The 10th to 15th century Visayan kris, & earlier artifacts

[migueldiaz]

laEspadaAncha, many thanks for the comments. And I agree with all of them. In particular, I certainly agree that that single evidence is not conclusive, as you nicely put it:

Originally Posted by laEspadaAncha

In short, the presence of this example of this form in a grave in the Visayas is not, IMHO, a sufficient condition to refute existing and established opinions of the Indonesian origin of the form.

I guess we are like in a judicial court here, and we are merely trying to establish "beyond reasonable doubt" whether the specimen is indeed a Philippine kris or not. Either outcome is fine. We just want to establish the most plausible explanation.

Because for sure nobody can say that he is 100% sure that it came from Java or Indonesia.

On the other hand, nobody can likewise say that he is 100% certain that it is indeed a Philippine kris (due to the fact that raiding and trading were very much part of the culture then).

Thus to my mind we are working with probabilities here. So it's more like trying to establish if it's more like 20/80, or 50/50, or 80/20, etc. on whether it's Javanese/Indo. or Philippine ...

[migueldiaz]

Kai, many thanks also for your comments.

I agree with you that labeling the gold hilts as kris (as some of them were captioned in the book/s) may be premature.

On the dating method employed, the use of excavated associated Chinese ceramics and pottery is actually a well-accepted method.

In any case if I may recap the considerations discussed so far --

ARGUMENTS FOR A PHILIPPINE ORIGIN

[1] the specimen was found in the Philippines; thus at first blush it has to be regarded as Philippine, and the burden of proof is in proving otherwise

[2] in the dissertation, it is apparent that the panelists (the American university professors) concurred with the proponent (Dr. Dizon) that the specimen was a Philippine artifact

[3] one of the dissertation's key findings is that over time, the metallography of Phil. iron implements improved as expected -- now if the subject kris was an imported item, most probably its characteristics would not have synced (or is anachronistic) with this key finding

[4] linguistically and from time immemorial, "kalis", "keris", and "kris" have been established to be the Philippine's primary weapon, aside from the kampilan -- hence, the presence of an ancient kris in the Phils. should not come as a surprise (and the Indonesians and the Filipinos must have had a common linguistic ancestry: "sandata" [Fil.] and "senjata" [Indo.] both refer to weapon, "kalis/karis/kris" [Fil.] and "keris" [Indo.] all refer to the same blade genre, etc.)

[5] it was also seen above that experts from all over have noted that ancient Philippine craftsmanship (10th to 15th century) was at par with the Javanese - thus once again, the plausibility of the specimen being Filipino is very much there

[6] zooming in on the specimen itself, I think it's easier (at least for me) to imagine the thing to be morphing over time into a Moro sundang (kris), rather than it evolving into the more slender and pointy keris -- but perhaps this is a matter of opinion

[7] and then we have the square cross section of the tang, which is a distinguishing trait of the Philippine/Moro kris (vs. the predominantly round cross-section of kerises)

[8] then we also see in post no. 10 above the elephant's trunk/ bird beak in one of the gold hilts (plus the bird's head motif in the others) -- my point here is that these features as we all know are still present in Philippine krises, and thus we see a coherent picture over time.


ARGUMENTS FOR A JAVANESE OR INDO. ORIGIN

[1] raiding and trading were prevalent at the time; thus it's also very possible that the kris was obtained via those means

[2] of the 90 or so artifacts examined, there was only one specimen that is like the subject kris

[3] I suppose that there is a larger body of literature that pertains to the development of the keris as originating from Java

[4] though the keris' tang's cross-section is circular, a few early (or rare?) kerises had square cross-section.

Those are the pro-Java arguments I can think of. But the fewness of the points was certainly not to load the dice! It's more because of my unfamiliarity with the Javanese keris. Hopefully, some of the other experts can chime in as well

PS - If anybody has access to the writings per attached, I think Guthe's own account can shed some more light on the matter.

[Battara]

I have always thought that there was a common kris form that later changed in various ways in Indonesia and in the Philippines. A similar keris to this one was found in Java several years ago with nearly the exact same shape to this one found in Bohol.

I thus go with this being an ancestor to the Moro kris.

Also, I have always been fascinated by the gold work of the Philippines before the Spanish took it all.

[migueldiaz]

Battara, thanks for the comments! And hope that you can find that pic

Back to Javanese weapons from the 10th to the 15th century, here are some pics from Candi Panataran and from Candi Prambanan, for comparison with the subject kris.

[Battara]

Originally Posted by migueldiaz

Battara, thanks for the comments! And hope that you can find that pic

Just found the link: http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...t=keris+museum

And here is a picture of the 14th century keris blade in the Amsterdam Museum in the link:

[migueldiaz]

Battara, thanks! Below is the pic from the referenced website. Incidentally, there are much more better pics than the black & white one below if one googles 'knaud kris'.

[Battara]

Yes I've always wondered if the buda type of keris was the ancestor to all keris and kris (seen also in the stone work). From there they diverged on their separate paths according to the varying martial environments of the Malay world (Indonesia/Malaysia/Philippines).

[migueldiaz]

That Knaud keris sure is interesting, to say the least. There are many pics on the Net and two are below. They came from here: knaud_1, knaud_2, knaud_3, knaud_4, knaud_5, and knaud_6. Thanks.