Keris Videos (Malay Peninsula)

A. G. Maisey · 15th August 2018, 08:22 AM

This comment is only relevant to the word "warang" or "warangan".

The word appears in Wilkinson, compiled prior to 1900, it was a word in common usage in Malay at that time, but Wilkinson gives origin as Javanese.

The word appears in Old Javanese and has several meanings, none of which relate to arsenic or realgar.

It is actually an interesting word, which possibly deserves further research by historical linguists, the entries in Zoetmulder seem to raise some interesting possibilities:- a relationship to colour?, to illness?, to a keris scabbard (warangka)?

It seems entirely possible that the application of the word to keris staining is something that might only have arisen in Modern Javanese, ie, since mid-17th century.

Green · 15th August 2018, 01:36 PM

Malay is essentially a very simple language. Migrant workers from South India or Nepal for example can pick up the language within 3 months without any formal training course and merely by interacting with their fellow malay co workers.

A great majority of malay words are borrowed from other languages. Primarily from sanskrit and later from arabic when the people became muslims and in the modern era a lot of words are taken fro English such as bas (bus) gelas (glass) komputer (computer) etc...It is not inconcievable that warang/warangan has been adopted by the malay keris community since early days but this word is never used in other situations by general population and if you ask any malays who do not delve in keris , it is almost certain that he will not know the word.

Having said that, and as an aside, it is to the great credit of Soekarno the late president of Indonesia who decided to use malay as the basis for 'bahasa Indonesia' and adopt it as the national language of Indonesia and bind the disparate people of Indonesia that speak all sorts of languages.

15th August 2018, 08:22 AM	#1
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 7,056	This comment is only relevant to the word "warang" or "warangan". The word appears in Wilkinson, compiled prior to 1900, it was a word in common usage in Malay at that time, but Wilkinson gives origin as Javanese. The word appears in Old Javanese and has several meanings, none of which relate to arsenic or realgar. It is actually an interesting word, which possibly deserves further research by historical linguists, the entries in Zoetmulder seem to raise some interesting possibilities:- a relationship to colour?, to illness?, to a keris scabbard (warangka)? It seems entirely possible that the application of the word to keris staining is something that might only have arisen in Modern Javanese, ie, since mid-17th century.

15th August 2018, 01:36 PM	#2
Green Member Join Date: Apr 2015 Location: Malaysia Posts: 323	Malay is essentially a very simple language. Migrant workers from South India or Nepal for example can pick up the language within 3 months without any formal training course and merely by interacting with their fellow malay co workers. A great majority of malay words are borrowed from other languages. Primarily from sanskrit and later from arabic when the people became muslims and in the modern era a lot of words are taken fro English such as bas (bus) gelas (glass) komputer (computer) etc...It is not inconcievable that warang/warangan has been adopted by the malay keris community since early days but this word is never used in other situations by general population and if you ask any malays who do not delve in keris , it is almost certain that he will not know the word. Having said that, and as an aside, it is to the great credit of Soekarno the late president of Indonesia who decided to use malay as the basis for 'bahasa Indonesia' and adopt it as the national language of Indonesia and bind the disparate people of Indonesia that speak all sorts of languages.