Arsenic or realgar for Keris etching?

A. G. Maisey · 18th August 2009, 02:53 PM

Michel, what you say about using tangguh to help form an impression, or as I would state it, a broad opinion of the classification of a blade is pretty much the way I would suggest that it could be used to satisfy the modern collector.

However, this is not the way it was intended to be used, it is more the way that it is practical to use it now.

Used correctly it can applied to give a good approximate indication of the age of a blade back to Mataram Sultan Agung. The closer we come to the present day, the more accurate it can be as an age indicator.

However, when we start to consider the older tangguh classifications it is perhaps best to simply acknowledge that these keris are old keris, and not couple the tangguh with any concept of actual time.

In Jawa you will find some people who will swear that tangguh Majapahit means that that keris was made during the Majapahit era.

You will find others --- others who are extremely knowledgeable ahli keris --- who will say "tangguh nggak sungguh".

To really understand the keris from a Javanese perspective it is absolutely essential to understand how the tangguh system works, and how to apply it. Regretably, the only way to gain this knowledge is to find somebody in Jawa who is prepared to teach you, and who has access to plenty of examples. Then give half a lifetime to the study.

For anybody outside Javanese society the best that can be hoped for is to gain a small understanding of the theory applied to reaching a classification.This theory really precludes the application of the system to lower quality pieces, but as I have already said, very few, if any , people use this system now as it was intended to be used.

However, there is one thing that is true:-

anybody who gives a tangguh classification to a blade must be able to support his opinion with reasoned argument by reference to the indicators he has used.

Far too often a person will say that a blade is tangguh such and such, and when pressed for his reason for saying this the best he can do is to simply say something like
"because its looks like such and such".

This is just not good enough.

However, this failure to provide reasoned argument is precisely what allows half educated "experts" to give tangguh to village quality blades.

If you stick with the indicators it is virtually impossible to classify a low quality piece within the tangguh structure.

kulbuntet · 19th August 2009, 12:12 AM

Oke Alan,

I undertand what you say. Like i posted before, it is a help to get an impression of a age or erra in witch the balde is made. Yes it feeds the need of the modern collector.. is there anny other need? I only can think of one other.. for museum display/indexing. But they can use carbon analisys combined with methodes that maybe could fall into tangguh classication.

You speak of using Tangguh to get a good approximate indication, how can i see this.. year/month? only year? decade? will it say anny thing about the region its made. Since like i posted before my understanding of the Tangguh system specialy with comparrison with normal giving a impression is verry limited.

Because of this i hope that the people on this forum would appriciate a Tangguh thread (http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...9266#post89266). And hopping that you and maybe some others with knowledge of this system, would try to expain how it works and witch the indicators are.... Yes Alan i know what you now think, or what you wil respond. You told me already several times. That it is verry difficult to just expain and even more to do it on a forum or by mail, using photo's.. but please just give it a try. We the other forum members and keris entousiasts would realy appriciate the info given and try to lear us about it. I think that everybody understand that i wil not make us experts, or be able to use it propperly.. We have here in Holland a old saying.. translated...... A bullet not fired, is a target always missed.

David · 19th August 2009, 12:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kulbuntet

We have here in Holland a old saying.. translated...... A bullet not fired, is a target always missed.

Yes, but if the gun is held in the wrong way, it might just take out the shooter.

kulbuntet · 19th August 2009, 12:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David

Yes, but if the gun is held in the wrong way, it might just take out the shooter.

lol, yes... it depends on the holder of the gun.. and the gun manufacteror.. did they give the holder a manual? Did the holder read the manual?

kulbuntet · 19th August 2009, 12:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David

Yes, but if the gun is held in the wrong way, it might just take out the shooter.

lol, yes... it depends on the holder of the gun.. and the gun manufacteror.. did they give the holder a manual? Did the holder read the manual?

A. G. Maisey · 19th August 2009, 01:34 AM

Michel, I'm going to tell you a little story.

Before I went to Jawa I had no idea at all that anything like tangguh existed. I thought I was doing pretty good if I could classify a keris according to origin in a geographic area. When I learnt and could reliably differentiate between Solo keris and Jogja keris I was regarded as a guru by local collectors.

During my first few trips to Indonesia I became aware that there was some sort of system of classifying keris that was totally beyond my understanding. I'd see old men --- always old men --- glance at the top of a keris that was still in the wrangka and pronounce it to be Tuban, or Majapahit, or whatever. Maybe they would withdraw it from the scabbard, study it for a couple of minutes and then give it as Pajajaran, or Pajang.

