Figural horn (possibly rhino) hilt

A. G. Maisey · 24th April 2016, 02:31 AM

Gustav, my first line should have read as did my initial response, forget the "will not", and substitute "reserve". To reserve comment is to delay comment. Some of your speculation and interpretation I would prefer not to comment on. But I'm happy to exchange comment on some other things.

My notes on sunggingan (2881) read:-
"The wr. has a sub-motif of stupas & foliage overlaid by gilt lines which are trunks & branches of trees & possibly a ground line"

This is how I saw it with it in my hand. I could be wrong, but in the absence of the object in question it is pointless discuss it. The way I did the photos on all these keris was not sufficiently technically advanced to permit a clear rendition of a very faint sub-motif.

As to "European knowledge".
Since very early days there has been continuing comment by people from Europe, and from societies founded in the European tradition, about the keris. Its not just Europeans, but other people who have some interest, or some training, academic or otherwise, who think they have something to contribute to the ongoing discussion. I must include myself in this group, as well as probably the most careful and accurate of all outside commentators, Garrett & Bronwen Solyom.

Some of the commentary generated by the outsiders has been excellent and has made available knowledge and understandings that are little known in Indonesia itself, or have been forgotten.

Some other commentary has been somewhere between silly and ludicrous.

However, whether that outside commentary has fallen into the "good" basket, or the "bad" basket has made not the slightest difference at all to the keris community in Jawa. I have selected Jawa specifically because this is the centre of the keris belief system and tradition, and also because I know the situation there very well..

I believe I understand how you intend your age estimates to be taken, correct me if I'm wrong, but you are looking at a minuscule sample of hilts of a known age, you look at the features in these hilts, then you compare with other hilts that you know to be younger. Based on this you form the opinion that certain features appear in the known older hilts, that do not appear in the known younger hilts.

I personally have a little bit of difficulty in subscribing to this methodology because the features that you point out in older hilts, I have seen in hilts that have been produced since 1980. These very recent hilts are obviously not at all old and could never be confused with old hilts, but to my mind the fact that design features in known old hilts are being repeated in known new hilts demonstrates a continuing tradition.

Thus, I question whether we can use design as an indicator of age, or whether these design features are in fact styles that come from different sources or areas of belief, or that have some other unknown reason for variation.

I do understand analysis. It is the foundation stone of how I have earnt my living for most of my life. What I know about analysis is this:- to draw conclusions we need a sufficiently large population from which to draw the test sample, then we need to factor in the statistical error. We do have a sufficiently large population of new hilts, we do not have a sufficiently large population of old hilts. Statistically the possibility of an incorrect conclusion is enormous.

We can make an observation, but we cannot draw a conclusion.

Gustav, it is beyond doubt that museums in Europe do hold some very old keris, as you know, I have seen, handled, and photographed some of these keris held by a number of museums. In some cases the keris that I looked at were documented, and what I found to be extremely interesting was that these keris that were sometimes several hundred years old could easily be mixed in with a batch of high quality, current production keris from the best Javanese and Madurese makers, and no collector that I know would be able to tell which keris was 200 years old, and which keris was 200 days old.

If we raise the bar just a little, and we have one of the people who are at the top of the Indonesian keris trade put one of the truly excellent current makers on his payroll, then give him a very high quality keris to copy, supervise the production, and then have old-style kinatah work done, the result will be a keris that perhaps only three or four people in the entire world will know to be a recently produced keris.

It was not the maker who produced the forgery, it was the man he was working for who used the maker as a tool. This same man, or one of his group, will introduce this keris into the local market, probably in Jakarta and it will sell for a price that nobody outside that local market would ever pay. We are not talking a few hundred dollars, or even a few thousand dollars, we are talking tens of thousands of dollars.

This is not to say that keris that pretend to be what they are not do not enter the market outside Indonesia. Of course they do. Perhaps three times a week on average I have photos of this type of keris sent to me for comment and advice. Sometimes it is easy to see that I'm looking at a ring-in, other times its not, but these are all low priced keris, seldom above $1000, most often down around only a couple of hundred dollars. This is not the market that the market controllers are interested in, and for that reason any collector outside Indonesia is safe:- he will never suffer a big loss, simply because he will never even see, let alone be offered, the really high class work.

