Balinese keris advice

[A. G. Maisey]

As I previously remarked Gustav, I have no problem if you or anybody else believes that Balinese people were warriors. Our opinions are based upon our experience, that experience can include study as well as personal and field experience, and my study and field experience dictates that my opinion must differ from yours.

Yes, it is true that I did introduce the idea of a "warrior society", now why do you think I might have done that?

Any single person from any society or cultural background can become a warrior, that is to say, a person who follows the profession of war. We can find warriors from every nation on earth, but that does not make an entire people warriors nor the society in which they live, a warrior society.

The Balinese people are a nation of farmers and have been farmers for a very long time, so we have a society of farmers.

But here we are talking about keris, and the keris is a societal & cultural artefact, that must be understood from the perspective of society & culture, not from the perspective of war.

In Jeff's first post he said :-

"I would like to think it is something a Balinese warrior might carry."

I considered that it was important to try to encourage the people who might read our comments to attempt to understand the keris in cultural terms, rather than in terms of warfare, thus I wrote:-

"I would not be so inclined to think in terms of Balinese warriors, out of context this can be a pretty misleading thought, similarly, in the Balinese context the keris should not thought of just in weapon terms."

The keris is not, and was not a weapon of war, if it cannot be thought of as a weapon of war, then it should not be thought of in terms of people who follow the profession of war.

Of course it is true that Balinese were employed by rulers across the archipelago, the museum attached to the Mangkunegaraan in Solo has some examples of the keris dress used by Balinese palace guards, but to understand why Balinese were employed in various capacities ( not only as guards & soldiers) we need to look at the societal conditions and elements that caused these men, & women, & children, to find themselves in these foreign situations. A major factor was the Balinese slave trade.

Incidentally, going back to your mention of the 1965-1966 communist purges , upon reflection, I find it ludicrous to mention these massacres in relation to any discussion of warriors.

The people who carried out these massacres were not in any sense warriors, the methods of execution did not involve conflict, the people killed as "communists" were in fact principally Indonesian-Chinese to whom money was owed, or who held property coveted by another person, or who had offended somebody at some time in the past.

The actual method of execution was more or less the same as that used in East Jawa by the Madurese, that is, the people to be executed were lined up and their throats were cut from behind by arit (reaping hook).

I have many friends and relatives who lived through this period of Indonesian history, what I know of it is from people who were directly involved both as potential victims and as executioners.

Warriors??????

In your dreams.

I'd just as soon leave this rather puerile discussion Gustav, from my perspective it is simply a repetition of opposing points of view, you have yours & I do not seek to re-educate you, I have mine and I do not believe that a discussion involving usage of the English language and personal opinions on the nature of the Balinese people has a place in this forum.

[A. G. Maisey]

Agreed David, neither do I, I really do get a bit fedup with silly little debates that really contribute nothing, this sort of thing is far too close to what I have done for a living for more than 50 years and I do not find it relaxing.

However --- dictionaries, and "profession" or "occupation" or "job".

This is an English language forum.

When I get paid for what I have done for a living for most of my life, I need to use the English language.

When I use that language in a strictly Australian context I try to use the Australian form of the language.

When I am required to use the language in some vehicle which will travel beyond the borders of Australia I try, insofar as it is possible, to use what I have been taught is Standard English, and if I need to go to a dictionary, I use the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles for general writing, and specific professional dictionaries when these are required.

If I'm talkin to me mates I use whichever jargon best suits the situation --- bush lingo with me cockie mates, accounting, audit, & legal jargon with my professional associates.

The word "warrior" can be used in many ways, we can find "keyboard warriors", "weekend warriors", we can find football teams that are some sort of warrior or other. When we get into colloquial usage there is no end to the warriors we can find.

But when I write in this forum, I try my best not to diverge into colloquial usage, and since what I write might be read by a person literate in English, but from a large variety of cultural & social backgrounds I do try to write in Standard English.

