Keris Sundang Melayu with twist core

[VVV]

Alan,

Sorry about the link, maybe the session expired.
Try yourself to search "archaic kris" on this forum and you will find several interesting threads and pictures of archaic kris.

On the dating I seem to have been unclear. I meant that the archaic kris survived into the first quarter of the 19th before being replaced by the next style in popularity. When it first appeared is more difficult to date but there seems to be a collector's consensus that it was produced at least from the early 18th C.

The kris sword is mentioned, but not pictured AFAIK, in much older sources but I do not have them with me when traveling.
Hopefully someone else can check them. Otherwise I will have a look and return to this thread in two weeks.
Scott's book would be a god start but there are several other sources that describes what the Philippines, Brunei, Borneo, North Malaysia and Sulawesi (= "the kris sword belt", the areas being close to the major Malay/Indonesian iron sources in Borneo and Sulawesi) looked like between 16 - 18th C. Both the kampilan and the kris are often mentioned in those travel descriptions from early European visitors.
At that time the kris sword still also was popular in the Central Philippines. I found this description in an extract on my computer, from Scott's book Barangay: Sixteenth Century Philippine Culture and Society, on the Visayas, page 148:

"There were two kind of swords - kris (Visayan kalis) and kampilan, both words of Malay origin. The kris was a long double-edged blade (modern specimens run to 60 or 70 centimeters), either straight or wavy but characterized by an asymmetrical flare at the end of the hilt end, called kalaw-kalaw after the kalaw hornbill.The wavy kris was called kiwi-kiwo, and so was an astute, devious man whose movement could not be predicted. Hilt were carved of any solid material - hardwood, bone, antler, even shell - and great datu warriors had them of solid gold, or encrusted with precious stones. Blades were forged from layers of different grades of steel, which gave them a veined or mottled surface - damascened or "watered." But even the best Visayan products were considered inferior to those from Mindanao and Sulu, and in turn were less esteemed than imports from Makassar and Borneo. Alcina thought the best of them excelled Spanish blades."

[Alcina was an early 17th Jesuit missionary who researched and documented the Philippines.]
Unfortunately I only had the chapter about the Visayas on my computer but, unless anyone will claim that the kris sword originated on Panay, I hope it will be of interest as a source that some kind of kris swords existed already in the 16th - 17th C in the kris sword belt.

The importance of Scott's research of the 16th C Philippines (based on Spanish sources from the same century) is "slightly corresponding" to Pigeaud's for Java in the 14th C, so I think his book will interest you.

Michael

[A. G. Maisey]

Thank you for your clarification Michael, and for all the additional information.

Going back 50 or so years I did do a lot reading of early publications that dealt with Malaya, Borneo and other SE Asian countries, much of what I read was Oxford University Press reprints, in fact I still have maybe a dozen large boxes of these books stacked in my garage. I used to have a very good idea of what that part of the world was like from the time of first European contact through to the early 20th century. However as my focus narrowed I lost interest in these other areas, and I have forgotten much.

I never did have much interest in the Philippines, and still do not, and I guess we can blame this disinterest in the society and culture of these other areas for my lack of knowledge of the weaponry found in those places. However, one is undoubtedly linked to the other. After the collapse of Hindu Jawa the character of the Javanese keris changed, and its common dispersal by principally Islamic traders saw it introduced into other places in Maritime SE Asia as an artifact that had virtually no relationship at all to its original purpose. Thus my loss of interest in the keris in these non-core areas.

Moving away from my excuses for ignorance, and back to a question that does have some interest for me, that is emergence of the sword in the form of a keris. Would it be reasonable to date the earliest appearance of this "sword-keris" at around the beginning of the 18th century, rather than the beginning of the 19th century? If this is so, what are the available sources for confirmation of this? If we cannot confirm, what evidence is there to support the "collectors consensus" that you mention?

Do we have a language interpretation problem in relation to the sword in the form of a keris, or is there no doubt at all that when reference is made to this artifact that word does refer to what many now refer to as the Moro Keris? (or kris, or criss, or any other generally understood synonym)

Please excuse my variant approach to this matter. You see, I do not think in terms of "nice catches", or pretty pamors or scarce and unusual forms. I think in terms of history and societal relevance. This of course means that I tend to look for verification of opinions, or if not verification, then at least some sort of logical supporting argument for an opinion.

GUSTAV

Any pamor miring is difficult, and once you go to a pamor miring you can count on using vastly more material, fuel and time. The possibility of error increases many times, and the possibility of failure increases many times.

Assessed on the basis of these factors alone, any pamor miring is by its nature a complex pamor. However, some are more complex than others, and these are pamors that are produced by twisting, splitting, re-welding, or other manipulation of the entire body of the bakalan, rather than by manipulation of the surface alone.

As examples, udan (hujan) mas is the result of surface manipulation.

The pamor in the keris that we are looking at in this thread is the result of manipulation of the entire bakalan.

[VVV]

Alan,

Oxford University is always a good source for credible references...
Anyway, Scott (who is an esteemed academic historian and not a weapon collector) is translating the 17th descriptions from the Jesuit missionary Acina (and earlier descriptions from other Spanish sources elsewhere in his book) as a kris sword (see my quote).
Other kind of blades he describes as daggers, so he seems to be quite specific on this matter (which of course is very essential for our discussion).
This means that some kind of kris swords existed already when the Spanish arrived to "the kris sword belt" in the 16th C.

To summarize:
a) Spanish sources state that there existed kris swords in the 16th C.
b) Weapon collectors state that some of the kris swords in museums and other collections - among them labelled "the archaic kris" (sword) - were made from the early 18th to the beginning of the 19th C.
c) It is not proven if the "archaic kris" (b), which we know what it looks like, is the same as the 16 - 17th C "kris sword" (a).
However, even if we at the moment do not have a picture here of the kris sword described in Scott's book, this does not imply that there is no proof of the existence of kris swords before the 18th C.

My suggestion as a start is that some forumite who can read Spanish double checks the original sources of Scott's to find out why he considers them to be a kris sword, instead of a kris dagger.
However, Scott is a historian and his publication is following academic standards. This implies that his research and conclusions already have been peer-reviewed by other historians (who probably not were sword collectors and, like you and me, biased in this matter).

Michael

PS If I would have been at home I would have been able to present other historic references than Scott/Acina for kris swords earlier than the 18th C, but this is a good start.