Bear one thing in mind Gustav:- I have been buying keris in Indonesia for about 40 years; you know who my teachers were; I have close, long term contacts in the keris trade in Solo. What others speculate on, I have seen.

The reason I started to deal in the first place was because I realised very early that it was the only way to gain keris knowledge:- the dealers, the craftsmen, the high level shonks hold all the knowledge, even the elite, experienced collectors and connoisseurs are trudging along in the dust behind them. Have you ever seen an honest book written by a high level Indonesian dealer? No, of course not, and you never will.

You mention a copy of an old sunggingan. Only one Gustav? I've seen dozens --- or more. The people who paint sunggingan wrongkos are the people who paint wayang puppets. They usually have pattern books that have been passed down through generations, not the actual books, but rather the patterns in those books, they sometimes add patterns when they see something that they like, and very rarely they will design a new motif themselves. Probably most of these artists have the pattern and the ability to reproduce an old sunggingan motif if they wish, but mostly they do not wish, because they need to make a living and it is easier to sell the motifs that are currently popular.

In respect of current production of accurate tajongs. This is something I don't know much about. The only current production tajongs I've seen for sale in Central Jawa and East Jawa have been very poor pieces of work that don't look anything like the real thing. I don't doubt for a minute that a competent Javanese/Madurese/Balinese carver could produce an accurate copy if he was given a model to work from. I believe it would be a carver who did the copy, not a m'ranggi or tukang jejeran. I do not know where these good tajongs are coming from, in fact, I can't even remember seeing a photo of one, but that is probably because I don't take a lot of notice of these fringe keris from other areas. Maybe a Jakarta or Surabaya dealer is getting them done in Bali or Lombok, there are extremely talented carvers in both places.

Gustav · 25th April 2016, 10:53 PM

For some afterthoughts:

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ghlight=hunter

A. G. Maisey · 26th April 2016, 07:28 AM

Not quite the same quality but possibly relevant

David · 26th April 2016, 04:02 PM

Perhaps either Gustav or Alan could expand on how these last two posts of this gold hilt from the book Old Javanese Gold or these Nyamba hilts are pertinent to our discussions so far on the original hilt posted. It seems to me that the original post brought two questions into the discussion.
1. A question of material used (is it rhino horn?)
2. A question on judging age based upon the specific ornamental features of the presented hilt.
Certainly these most recent additions to the discussion have nothing to do with the first question, which i tend to agree with Alan is personally of lesser interest to me.
I do believe that this hilt from Old Javanese Gold is most probably from the Mojopahit period, so older than Gustav believes the horn hilt to be (17th century). While it does present a stylized yoni i cannot say that it also presents the lingam in the tumpal at the base of the hilt that Gustav points us to in the horn example. Though the basic form of the buta hilt is similar enough to both Gustav's horn example as well as my more recent wooden ones the specific stylistic ornamental flourishes are not quite the same to either. So i am curious what direction or what further conclusions we can reach by viewing this or Alan's added examples that help us with the initial questions at hand.
Gustav, if you have not obtained Miksic's book yet (as you mention in the thread you linked us to on this gold hilt), he has very little to say about it despite the hilt appearing both on the front and back dust cover, as the full-page chapter lead photo for the Middle and Late Classic Period section of the catalog and once again as a series of three photos showing various sides of the hilt. He does not specifically date the hilt and only writes:
"Its sharp nose and smooth and rather swollen and rounded body are quite similar to those seen in depictions of humans and mythical heroes in shadow puppets (wayang kulit) and in illustrations in other media, such as wayang beber (painted cloth scrolls used in telling stories) and illuminated manuscripts. The monster wears a necklace, originally set in stone."

A. G. Maisey · 26th April 2016, 11:27 PM

Yep, I agree with you David.

A few posts back I considered starting a new thread to discuss all this age & symbolism stuff, but I've had a bit on my plate recently and I didn't do it.

If, as moderator, you have the ability to begin a thread and move these possibly irrelevant posts to it, why not do so? Then Gustav and I and anybody else who felt like it could ramble on about symbols and icons and etc, etc, etc to our hearts content and upset nobody.

But you know the way it is:- you start off talking about the weather to somebody, and before you know where you are you're discussing Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and from there the discussion jumps to the problems involved in restoring steam locomotives --- and availability of good coking coal, and what 7X5 box trailer full of beach sand weighs --- this sort of diversion never stops. That's what happens with non-formal discussions:- they wander all over the place --- and this Forum is a venue for informal discussion, so discussions are bound to get off the tracks from time to time.

