Mahesa/Kebo

[A. G. Maisey]

David, it seems obvious to me that you can no longer hide your true character behind a camera lens. You are clearly descended from a long line of farmers, even though you may not be able to identify one single agriculturalist or herdsman in your known ancestors.

As to the name, I reckon it depends on who you are and where you are. In conversation with any keris literate person whom I know, I would simply call it "kebo":- we've got the thing in front of us, we know what we're talking about, and my keris literate friend could very easily use a different name for it, so just "kebo" would be good enough.

Moving away from that scenario, I'd follow the lead of whoever I was speaking with, in order not to create any disagreement --- something that the Name Game is pretty good at generating.

I'm not going to suggest a name for this keris, because I'd only do what you have already done, I'd look in every reference I could find and list the names I found.

Re the keris fit. If you coat the gonjo with machine oil and put the keris into the scabbard, the oil will stain where it touches, then you take a small, sharp blade and scrape (NOT cut) the stained wood away. After repeating this operation uncountable times you eventually get a flush fit. It does take a lot of time & patience to get it perfect. I recently fitted dress to a Jayasukadgo for a gentleman in the USA, and the final fitting took around as long as all the rest of it put together.

However, this idea of having a perfectly flush fit of the blade to the wrongko is a pretty recent I think. I have seen many older, I mean much older, Javanese & Balinese keris where most of the gonjo projects above the top of the gambar, this is also pretty common with Bugis style keris.