Keris (or not ?) with chinese handle

[Paul B.]

Could it be a sepang blade missing the ganja?

[Gustav]

And two from Groneman, one more refined:

[Athanase]

The selut is in silver, not brass plated.

Yes I think that a Sepang Keris blade without ganja is the most likely.
The warangka was made after the loss of the ganja.
The thin coper pendok and the good quality of wood make me think that the set was assembled during the first half of the 20th century, but not later (But it's a feeling, not a certainty).

In any case, as Allan said, even if this "Keris" does not respect the Javanese rules, it is not an object for tourists.

[A. G. Maisey]

Thanks for those pics Gustav. Yes, a couple of those selut certainly seem to be the same motif, but I'm not so sure about the one where the individual dots have been separated into "islands".

Still, it is interesting to see these old examples.

These days this pattern selut is one of the lower priced styles, but way back when these ones that you have shown us were made I'd guess they were probably no better & no worse than most other selut in the market place.

For the last 50 or 60 years, in Solo, it has not been the usual practice to get a selut made for a hilt, but rather to get the hilt made to fit the selut, or to do a retro fitting of selut to an existing hilt. So a client will approach the tukang jejeran with his order and provide a selut, or perhaps only a mendak, and the tukang jejeran will make the hilt to fit that selut. In any case, most of the component parts for keris dress are made to standards that permit a high degree of flexibility in fitting.

The question of "quality" in a selut or mendak is one where we would need to first establish exactly what we meant by "quality". Some lower priced selut can be quite well made & durable, some higher priced selut can be poorly made and flimsy, even though they might look good in a photo. Then there is the difference between a selut with a cast body and a selut with a fabricated body, or the difference between stones that are held in place with adhesive and stones that are in a setting.

A similar thing applies with mendak:- is it fabricated, or cast, or stamped out, or produced by embossing or repousse, or has a combination of techniques been used?

We are only in a position to appraise quality of any type of work if we understand the processes that are used in production.

For example, have a look at the mendak on the keris under discussion. Based upon what we can see in the photograph, what process might have been used to produce this mendak? Is this a high quality mendak or a mendak that would slot nicely into the lower priced end of the scale?

Incidentally, if that selut does indeed test as silver, rather than as silver plated brass, my estimate of age was wrong. In recent times this pattern of selut seems to have invariably been made in brass & then plated, so if the one under discussion is indeed silver, that would place it earlier than current era.

The pendok on this keris does not appear to be copper, it looks like silver or mamas, the bruise pattern inclines me to nominate silver.

The only way we can be certain about the material used in these keris fittings --- & other things produced in Jawa --- is to go to the inside of the object, heavily scrape the surface and then use a test fluid.

[A. G. Maisey]

Gustav, I've had the opportunity to have a look at my copy of David van Duuren's publication of Groneman's work.

Groneman uses the term "trap-trapan" to refer to the selut shape & method of production, his description in English does not make sense to me, possibly it is better in the original language.

However, his name for the motif as "untuq-untuq" would now be spelt as "unthuk-unthuk" which translates as "little mounds", Groneman tells us that the meaning is "foam", and yes, "unthuk"(singular) can be understood as "foam", but when we double a word it indicates plural, so "foams"? maybe. As far as I can determine, this is not the name of any Javanese art motif, but "little mounds" is a perfect description of the ornamentation shown on this selut style. Actually, this motif shown on these seluts has been given to me by my own informants as "m'rutu sewu", "sewu" means "a thousand", "m'rutu" means "a bug, or a gnat", however, both people who gave the name as m'rutu sewu, gave the translation into Bahasa Indonesia as "seribu bunga" = "a thousand flowers" , I guess "flowers" are much more charming than "bugs".

In general the names of motifs used in Javanese art work are pretty standardised and can normally be found in batik motif use.

Coming back to the word "trap-trapan", this refers to the way that something is arranged. I have not encountered this word used to refer to a selut shape. The other shape he mentions is "tatahan", which (as he writes) means chisel work, and this refers to ornamentation, not form.

Equally the names he gives for motifs are confused, and look more like descriptions.

For many years I was very eager to read Groneman's work, and I mentioned this to David van Duuren a few times long before his Groneman book was published. At that time he told me that there was really no new knowledge in Groneman's work & that I was not missing anything by not being able to read it.