On the subject of those hilts I posted pics of:- all three are fairly old, but I have no idea how old, the one with the gemstone bandul around his neck is by far the oldest, if judged on construction and appearance. All are known in Jawa as either nyamba or minat jenggul.

Oh yes --- we cannot have a yoni without a lingga in Hindu, or Hindu-Jawa iconography. This situation could be read as something extremely unlucky. Lingga = male, yoni = female, lingga+yoni = universal stability, one without the other? not good, not good at all. Lots of ways to read this singularity if it intentionally occurred, but basically what you have is the collapse of the cosmos.

So --- if we think we see an intentional lingga by itself, or an intentional yoni by itself, maybe we should pause a moment and ask if we understand what we think we are seeing.

David · 27th April 2016, 03:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

If, as moderator, you have the ability to begin a thread and move these possibly irrelevant posts to it, why not do so? Then Gustav and I and anybody else who felt like it could ramble on about symbols and icons and etc, etc, etc to our hearts content and upset nobody.

But you know the way it is:- you start off talking about the weather to somebody, and before you know where you are you're discussing Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and from there the discussion jumps to the problems involved in restoring steam locomotives --- and availability of good coking coal, and what 7X5 box trailer full of beach sand weighs --- this sort of diversion never stops. That's what happens with non-formal discussions:- they wander all over the place --- and this Forum is a venue for informal discussion, so discussions are bound to get off the tracks from time to time.

Alan, a sarcastic response is really not necessary. I was neither chiding you gentlemen for the direction the thread was taking nor trying to curtail your rights as members to wander off to discuss other aspects of hilts or even Einstein's Theory of Relativity if it suits you. After a bit of back and forth on the two questions i mentioned above Gustav posted the Old Javanese Gold cover pictures as an "afterthought" and made no other comment. You then followed with some Nyamba hilts with the comment that they may be "possibly relevant". I then asked if you gentlemen could expand on these ideas, i.e. what is your "afterthought" and how are these "relevant". That is all. Not trying to stifle whatever direction you are taking. You see, i generally say pretty much exactly what i mean. I would ask that you not read any other motivations into my posts. I am mostly just following along with this discussion, not taking sides or trying to promote or disprove any of the presented theories. I am asking questions, perhaps the wrong ones that don't open the door to higher knowledge, but questions no less. In other words, i have no dog in this race.
Gustav, on the description provided in the book itself, i presented it to you for no other reason than that you stated in the linked thread that you did not yet own this book. So i presented the passage so that you would know what had been written there on this hilt. It appears on page 249 beneath 3 rather small photographs of various angles of this hilt. They may have given you a wide date range (1000-1400) on the website, but i can find no place where any dating is applied to this hilt in the book. Alan may be correct. Perhaps i don't understand what i am seeing. The photos are also pretty small in the book, much, much smaller than the close-up images used on the books cover. There is some scroll work in the area where one would expect to find the male organ, but i would have to use a great deal of imagination to see it as such (even when i magnified the region). Still, i concede that might be its symbolic intention. Very hard to tell without larger images.

David · 27th April 2016, 03:58 AM

Gustav, i hope you don't mind that i re-edited your last photo to show more detail.