You have referred to a number of dictionaries, I checked what I wrote about warriors being those who have war as a profession --- meaning of course that they are paid for engaging in warfare --- I think I am writing in Standard English, so I used my normal Oxford dictionary OHP to check.

Here is a photo of the entry:-

[David]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

The word "warrior" can be used in many ways, we can find "keyboard warriors", "weekend warriors", we can find football teams that are some sort of warrior or other. When we get into colloquial usage there is no end to the warriors we can find.

True enough. Though i certainly was not using the word in this context in ANY of the examples i gave.
The four different dictionaries i quoted were all online editions. The Oxford example i used was the Oxford Learners Dictionary, so not their regular edition. But i would consider ALL these sources as legitimate sources for "Standard English" usage. Surely you don't believe your Oxford dictionary is the sole source for such information. I have no reason to believe that i am using the word "warrior" in anything but a standard English context. The examples of uses you used above were not ones that i was considering at all.
We are quibbling about semantics here Alan, but some of your response seems to ignore everything else i stated. No one claimed Bali was a "warrior society" or that the entire population of Bali are/were "warrior people". But clearly the Balinese did occasionally engage in war, and when there are wars, there are warriors.
In my comments you will find that i agreed completely with you that the nature of the keris should not being connected to warfare and also related this to Jeff. I will say now that i also agree that what happened in Bali in the 1960s has nothing to do with warriors and understand your reaction to Gustav's comments.
However, in discussing the Cekah Solas hilt of his keris my research brought up writings by Lalu Djelenga stating that these hilts were favored by warriors. What am i to make of this source? And numerous sources do indeed refer to the Satrias, what is the Kshatriya caste in Bali, as members of a "warrior" caste. Yes, i completely understand the these aristocratic knights should not necessarily be seen in the same light as, say, an Apache warrior, but the term warrior caste is associated with them in many references so it is hard to ignore. Again, i think this becomes merely a matter of semantics. My point in bringing up this information was only to try to establish some further information about this hilt form and it's possible place in the world of Balinese keris culture. To keep the discussion focussed on the object at hand. Unfortunately this debate about the word "warrior" has somewhat derailed my intent and we are no longer discussing Jeff's keris at all, but rather word usage and what each of us feel is "Standard English".

[Gustav]

David, my mention of 1965 in Bali has nothing to do with "warriors" from Bali. In fact, in my comment, which goes "Surely the last Puputans changed the Balinese society and culture (something like Gamelan Gong Kebyar was unthinkable before them), but always, looking at the friendly smiling Balinese and their peaceful and artistic society, I must think of 1965 in Bali." I referred here to pre-Puputan Balinese society and already explained that in my previous post. I also must say, that I, unlike you, don't understand Alans reaction to this comment.

[Gustav]

Alan, my mentioning of 1965 in Balinese context is only a response of your picture of contemporary Balinese as "friendly and personable" descendants of the friendly and amiable people posing with scary expressions in a 19th century picture. Exactly these friendly and personable people, a personificated dream of tourism in the 30ties, were capable of such violence, that even the troups from Java that had been sent to ignite the action had difficulties to stop it.

There was a specific Balinese touch to this outburst of violence in Bali, and it had its roots within the pre-Puputan Balinese society.

Regarding Balinese Keris, which we are able to understand after understanding the Balinese society, some time ago you wrote:

"In Bali prior to its subjugation by the Dutch, we had an agrarian society. This society was organised under a number of minor warlords who were constantly at one another's throats."

And further:

"In old Bali there was an earthy crudity to the society. Even into the early years of the 20th century, both before and after occupation by the Dutch, much of south Bali was characterised by gangs of toughs and hoodlums who preyed upon the unwary.Alchoholism, prevalent drug use, bashings, casual murders. Bali was not the ordered society of Jawa, dominated by the Dutch, and with its refined courts, its professional courtiers, and its rampant mysticism. The nature of Balinese society, and the magic within Balinese society was closer to the sympathetic and naturalistic magic of the older cultures of both mainland and maritime SE Asia, rather than to the refined magic which existed in Jawa, that owed much of its nature to both Islamic and European influences.