This was all intensely interesting, and as time went by I learnt a little more about this system, but I had no idea at all of how to use it.

Eventually I met Pak Parman and it was not until he accepted me as a student that I learnt anything worth knowing about tangguh and its application.

Pak Parman was 100% kejawen. Maybe he was 110% kejawen. If he said that a keris was Majapahit, to him, that meant that it had been made in Majapahit during the Majapahit era.

If he said that a keris was Kinom Mataram it was a keris that had been made start to finish by Kinom during the era of Sultan Agung.

This what I was taught, and it was field of knowledge that totally defied logic and reason, but as long as my teacher told me it was so, and as long as my teacher was still with us, and I was still his pupil I believed what he taught me completely.

To do otherwise would have been not only disrespectful but also incredibly stupid.

How many people from a western culture have been accepted as students by a Javanese palace empu?

To learn from Pak Parman I needed to accept and believe every word he gave me.

Without question.

The key word here is "believe".

The entire keris ethic in Central Jawa is a belief system. This includes the system of tangguh.

When you involve yourself in tangguh you need to forget reality as you understand it and adopt a Javanese world view. Time and the cosmos as it is understood by any person in a western culture does not translate into a Javanese thought pattern. You need to learn to understand everything in a different way.

Well, I struggled with tangguh and the many other things I needed to come to terms with in order to even begin to understand tangguh for years. Pak Parman though I was blind, deaf, dumb and stupid. By his standards I could not grasp even the most simple concept.

I had the very best teacher. The most knowledgeable man. Almost limitless access to excellent examples, and when I was asked to give the tangguh of something as simple as a Surakarta blade, or a Tuban blade, my mind went blank.

I think he probably gave up on me half a dozen times, but at the next visit he'd start again. He had an extremely violent temper and would lose patience with me very quickly, but the temper storm would pass as quickly as it arose and then he'd settle back into trying to get the knowledge that he had in his head into my head.

Pak Parman left us when I was in Australia. The next time I went back to Solo, a few months after his passing I went to visit his grave. The morning after I visited Pak Parman's grave I woke with a head full of ideas that I had not had when I went to sleep. It was as if every question I had ever had about keris was no longer a question but was already knowledge that I had always had. I could look at a keris and I could apply the indicators in an ordered fashion and give a supportable opinion on tangguh. I was not struggling to do this, I was doing it easily and naturally. Quite simply, I knew more when I awoke than I had when I went to sleep.

Michel, I am not a flake, and I do not have any sort of pretensions to any sort of paranormal powers. I look at everything from a base of logic and reason. However, I cannot explain what happened after my visit to Pak Parman's grave with any logic nor any reason.

The point of my story is this:-

if I had first hand tuition from perhaps the most knowledgeable man of his time in the application of the tangguh system, if the conditions under which I was taught were the very best conditions possible, if I had excellent access to excellent examples, and if after many years of this excellent tuition I still was unable to correctly and consistently apply the tangguh indicators and arrive at a supportable opinion, what hope is there for anybody to learn anything from photos and words on a computer screen?

Even if some small degree of knowledge could be gained, of what use is that knowledge without the ability to place the knowledge into a Javanese world view?

If you want to learn tangguh you must first learn to see the world through Javanese eyes.

Don't begin with tangguh and keris, but begin with trying to understand the way in which a traditional Javanese person understands the world. To do this you need to immerse yourself in Javanese culture and society. You cannot do it from computers and books.

kulbuntet · 19th August 2009, 11:48 PM

Thank you Alan for this intresting story and explaination. But were to start. Im trying to do as best i can, with the limited means that i have.

