Planning to make a wrongko

[A. G. Maisey]

Rasdan, I don't think that we can say whether or not the keris in the scabbard on that statue is Buda, however, the fact that it is a 15th century statue does not automatically rule out the form of the keris.

Yes, we refer to keris that we believe came from Pre-Islamic Jawa as "Keris Buda", but that does not mean that Keris Buda were never made and used in later eras. Even Mpu Pauzan made a few keris Buda, and lesser current era makers have also produced them. Similarly, Islam did not just automatically dominate Jawa after the collapse of Majapahit, it took a long time to get almost total domination. Even today, that domination is not complete, the people of the Tengger still cling to the old Pre-Islamic traditions, in fact in some ways the Tengger traditions reflect very early indigenous beliefs.We also have the Badui of Sunda.

Then there is the artistic dictate that the carver may have used an earlier style to reflect what the rest of the subject depicted.

The keris in the scabbard might be a KB, or might not, but we cannot even guess what the carver had in mind, based upon what we can see