The keris in this society had the nature of weapon, but it was a weapon that could attain the status of an iconic symbol within a kin group, or at a state level.However, first and foremost it was a weapon, a tool for removing the life force from another human being."

So far about Balinese Keris.

You write: "As I previously remarked Gustav, I have no problem if you or anybody else believes that Balinese people were warriors." This is an error, as neither I, or somebody else in this thread has stated something similar. Nobody has said, Balinese were warriors per se (well, M.C. Ricklefs, one of the most important scholars of Indonesian history, wrote "The Balinese were (...) a nation of soldiers" in a certain context), or called their society a "warriors society". Please relax.

And yes, Lalu Djelenga, the iniciator of our trouble: "Atau Cekah Solas yang jaman dulu untuk prajurit."

[JeffS]

While a little prickly, I really do appreciate the divergent views and perspectives and the time taken to share them.

[A. G. Maisey]

Gustav, I know that you are an intelligent & cultured gentleman, and I do sometimes enjoy reading your opinions, however, the sort of discussion you & I are currently engaged in is the sort of discussion that I thought I had put behind me 60 or so years ago.

It is a discussion about trivialities.

In order to get paid for some of the work I engage in, I need to sometimes involve myself in this sort trivial exchange, but I am not being paid for my contributions to this forum, so I am not going to continue this discussion with you.

As I wrote:- no further discussion, so please just regard the following comments as remarks directed at the nearest wall:-

society in the fledgling country of Indonesia between the late 1930's and the fall of the Suharto regime deserves serious field study as well as reading the canned opinions of academics, if we wish to have some understanding of present day Indonesian society.

yes, pre-puputan Bali was not always ordered & settled, but conflicts between rulers were often settled by means other than extended physical conflict that deserves the name of "war".

yes, the keris had the nature of a weapon, it always did have, and it still has, but it was not, is not, a weapon of war, if it was not, is not a weapon of war, then it cannot be the weapon of a warrior.

soldiers and warriors are not necessarily one & the same thing, use of the word "warrior" automatically infers being engaged in war.

[A. G. Maisey]

I feel like I'm playing ping-pong here David, I have one bat in my right hand, one bat in my left, and as soon as I've returned a ball to Gustav, I need to return one to you.

Firstly, I do not use online dictionaries. The professional writing that I need to do often finishes up being used in a legal context, so I use hard copy, published dictionaries, I've got about two meters of bookshelves given over to dictionaries in several different languages, I need these as tools of trade, it can be pretty embarrassing to have a lawyer read out something that one has written, and then have that destroyed by some smart-ass barrister -- not one who makes coffee, but one who keeps people out of jail.

It is not open to each of us to independently determine what form or style of the English Language qualifies as "Standard English".

In another lifetime I taught English to new comers to Australia, I did this as a community service, it was not paying work, however, it did require a qualification to be permitted to undertake the work. One of my teachers who helped me to gain this qualification was a linguist who taught me and his other students, that the best example of "Standard English" was the form of English spoken by educated people living in a certain part of England, I think that part of England might have a location somewhere about 16 miles south west on London.

Well, he might have been right, or he might have been wrong, but what I have learnt about "Standard English", as that term is understood by linguists at the present time, is that "Standard English" can no longer be restricted to a single ironclad idea, thus "Standard English" can now be defined in a rather loose way that involves the application of varying measures in order to determine what is, or is not Standard English, in other words, Standard English is no longer something that is inflexible, but rather something that can flex providing that it adheres to a standard of intelligibility.

So I assume the idea of "Standard English" now means that as long as an educated person can understand the message of the spoken or written word that message has complied with a standard.