24th April 2016, 02:31 AM	#1
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 7,043	Gustav, my first line should have read as did my initial response, forget the "will not", and substitute "reserve". To reserve comment is to delay comment. Some of your speculation and interpretation I would prefer not to comment on. But I'm happy to exchange comment on some other things. My notes on sunggingan (2881) read:- "The wr. has a sub-motif of stupas & foliage overlaid by gilt lines which are trunks & branches of trees & possibly a ground line" This is how I saw it with it in my hand. I could be wrong, but in the absence of the object in question it is pointless discuss it. The way I did the photos on all these keris was not sufficiently technically advanced to permit a clear rendition of a very faint sub-motif. As to "European knowledge". Since very early days there has been continuing comment by people from Europe, and from societies founded in the European tradition, about the keris. Its not just Europeans, but other people who have some interest, or some training, academic or otherwise, who think they have something to contribute to the ongoing discussion. I must include myself in this group, as well as probably the most careful and accurate of all outside commentators, Garrett & Bronwen Solyom. Some of the commentary generated by the outsiders has been excellent and has made available knowledge and understandings that are little known in Indonesia itself, or have been forgotten. Some other commentary has been somewhere between silly and ludicrous. However, whether that outside commentary has fallen into the "good" basket, or the "bad" basket has made not the slightest difference at all to the keris community in Jawa. I have selected Jawa specifically because this is the centre of the keris belief system and tradition, and also because I know the situation there very well.. I believe I understand how you intend your age estimates to be taken, correct me if I'm wrong, but you are looking at a minuscule sample of hilts of a known age, you look at the features in these hilts, then you compare with other hilts that you know to be younger. Based on this you form the opinion that certain features appear in the known older hilts, that do not appear in the known younger hilts. I personally have a little bit of difficulty in subscribing to this methodology because the features that you point out in older hilts, I have seen in hilts that have been produced since 1980. These very recent hilts are obviously not at all old and could never be confused with old hilts, but to my mind the fact that design features in known old hilts are being repeated in known new hilts demonstrates a continuing tradition. Thus, I question whether we can use design as an indicator of age, or whether these design features are in fact styles that come from different sources or areas of belief, or that have some other unknown reason for variation. I do understand analysis. It is the foundation stone of how I have earnt my living for most of my life. What I know about analysis is this:- to draw conclusions we need a sufficiently large population from which to draw the test sample, then we need to factor in the statistical error. We do have a sufficiently large population of new hilts, we do not have a sufficiently large population of old hilts. Statistically the possibility of an incorrect conclusion is enormous. We can make an observation, but we cannot draw a conclusion. Gustav, it is beyond doubt that museums in Europe do hold some very old keris, as you know, I have seen, handled, and photographed some of these keris held by a number of museums. In some cases the keris that I looked at were documented, and what I found to be extremely interesting was that these keris that were sometimes several hundred years old could easily be mixed in with a batch of high quality, current production keris from the best Javanese and Madurese makers, and no collector that I know would be able to tell which keris was 200 years old, and which keris was 200 days old. If we raise the bar just a little, and we have one of the people who are at the top of the Indonesian keris trade put one of the truly excellent current makers on his payroll, then give him a very high quality keris to copy, supervise the production, and then have old-style kinatah work done, the result will be a keris that perhaps only three or four people in the entire world will know to be a recently produced keris. It was not the maker who produced the forgery, it was the man he was working for who used the maker as a tool. This same man, or one of his group, will introduce this keris into the local market, probably in Jakarta and it will sell for a price that nobody outside that local market would ever pay. We are not talking a few hundred dollars, or even a few thousand dollars, we are talking tens of thousands of dollars. This is not to say that keris that pretend to be what they are not do not enter the market outside Indonesia. Of course they do. Perhaps three times a week on average I have photos of this type of keris sent to me for comment and advice. Sometimes it is easy to see that I'm looking at a ring-in, other times its not, but these are all low priced keris, seldom above $1000, most often down around only a couple of hundred dollars. This is not the market that the market controllers are interested in, and for that reason any collector outside Indonesia is safe:- he will never suffer a big loss, simply because he will never even see, let alone be offered, the really high class work. Bear one thing in mind Gustav:- I have been buying keris in Indonesia for about 40 years; you know who my teachers were; I have close, long term contacts in the keris trade in Solo. What others speculate on, I have seen. The reason I started to deal in the first place was because I realised very early that it was the only way to gain keris knowledge:- the dealers, the craftsmen, the high level shonks hold all the knowledge, even the elite, experienced collectors and connoisseurs are trudging along in the dust behind them. Have you ever seen an honest book written by a high level Indonesian dealer? No, of course not, and you never will. You mention a copy of an old sunggingan. Only one Gustav? I've seen dozens --- or more. The people who paint sunggingan wrongkos are the people who paint wayang puppets. They usually have pattern books that have been passed down through generations, not the actual books, but rather the patterns in those books, they sometimes add patterns when they see something that they like, and very rarely they will design a new motif themselves. Probably most of these artists have the pattern and the ability to reproduce an old sunggingan motif if they wish, but mostly they do not wish, because they need to make a living and it is easier to sell the motifs that are currently popular. In respect of current production of accurate tajongs. This is something I don't know much about. The only current production tajongs I've seen for sale in Central Jawa and East Jawa have been very poor pieces of work that don't look anything like the real thing. I don't doubt for a minute that a competent Javanese/Madurese/Balinese carver could produce an accurate copy if he was given a model to work from. I believe it would be a carver who did the copy, not a m'ranggi or tukang jejeran. I do not know where these good tajongs are coming from, in fact, I can't even remember seeing a photo of one, but that is probably because I don't take a lot of notice of these fringe keris from other areas. Maybe a Jakarta or Surabaya dealer is getting them done in Bali or Lombok, there are extremely talented carvers in both places. Last edited by A. G. Maisey; 24th April 2016 at 05:08 AM.

