Balinese keris advice

[A. G. Maisey]

Quite possibly so Gustav, but since I have been required for many years to be very conscious of the truth, meaning and logic of words, this is only to be expected.

Unlike many people I do not find the study of words to be onerous nor objectionable, I find it to be essential.

I was told many years ago by somebody, & I honestly forget who told me this, it might have been a high school teacher, that we cannot throw words around haphazardly we should regard words as being similar to bullets, not only in required accuracy but also in terminal effect.

A lot of the way I think and the way I act has come to me from things others have taught me, or maybe not necessarily "taught", but just their passing comments. I do try to follow some of this good advice, but I'm not always successful. I tend to be too verbose at times.

I recently had a little bit of writing published in (of all things) a book dealing with philosophy. I think it needed to be restricted to 5000 words, in any case, it needed to be of a defined length, & written in a defined style.

So I sat down and wrote the thing in a spare afternoon. It did not take long. But when I ran it through a word counter I had something like 20,000 words. The next 15 drafts were principally concerned with reducing that stack of garble that I had produced to an acceptable minimum.

I don't think I deliberately try to turn myself into a Gordian knot --- and I prefer to take this analogy as a compliment --- but I believe this sometimes might happen because I feel that I owe other people the common courtesy of trying my best to explain why I might take a certain position.

As to academia. I am not an academic, but I do have close friends and family who have been, & still are subjected to the harsh dictates of this segment of society. I have carried out paid work for a number of academics. Frankly I do feel sorry for academics and the world in which they live, but at the same time I am very appreciative of the contributions of some of these people to the bank of knowledge that they have made available to all of us.

EDIT

Too late Gustav, I had already read what you wrote & then deleted, and I thought it was, in its way, a beautiful piece of writing, perhaps one of the more perceptive things you have posted to this forum.

[Jean]

By the way my impression is that these 2 guys on the fist pic may be Sasak from Lombok and not Balinese?

[Gustav]

Jean, your impression has many facets to it, but basically is grounded on the fact, that even on the new NMVW website, where collections from Leiden, Amsterdam and Rotterdam are thrown together, the identifications of photographs are on quite low standard.

This is a photograph by Isidore van Kinsbergen. In 1865 he visited Bali, or more precisely, Buleleng. He never went to Lombok. Many if not at least a half of the photographs made in Buleleng on the NMVW carry the word Lombok in their "traditional" descriptions: we have a photograph named "Enkele tempels en offerplaatsen op Lombok" (some temples and offering places on Lombok), the alternative title of it being "Huis van den Koning van Bali" (house of the King of Bali), we have a picture described "Edellieden (Ida`s) uit Lombok in hofkostuum" (Aristocrats (Brahmans) from Lombok in court attire), which depict two adwisers of Raja of Buleleng, whose names are actually known, etc.

Also the photograph in question on the NMVW carries the title "Mannen uit Lombok in wapenuitrusting" and alternative title "Balinesen".

It is clear that the descriptions from NMVW website, which are taken over from the old Tropenmuseum website, are not on standard and actually misleading. The source for correct identifications is the monograph about Kinsbergen, which, as I understand, uses Kinsbergen's diarys. Unfortunately the photography in question doesn't appear in the monograph.

Well, there is a possibility these two man are mercenaries from Lombok indeed, but I would say, they are not Sasak but Balinese.

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Alan, thank you.