Thus, the standard with which Standard English must comply is a standard of intelligibility, and this standard cannot be not one of individual interpretation.

In respect of the version of the Oxford English Dictionary that I prefer to use for general writing. I use this because I was advised by a couple of lawyers that for courtroom usage this particular edition was perhaps the most practical. The complete Oxford runs to something like twenty odd volumes and is constantly being revised, for general usage it is not really practical to use, but the edition I use is apparently well suited for use in defensible legal argument. Moreover, it is only two volumes, and is always within arms length, so even though I began using it maybe 40 or 50 years ago, I now habitually use it whenever I have to look at a dictionary.

As to your semantics comment, yes, I do agree that I sometimes tend to consider exactly what a word means. I'm sorry, this is the way I was taught to think, it is the way I do think, if I write something I do want to be able to defend what I write. If I'm talking to somebody, I'm not as particular, particularly in a social setting, that is because when using the spoken word for communication we usually do have the opportunity to correct a misunderstanding, when we write we do not have that opportunity, thus when I write something I want that writing to say just what I want it to say.

Thus, if I want to refer to a person who is operating in a military capacity I might use the word "soldier", but if I wish to refer to a person who follows the occupation of war, I might use the word "warrior". These are different words with different meanings, and I have worked too long in an environment where use of the wrong word can get you hung.

True David, I did not address everything you wrote, but did I need to? Why recap on things that need no comment?

I agree with you completely in that all this discussion about warriors has derailed this thread. This sort of discussion, or if you wish debate, is something like the sort of discussion that undergraduates have in order to try to elevate themselves in the intellectual hierarchy.

All I really wanted to do was to cause people to think about why I wanted to disconnect Balinese keris from Balinese warriors, and the answer to that is pretty simple, it was because the keris was not, is not a weapon of war.

All the rest of this garble is just so much piss in the wind. (fifty years ago this would not have been accepted as Standard English, but by the current standard, I think it might be)

[Gustav]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

All I really wanted to do was to cause people to think about why I wanted to disconnect Balinese keris from Balinese warriors, and the answer to that is pretty simple, it was because the keris was not, is not a weapon of war.

Interestingly, Margaret Wiener in her much mentioned book writes:

"In precolonial Bali, all men owned at least one keris. This marked, in part, their status as warriors. Since all of a rulers adult male subjects were expected to fight in his wars, as intruments of royal agency, keris defined manhood in relation to a certain kind of political order."

And:

"The role keris played in constituting power hinged upon the fact that keris were first and foremost weapons, meant to be used against external enemies in war or internal ones in executions."

A book, always worth of rereading indeed.

[A. G. Maisey]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UneS2Uwc6xw

I respect MW enormously, since its publication I have recommended her work on Bali to perhaps every person who has asked me for guidance in their quest to understand the keris, however, I do not necessarily agree with every single word she wrote, nor with all of her published opinions.

I do not slavishly rely upon academic works to form my own opinions, and some of those opinions do vary from the opinions of academics.

As David has commented, this thread has become an exercise in semantics, but semantics is the study of meaning and truth, and the only way that any word can be understood as it should be understood is to analyse the meaning of that word and the truth encapsulated in that meaning. Ideally language should be used with precision, if it is not used with precision, that inadequately constructed language can generate misunderstanding and ignorance.

If what I have just written is true, then we need to consider this:-

1) A conflict or skirmish is not a war, neither is a confrontation or disagreement a war.

2) Engaging in a conflict or skirmish upon the orders of one's lord does not make a farmer either a warrior or a soldier.

3) Even fighting in a war does not make a farmer a warrior.

4) A weapon that might be used in a war does not make that weapon an implement that was intended for war, thus it is not a weapon of war.

5) The nature of a weapon can be many fold, and although that nature might include the letting of blood, in the case of the keris that letting of blood is not the only purpose of the keris.

The above is probably about as simple as I can make it, and yes, it is all about semantics:- the study of meaning and truth.