Keris malela in Bujangga Manik

[rasdan]

Hi Jaga,

Here's an example of a wootz keris. It is probably a 17th century Palembang keris. This keris was polished and lightly etched showing the wootz pattern. About 50% of the blade was once adorned with kinatah. Unfortunately this one is no longer mine.

I have another keris that is probably wootz. But this keris was a bit eroded with traditional cleaning it is rather rough and we cant see of it is really wootz. This one is probably Javanese. I don't have any photo of this keris at the moment.

I find that there are a number of examples of other weapons usually from Sumatra that was made from wootz.

[jagabuwana]

Alan - thank you for the extra info. This has challenged my initial assumptions -(1) that wootz keris were of better quality; and (2) that is due to wootz being a more expensive imported product than local steel.

Rasdan - thank you for the reference image. Of the two wootz keris you refer, would you say they are of better-than-average quality and manufacture?

[rasdan]

Hi Jaga,

It is rather difficult to say on quality as we need to match the quality level to the respective age and origin or tangguh of a keris.

Plus there is a problem on how a certain dhapur for certain keris origin/tangguh should ideally look like. Only people who have access to well preserved, high quality keris with known provenance will know this and there are a lot of pretenders out there.

Then there are varying qualities of wootz. I am sure the cost is going to be different. I think we cannot use wootz as an indicator of quality for keris.

Regarding the two keris I mentioned, in general, I think, I can say that both keris when they were new are of good quality. The Palembang is probably, probably the near top quality in Sumatera at the time it was made, but the Jawa one is probably just slightly above average, not top quality. It could be lower, but I have insufficient knowledge to say; I don't even know if it is really wootz because of the surface erosion.

[A. G. Maisey]

No way to judge quality when new of the items I used to send to Jerzy, as I said, it was all junk: old, eroded, formless.

But the thing to note is this:- there was no local material, I used to believe that there was local iron that had been smelted from beach sands in South Jawa & Bali, and possibly other places, my belief was generated by inaccurate information that was floating around 20 or 30 or more years back, probably misguided local pride.

We now know that there is no evidence of locally smelted iron anywhere in Jawa/ Bali.

All the ferric material came in from somewhere else, mostly China, as both raw (ingots) of iron and as tools. There is more than enough evidence of this. But even so, it is reasonable to assume that all material imported was not of equal quality, thus the variations in pamor sanak.

[Jean]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

We now know that there is no evidence of locally smelted iron anywhere in Jawa/ Bali, & probably no credible evidence for anywhere else in the Archipelago either.

Hello Alan,
What about pamor Luwu in Sulawesi?
Regards

[A. G. Maisey]

Yes Jean, of course.

I sometimes do get a little bit too focused on Jawa/Bali.

Luwu was a major producer & exporter of nickel/iron, and was producing this from very early times --- & still is. Hardjonegoro gave me some Luwu nickel, but I never got around to using it.

There have been some quite informative archeological investigations of work sites carried out in South Sulawesi, especially around Lake Matano & Katue, I think some of the Kutue sites date back to the first millenium.

You're right Jean, I should stop & think for a moment before extending my Jawa focused thoughts into other places.

So we can just delete my off the cuff comment, & I thank you Jean for waking me up.

However, from memory, I think that those South Sulawesi smelts produced iron/nickel alloy, cannot recall if there was any evidence of pure iron smelting. I think they were smelting from laterite ores, so it might have been impossible to get away from the nickel inclusion.

EDIT

There was a big project a while back that looked closely at this matter, I'm pretty sure it was called the "OXIS Project" and a very good paper was written on it by a Misol Do, I have a copy of the paper but i cannot find it on the net, I'm sure somebody with more time than I have could locate it.

[David]

Is this what you were looking for Alan?
https://www.oxis.org/theses/misol-2103.pdf