Empus of the nom-noman era & their signatures
 

I have been going through book, articles, forums and videos to learn more about javanese kris. I noticed that for old ('sepuh') krises, often the name of legendary empus are used as identifier to signify distinction, such as sombro, supo/kasa/sedayu, ki nom/tundhung/sendang, bekeljati/modin, etc.

Meanwhile, for younger ('nom-noman') krises, usually they are identified by the name of the reigning PB or HB at the time, e.g. PB7 or HB5. This is despite better availability of written record on the empus who served in the two courts of Surakarta and Yogyakarta.

May I ask senior collectors/kris enthusiasts in this forum on your take re: the above observation? Also can you/how would you identify differences in the nom-noman kris made by the different empus/besalen? (or is this an irrelevant question since they are made to be uniform for each of the reigning sovereign).

Am keen to learn more about the innovations and characteristics of krisses made by empus of the nom-noman era: empu brojoguno (also brojokaryo and brojosentiko - brothers or different generations?), empu japan, empu tirtodongso, empu jayasukadgo; as well as the legendary besalen of mangkubumen, mloyokusuman, riyokusuman and sri manganti.

Thank you!

Jaya, that is a "Nature of the Universe" question.

To get those answers you need many years of face to face contact with people who hold relevant opinions & beliefs. It is mostly opinions, or perhaps beliefs, that we are talking about. Keris knowledge covers numerous aspects, and those aspects are in many cases systems of belief, so ultimately keris knowledge boils down to knowledge of belief systems.

Throw this search term into google search & you'll get a few hits that might be of interest:-

Turun Temuruning Mpu Tanah Jawa

I do have a complete family tree of the empus of Jawa, taken from Turun Temuruning.

Identifying the work of individual makers is a very big step up on applying the tangguh indicators, it takes years & years of study & availability of good examples. You really need to join a good, established, Javanese keris study group to get even a start in this direction.

There are quite a few little booklets from years past that can assist, Keris Jawa by Haryoguritno has some info, as well as pictures of what are generally accepted as the rondha form used by some of the high ranking Surakarta makers of the recent past.

To get to the guts of all this info you need Bahasa Indonesia as a minimum, & preferably a working knowledge of Basa Jawa. If you do have these languages I can give you the titles of a few books you could start looking for.

If you are located in Jawa, the Mangkunegaraan library in Solo has more than a few publications that deal with keris, & you can buy foto copies of these books --- or at least you could in the past, I do not know about now.