Keris Measurement

[A. G. Maisey]

This is an English translation from an old Balinese lontar, written in Kawi. It was translated into modern Balinese, Indonesian, French and English. The English says the same as the Indonesian, I cannot read Balinese without a dictionary, and I cannot read Kawi at all.

"Take a rope or young coconut leaf, and take the length of the keris, starting from its ganja until its point, then cut the rope/leaf. It will have the same length as the keris.
Fold the rope /leaf into two. Now its length is half the length of the keris. Find the middle part of the keris by measuring the half length rope/ leaf onto the keris,starting from the wesi (place of the handle of the keris)
After getting the middle part of the keris, unfold the rope/leaf and use it to measure the width of the middle part of the keris, then fold up the rope/leaf following the width of the middle part of the keris ( the length of keris is divided by the width of its middle part)so that we will get some pleats.---"

After this it goes into the usual sort of lucky/unlucky thing.

In the above you can read "wesi" as "pesi", so what you are doing is measuring the length of the blade without gonjo, using a center line.

Maybe Mr. Skeat didn't know the difference between a gonjo and an aring?

In fact, I have to think about aring myself. I never use the Malay terms and when somebody says "aring" I have to stop and think what they mean.