25th April 2016, 10:53 PM	#2
Gustav Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 1,295	For some afterthoughts: http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ghlight=hunter Attached Images

26th April 2016, 07:28 AM	#3
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 7,043	Not quite the same quality but possibly relevant Attached Images

27th April 2016, 03:58 AM	#7
David Keris forum moderator Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Nova Scotia Posts: 7,227	Gustav, i hope you don't mind that i re-edited your last photo to show more detail. Attached Images

26th April 2016, 04:02 PM	#4
David Keris forum moderator Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Nova Scotia Posts: 7,227	Perhaps either Gustav or Alan could expand on how these last two posts of this gold hilt from the book Old Javanese Gold or these Nyamba hilts are pertinent to our discussions so far on the original hilt posted. It seems to me that the original post brought two questions into the discussion. 1. A question of material used (is it rhino horn?) 2. A question on judging age based upon the specific ornamental features of the presented hilt. Certainly these most recent additions to the discussion have nothing to do with the first question, which i tend to agree with Alan is personally of lesser interest to me. I do believe that this hilt from Old Javanese Gold is most probably from the Mojopahit period, so older than Gustav believes the horn hilt to be (17th century). While it does present a stylized yoni i cannot say that it also presents the lingam in the tumpal at the base of the hilt that Gustav points us to in the horn example. Though the basic form of the buta hilt is similar enough to both Gustav's horn example as well as my more recent wooden ones the specific stylistic ornamental flourishes are not quite the same to either. So i am curious what direction or what further conclusions we can reach by viewing this or Alan's added examples that help us with the initial questions at hand. Gustav, if you have not obtained Miksic's book yet (as you mention in the thread you linked us to on this gold hilt), he has very little to say about it despite the hilt appearing both on the front and back dust cover, as the full-page chapter lead photo for the Middle and Late Classic Period section of the catalog and once again as a series of three photos showing various sides of the hilt. He does not specifically date the hilt and only writes: "Its sharp nose and smooth and rather swollen and rounded body are quite similar to those seen in depictions of humans and mythical heroes in shadow puppets (wayang kulit) and in illustrations in other media, such as wayang beber (painted cloth scrolls used in telling stories) and illuminated manuscripts. The monster wears a necklace, originally set in stone."

26th April 2016, 11:27 PM	#5
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 7,043	Yep, I agree with you David. A few posts back I considered starting a new thread to discuss all this age & symbolism stuff, but I've had a bit on my plate recently and I didn't do it. If, as moderator, you have the ability to begin a thread and move these possibly irrelevant posts to it, why not do so? Then Gustav and I and anybody else who felt like it could ramble on about symbols and icons and etc, etc, etc to our hearts content and upset nobody. But you know the way it is:- you start off talking about the weather to somebody, and before you know where you are you're discussing Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and from there the discussion jumps to the problems involved in restoring steam locomotives --- and availability of good coking coal, and what 7X5 box trailer full of beach sand weighs --- this sort of diversion never stops. That's what happens with non-formal discussions:- they wander all over the place --- and this Forum is a venue for informal discussion, so discussions are bound to get off the tracks from time to time. On the subject of those hilts I posted pics of:- all three are fairly old, but I have no idea how old, the one with the gemstone bandul around his neck is by far the oldest, if judged on construction and appearance. All are known in Jawa as either nyamba or minat jenggul. Oh yes --- we cannot have a yoni without a lingga in Hindu, or Hindu-Jawa iconography. This situation could be read as something extremely unlucky. Lingga = male, yoni = female, lingga+yoni = universal stability, one without the other? not good, not good at all. Lots of ways to read this singularity if it intentionally occurred, but basically what you have is the collapse of the cosmos. So --- if we think we see an intentional lingga by itself, or an intentional yoni by itself, maybe we should pause a moment and ask if we understand what we think we are seeing.