May i ask you a question about the night you went to sleep and woke up.. diffrent... Did you have a dream that night? Ever had the thought that Pak Parman might have visit you in that night? pls let me explain my question. As you know i am a Keris enthousiast for now maybe 4/5 year. It just came, without anny good posible reason. Yes i had been studying Pencak Silat in the past, but that was when i was about 16 year old, im 32 now. So that would not be the reason, as far i feel. But on one day i just walked on the waterloo square here in amsterdam, (its known as a rubisch/antque/tourist market) with my mother. i was walking past a shop and drawn inwards to the shop without anny reason. There were 2 keris hanging on the wall behind some other thing. I had a look at them, and passed on.... but the upcoming hour the keris were stil in my head, so i went back to have an other look. Ending up by buying both of them, i went home. Placing one near my bed and the other one in the living room. I had a strange dream the first night i had the keris 2 feet next to my bed. There was a old man standing next to my bed, talking to me... he told me a big story... it felt like it was a half hour or somthing like it.. i did not understand the man, since i dont understand javanese or bahasa. but ending the story the man did a movement with his right hand to the right and in a sort of flash i was in a other part of the world in a difrent time, unluckly i cant remember all of the dream what i have seen.. but i can remember a old man with a mustage meditating every time i passed by and horses and cariots. Since that happend i got realy intressted by keris and indonesian culture and history.. and wanting to know what happend to me, and why? By the way i stil dont have found the answers. I have spoken about this happening with just some other people, few dutch some in indonesia. One of the dutch people is the one that learned me washing, he is a very intresting man, that lives by keris and indonesian culture. He told me that i did not pick the kerises.. they picked me. And there must be a reason for that.. he could not give me the reason.. but told me that the future wil suport it for me, and wil make things clear for me. Same as 2 people on Jawa told me, plus that it must have to do with former lives or family ties. A other friend of me that i have told has the opinion that i must cut loose to the live i have here, and move to java... since my hart and mind is there and not here.. In the time from than till now i have
experienced not to declare things. But since the man that learned me the basics that i know now.. cant do more for me than he already has.. i need to find a new good guide, to help me take the next step. But were to start it, and were to find a good one?

You writing the story you just did, made one thing clear for me.. I need to got to Java.... and see what wil come to me. First for a holliday... later for longer.. but on this moment im stil bound im my live here, since i have a son that i love and cant do without me... because he is 12 and not able to stand on his own feet in life alone for some more years...

Its difficult to understand for the ones never experienced things like this.. it did change me alot too. Im just trying to find out were it wil bring me, and why?

regards Mich

A. G. Maisey · 20th August 2009, 12:21 AM

Thanks for your story Michel.

I know I began this line of discussion, but I do not want to take it any further.

What I have already put up for public perusal is much more than I perhaps should have.

If you wish to increase your understanding I would most sincerely recommend that you undertake a continuing study of Javanese history and culture. Additionally, you must learn the language. Without the ability to use Indonesian you will forever be severly handicapped. Without the ability to at least understand some Javanese, and most importantly, to understand the logic of the Javanese language, you cannot hope to be able to understand the Javanese world view. Ideally you would want to learn Javanese, but this might be too big a project.

This is the base you must come from if you wish to understand the blossoms of Javanese culture.

19th August 2009, 12:12 AM	#2
kulbuntet Member Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands Posts: 159	Oke Alan, I undertand what you say. Like i posted before, it is a help to get an impression of a age or erra in witch the balde is made. Yes it feeds the need of the modern collector.. is there anny other need? I only can think of one other.. for museum display/indexing. But they can use carbon analisys combined with methodes that maybe could fall into tangguh classication. You speak of using Tangguh to get a good approximate indication, how can i see this.. year/month? only year? decade? will it say anny thing about the region its made. Since like i posted before my understanding of the Tangguh system specialy with comparrison with normal giving a impression is verry limited. Because of this i hope that the people on this forum would appriciate a Tangguh thread (http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...9266#post89266). And hopping that you and maybe some others with knowledge of this system, would try to expain how it works and witch the indicators are.... Yes Alan i know what you now think, or what you wil respond. You told me already several times. That it is verry difficult to just expain and even more to do it on a forum or by mail, using photo's.. but please just give it a try. We the other forum members and keris entousiasts would realy appriciate the info given and try to lear us about it. I think that everybody understand that i wil not make us experts, or be able to use it propperly.. We have here in Holland a old saying.. translated...... A bullet not fired, is a target always missed. Last edited by kulbuntet; 19th August 2009 at 12:23 AM.

