Any time! Actually just to correct myself, it reads "the long tangled hair", but I guess the "long" part is kind of obvious. :p

Rarung, once more
 

I have found another 3 examples of this deity, this time the person whom put these images together called it Rangda but , in my mind, this is , again, Rarung.

Strange though this may be, Rarung representations I come across are mostly found in the Netherlands. However , I am told the NL are the second largest (for amount of krises) country in the world after Indonesia, so it may be not so unusual after all.

I always think of this thread every time I find this figure. The images were small and the quality was already enhanced to the outmost of the reasonable.

Another one from my collection (recent piece).

thanks, it is a very interesting theme and the figure looks more curvaceous ( feminine) or less as the example here ^ (masculine?) in different carvings.

Hi milandro,

What is the material for the white hilt?

Thank you

perhaps I wasn't clear, they aren't mine, I found these on line so I cannot answer your query , I don't think it is Ivory.

So i do believe we see enough examples of this "Rarung" (for want of a better name) hilts to confirm that it is a specific form of Bali hilt. But the question still remains in my mind when did this hilt form first emerge and does it have any real legitimacy as an socially accepted form? I don't think i have seen any examples that are antique. Has anyone?

in time we may come across them

Where do you think they might be hiding?

well, as much as one may think that all the kris people of the world would roam these pages, I believe that there may be the slight chance that many more krises are out there than people are here.

Also, I cannot believe that only an handful of carvers and, all of a sudden, without any reason started to depict Rarung in their carvings, just in the last few years.

Since Emile van Veenendaal came across this hilt and made mention in his book , it may have been not contemporary but older at the time it was written.


So chances are that there are more out there and , my guess, that some of these may be even of some age

maybe not quite so surprisingly the thread is one of the most important sources on line concerning Raring ....

It seems that many of us have come to agreement that this lady (?) who is having the bad hair day is Rarung.

Now we know that Rarung was not noted for regular visits to a hair stylist, & also that she avoided the use of hair spray, in fact, most comments on Rarung's hair indicate that it was decidedly unkempt.

Yesterday I spent some time on looking at traditional representations of Rarung --- carvings, dance costumes & etc . I looked at a lot.

I could not find a single traditional Balinese representation of Rarung with her unkempt hair covering her fanged face.

This raises in my mind the possibility that perhaps all these representations of Rarung with her face covered by a veil of hair are perhaps airport art.

Alternate hypothesis: Cousin It once made a visit to Indonesia. :D

(Actually I wonder if there was some cross-cultural influence there when the Addams Family writers came up with that character.)

this is another one that I have just seen recently from a person whom acquired a kris of mine and replaced the hilt with this one

Thanks for posting another example. Again we have a very contemporary example. Hopefully you don't believe that the majority of us on this forum only haunt these "hallowed" halls. LOL! Personally i search out keris information wherever i can find it, keep a rather large (relatively) library of keris related books and moderator two other online keris groups. I've been on this search for information for 40 years now. Some here much longer. This does not, of course, mean that antique versions of this hilt do not exist. I just haven't seem them if they do. If we all keep searching perhaps one with some old provenance will turn up. :)

Just adding to our archive base on this particular hilt form. The first one was already posted by Detlef in post #24, but it is rephotographed from a book, so this is a better image.
The second one is a bit different in design, though i suspect it belongs in the same family possibly meant to depict the same figure.

The hilt with the hair as a veil
 

The hilt with the hair as a veil is :

Balu Mekabun she hides in the shade of the twilight zone, waiting for a chance to catch you!'

This Hindu godess and widow of Shiva, wears her hair down. Nobody sees her ugly monster face, so she can easily appraoch her victims without being recognized as the devouring monster Rangda.

This is what i found on the Dutch Keris group on FB.

In the high level of Basa Bali, the word "Balu" can be used to refer to Dhurga, however, the phrase "Balu Mekabun" means a "widow who has been left with one or more daughters".

Further usages of "balu" are:-

balu bunter/ balu putung = a widow or widower without children

balu makarang = a widow left with one or more sons

balu mwani = a widower

balu remban = a widow or widower left with many children

a secondary meaning for "balu" is to bet on a cockfight, this was actually the context in which I first heard this word used.

"balu" is a contraction of "balung"

I know a number of Hindu people who have Dewi Dhurga as their household deity, Dhurga is actually a protective deity, but as with many deities, Dhurga also has a terrible aspect. In all creation the good and the bad, dark & light, protection from & exposure to evil are merely opposite sides of the same coin.

The key to a safe and harmonious existence is to keep those good & bad things in balance.

Regrettably, many people from outside cultures that are foreign to their own choose to select from those cultures only the things that they wish to see, hear, believe or understand.

I have acquired new information from my new friend Duncan who has much experience in general in the Kris hilts world but a special interest in the Kris micro world of Lombok.

He told me that Locally Raring is known as a Selak, a spirit perhaps a phantom, called Selak.

you can see from this image found on like that obviously there the figure of a female with the hair covering the face has arrived to these days


Fascinating the fact that Lombok appears to have developed a quite different iconography from Bali