Keris for ID and Comments

[A. G. Maisey]

I had intended to stay out of this discussion, the reason being that all of the Kebo/Mahesa dhapurs are usually quite far from a standard, and almost never of the quality that we should ideally consider for classification either in terms of dhapur, or of tangguh. But in the spirit of the holiday season, I'm going to throw caution to the winds and toss my opinion into the ring.

If I were to classify this keris in accord with dhapur, I would give it as Mahesa Dengen --- or Kebo Dengen --- but I prefer Mahesa, it has more letters, sounds nicer when spoken, and is quite simply a classier word.

So, Mahesa Dengen, Luk Sembilan. Why 9 luk instead of 7 or 8?

It was made as 9 luk, thus since we can still see the evidence of what it was made as, it must be named as that. Even though there might be an 8 luk keris in existence somewhere, this one is not it. When that very rare keris with a countable number of even luk is seen, the turn of the last luk in the wrong direction is very obvious and not in any way a matter of accident.

This keris has 9 luk --- might not look that way, but this addition of the missing luk is by now a very well established convention. Anybody who has read my "Interpretation" thing will know that I do not agree with this little piece of social engineering, but, well, I'm not going to swim against the stream, if everybody is wrong, so be it, not my place to change the world.

Now, there is a little peculiarity about Dhapur Mahesa Dengan, and that is that it is virtually always Tangguh Tuban, and if we look at the pawakan and the sirah cecak of this keris, what else can it be but Tuban?

So it is neither Jawa Tengah, nor Jawa Timur, it is Jawa Utara, yaitu, Pesisiran.

My opinion:- Mahesa Dengen Luk Sembilan, Tangguh Tuban.

For the purists who might like to quibble with my mixing of Indonesian with Javanese, I excuse myself on the grounds that I am not familiar with North Coast Javanese dialect, but I do believe that it has tendency to incorporate a lot of Malay words, and since Bahasa Indonesia is based in Malay, I doubt that I would offend anybody much, if at all.

Incidentally, Mahesa Dengen is a very rare dhapur.

[Jean]

Thank you Alan for your detailed evaluation and comments. I agree with your dapur identification (not standard) and I did not realize that Tuban should be considered as part of Northern Java/ pesisiran and not East Java regarding the keris origin classification.