18th August 2009, 02:53 PM	#1
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 6,992	Michel, what you say about using tangguh to help form an impression, or as I would state it, a broad opinion of the classification of a blade is pretty much the way I would suggest that it could be used to satisfy the modern collector. However, this is not the way it was intended to be used, it is more the way that it is practical to use it now. Used correctly it can applied to give a good approximate indication of the age of a blade back to Mataram Sultan Agung. The closer we come to the present day, the more accurate it can be as an age indicator. However, when we start to consider the older tangguh classifications it is perhaps best to simply acknowledge that these keris are old keris, and not couple the tangguh with any concept of actual time. In Jawa you will find some people who will swear that tangguh Majapahit means that that keris was made during the Majapahit era. You will find others --- others who are extremely knowledgeable ahli keris --- who will say "tangguh nggak sungguh". To really understand the keris from a Javanese perspective it is absolutely essential to understand how the tangguh system works, and how to apply it. Regretably, the only way to gain this knowledge is to find somebody in Jawa who is prepared to teach you, and who has access to plenty of examples. Then give half a lifetime to the study. For anybody outside Javanese society the best that can be hoped for is to gain a small understanding of the theory applied to reaching a classification.This theory really precludes the application of the system to lower quality pieces, but as I have already said, very few, if any , people use this system now as it was intended to be used. However, there is one thing that is true:- anybody who gives a tangguh classification to a blade must be able to support his opinion with reasoned argument by reference to the indicators he has used. Far too often a person will say that a blade is tangguh such and such, and when pressed for his reason for saying this the best he can do is to simply say something like "because its looks like such and such". This is just not good enough. However, this failure to provide reasoned argument is precisely what allows half educated "experts" to give tangguh to village quality blades. If you stick with the indicators it is virtually impossible to classify a low quality piece within the tangguh structure.

19th August 2009, 01:34 AM	#6
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 6,992	Michel, I'm going to tell you a little story. Before I went to Jawa I had no idea at all that anything like tangguh existed. I thought I was doing pretty good if I could classify a keris according to origin in a geographic area. When I learnt and could reliably differentiate between Solo keris and Jogja keris I was regarded as a guru by local collectors. During my first few trips to Indonesia I became aware that there was some sort of system of classifying keris that was totally beyond my understanding. I'd see old men --- always old men --- glance at the top of a keris that was still in the wrangka and pronounce it to be Tuban, or Majapahit, or whatever. Maybe they would withdraw it from the scabbard, study it for a couple of minutes and then give it as Pajajaran, or Pajang. This was all intensely interesting, and as time went by I learnt a little more about this system, but I had no idea at all of how to use it. Eventually I met Pak Parman and it was not until he accepted me as a student that I learnt anything worth knowing about tangguh and its application. Pak Parman was 100% kejawen. Maybe he was 110% kejawen. If he said that a keris was Majapahit, to him, that meant that it had been made in Majapahit during the Majapahit era. If he said that a keris was Kinom Mataram it was a keris that had been made start to finish by Kinom during the era of Sultan Agung. This what I was taught, and it was field of knowledge that totally defied logic and reason, but as long as my teacher told me it was so, and as long as my teacher was still with us, and I was still his pupil I believed what he taught me completely. To do otherwise would have been not only disrespectful but also incredibly stupid. How many people from a western culture have been accepted as students by a Javanese palace empu? To learn from Pak Parman I needed to accept and believe every word he gave me. Without question. The key word here is "believe". The entire keris ethic in Central Jawa is a belief system. This includes the system of tangguh. When you involve yourself in tangguh you need to forget reality as you understand it and adopt a Javanese world view. Time and the cosmos as it is understood by any person in a western culture does not translate into a Javanese thought pattern. You need to learn to understand everything in a different way. Well, I struggled with tangguh and the many other things I needed to come to terms with in order to even begin to understand tangguh for years. Pak Parman though I was blind, deaf, dumb and stupid. By his standards I could not grasp even the most simple concept. I had the very best teacher. The most knowledgeable man. Almost limitless access to excellent examples, and when I was asked to give the tangguh of something as simple as a Surakarta blade, or a Tuban blade, my mind went blank. I think he probably gave up on me half a dozen times, but at the next visit he'd start again. He had an extremely violent temper and would lose patience with me very quickly, but the temper storm would pass as quickly as it arose and then he'd settle back into trying to get the knowledge that he had in his head into my head. Pak Parman left us when I was in Australia. The next time I went back to Solo, a few months after his passing I went to visit his grave. The morning after I visited Pak Parman's grave I woke with a head full of ideas that I had not had when I went to sleep. It was as if every question I had ever had about keris was no longer a question but was already knowledge that I had always had. I could look at a keris and I could apply the indicators in an ordered fashion and give a supportable opinion on tangguh. I was not struggling to do this, I was doing it easily and naturally. Quite simply, I knew more when I awoke than I had when I went to sleep. Michel, I am not a flake, and I do not have any sort of pretensions to any sort of paranormal powers. I look at everything from a base of logic and reason. However, I cannot explain what happened after my visit to Pak Parman's grave with any logic nor any reason. The point of my story is this:- if I had first hand tuition from perhaps the most knowledgeable man of his time in the application of the tangguh system, if the conditions under which I was taught were the very best conditions possible, if I had excellent access to excellent examples, and if after many years of this excellent tuition I still was unable to correctly and consistently apply the tangguh indicators and arrive at a supportable opinion, what hope is there for anybody to learn anything from photos and words on a computer screen? Even if some small degree of knowledge could be gained, of what use is that knowledge without the ability to place the knowledge into a Javanese world view? If you want to learn tangguh you must first learn to see the world through Javanese eyes. Don't begin with tangguh and keris, but begin with trying to understand the way in which a traditional Javanese person understands the world. To do this you need to immerse yourself in Javanese culture and society. You cannot do it from computers and books.