However, I obtained a copy of David's publication as soon as it became available, and the first thing I did was to dive into the translated Groneman text. I found so many errors and misunderstandings and omissions that I came to the opinion that Groneman had not seen, had not understood much of what he undertook to describe.

Isaac Groneman appears to have spent more than 50 years on the Island of Jawa, I don't know how long he actually spent in Central Jawa, because he seems to have been in a number of places, but in light of that + 50 years I would expect him to have been competent in the use of the Javanese language, not merely Malay, so I strongly suspect that the informants he would have been using were either not particularly strong in knowledge of the keris, or were behaving in the usual manner that Javanese people during the colonial era behaved with Europeans, and to a degree, still do today.

I am of the opinion that Groneman's work is of value to us, and David's presentation of this translated work, along with all the other contents of this publication is a great gift to us, but I'm afraid that I cannot have much confidence in the accuracy of Isaac Groneman's writings. But this is probably through no real fault of his own. Things in Jawa were a bit different for Europeans a hundred & more years ago.

[Gustav]

Alan, thank you for your remarks.

Looking at how Keris terminology has changed over last 40 years I can imagine, terminology used by people around 120 years ago could leave us really wondering about it, even if we suppose the society and Keris lore could have been a bit more conservative and certainly not developing in a way how it is developing today.

I must say, unfortunately I don't have the German language original of Groneman's work.

But I looked through Jasper&Mas Pirngadie. They also mention two kinds of Selut: "seloet trap-trappan" (OE in this and all following words is Dutch spelling for modern U)and tatahan. Both names indicate the method of production.

With Selut Trap-trapan they mention following motifs:
1) "Kembang Oentoek-Oentoek (=foam)" - which changes the perspective and we have now a connection with flowers here indeed.
2) "Kembang Anggoer"
3) "Tamparran"

With Selut Tatahan they mention following motifs:
1) "Seloet Djlengoet"
2) "Wilojo" (I write an A with overring as O)
3) "Koemo Irawan" (ditto)
4) "Loeng Gadoeng"
5) "Saton"
6) "Tlatjappan" (Tlatjap=Toempal)

[A. G. Maisey]

You are absolutely correct Gustav:- language changes & understandings change over time.

Another thing that particularly applies to Javanese language usage is that the actual words used do not always indicate what a literal translation of those words might be. In other words, we cannot assume that just because words used might mean one thing in a literal translation, the speaker's meaning can be understood literally.

However, just using what Groneman wrote, the use of "trap-trapan" refers to the way the selut was made, "tatahan" refers to the method of decoration. Even now we will refer to a selut or a pendok or something else as a selut/pendok/or whatever as tatahan, but the actual shape of the selut would need to be specified. The normal assumption would be that we wanted a selut jeruk pecel if we only said "tatahan", but if we did not want to end up with something bigger than we actually wanted, we should specify that.

In Solo we have two forms of selut classified by shape, the first is jeruk pecel, the second is jeruk keprok. Now, those two basic shapes are further classified into various styles, for example, we have selut trap-trapan(ie, a fabricated selut), selut tatahan (ie, a selut that has been ornamented by carving with chisel work) then we have others like selut krawangan, selut unthuk-unthukan ( usually shortened to unthuk-unthuk), selut m'rutu sewu, selut wungkul (wungkul refers only to round things and it means something that has not yet been cut, so in BI, that means it is "polos", ie unornamented). Then we might want to specify motifs, such as lung-lungan, or maybe anggur, or kembang anggrek.

J&P is a respected source, iconic, but just the names of things are not really a whole lot of use unless we understand what the meaning is that the name is supposed to convey, for example we can have a fabricated selut that has been worked by using the krawangan method of working and that is then ornamented with precious or semi-precious stones. Such a selut would be a selut trap-trapan, krawangan tretes.

However, in speech we do not usually give a full description of a selut when we refer to it, we just abbreviate to a single word, or a couple of words that will convey the meaning. So we might just say that we are looking for a selut tatahan, this immediately conveys that we do not want a fabricated (trap-trapan) selut, nor do we want a krawangan or tretes selut.

But if we say that we want a krawangan selut, that might generate the question as to whether we want a selut tretes or just a plain selut that draws its ornamentation from the krawangan work alone.

It all comes down to the necessity of knowing exactly what it is that we are talking about, otherwise it is just words with no clear meaning.