroness of Spain at 1617 (Hasekura was baptisised and most probably got his coat of arms at 1615).

Actually he was leaving Spain in June 1617, so the 1616 on the map from wikipedia is a mistake.

As for the oppinion of an expert, I think, we can doubt it or to believe it, his oppinion has more weight then ours. Moreover, he was able to examine the keris in Sendai City Museum.

The possibility entire painting was done outside of Bali or Java is very, very small. The style of painting on sunggingan from Vienna (before 1608) is very similar (also W. Martowikrido mentions this). I have not seen till now better pictures of the third old sunggingan with alas-alasan in Munich, which is also in a good state of preservation.