19th August 2009, 11:48 PM	#7
kulbuntet Member Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands Posts: 159	Thank you Alan for this intresting story and explaination. But were to start. Im trying to do as best i can, with the limited means that i have. May i ask you a question about the night you went to sleep and woke up.. diffrent... Did you have a dream that night? Ever had the thought that Pak Parman might have visit you in that night? pls let me explain my question. As you know i am a Keris enthousiast for now maybe 4/5 year. It just came, without anny good posible reason. Yes i had been studying Pencak Silat in the past, but that was when i was about 16 year old, im 32 now. So that would not be the reason, as far i feel. But on one day i just walked on the waterloo square here in amsterdam, (its known as a rubisch/antque/tourist market) with my mother. i was walking past a shop and drawn inwards to the shop without anny reason. There were 2 keris hanging on the wall behind some other thing. I had a look at them, and passed on.... but the upcoming hour the keris were stil in my head, so i went back to have an other look. Ending up by buying both of them, i went home. Placing one near my bed and the other one in the living room. I had a strange dream the first night i had the keris 2 feet next to my bed. There was a old man standing next to my bed, talking to me... he told me a big story... it felt like it was a half hour or somthing like it.. i did not understand the man, since i dont understand javanese or bahasa. but ending the story the man did a movement with his right hand to the right and in a sort of flash i was in a other part of the world in a difrent time, unluckly i cant remember all of the dream what i have seen.. but i can remember a old man with a mustage meditating every time i passed by and horses and cariots. Since that happend i got realy intressted by keris and indonesian culture and history.. and wanting to know what happend to me, and why? By the way i stil dont have found the answers. I have spoken about this happening with just some other people, few dutch some in indonesia. One of the dutch people is the one that learned me washing, he is a very intresting man, that lives by keris and indonesian culture. He told me that i did not pick the kerises.. they picked me. And there must be a reason for that.. he could not give me the reason.. but told me that the future wil suport it for me, and wil make things clear for me. Same as 2 people on Jawa told me, plus that it must have to do with former lives or family ties. A other friend of me that i have told has the opinion that i must cut loose to the live i have here, and move to java... since my hart and mind is there and not here.. In the time from than till now i have experienced not to declare things. But since the man that learned me the basics that i know now.. cant do more for me than he already has.. i need to find a new good guide, to help me take the next step. But were to start it, and were to find a good one? You writing the story you just did, made one thing clear for me.. I need to got to Java.... and see what wil come to me. First for a holliday... later for longer.. but on this moment im stil bound im my live here, since i have a son that i love and cant do without me... because he is 12 and not able to stand on his own feet in life alone for some more years... Its difficult to understand for the ones never experienced things like this.. it did change me alot too. Im just trying to find out were it wil bring me, and why? regards Mich

20th August 2009, 12:21 AM	#8
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 6,992	Thanks for your story Michel. I know I began this line of discussion, but I do not want to take it any further. What I have already put up for public perusal is much more than I perhaps should have. If you wish to increase your understanding I would most sincerely recommend that you undertake a continuing study of Javanese history and culture. Additionally, you must learn the language. Without the ability to use Indonesian you will forever be severly handicapped. Without the ability to at least understand some Javanese, and most importantly, to understand the logic of the Javanese language, you cannot hope to be able to understand the Javanese world view. Ideally you would want to learn Javanese, but this might be too big a project. This is the base you must come from if you wish to understand the blossoms of Javanese culture.