Interesting odd klewang at eBay

[kai]

Thanks for the reminder, John!

http://home.comcast.net/~jtcrosby/Aceh.html

Originally Posted by RhysMichael

Just my thoughts. The blade on here strongly reminds me of the blades on Aceh peudeueng peusangan( aka sikin peusangan, sikin pasagan ).

That's surely the strongest contender so far - especially the deep fuller is very convincing in my eyes (the tip configuration seems only slightly different). Is this your piece or can you please inquire wether the false edge is sharpened?

Of course the handle is very different.

Could be an ideosyncracy or more likely some "unknown" variety which just didn't make it into the textbooks. Could also be an transplated blade which got rehilted by a different group but this seems quite unlikely given the rarity of this blade variant in the first place...

I would like to hear if others see the resemblance in the blade or not

Sure, good one! I have only seen these blades with the the usual tip more akin to a peudeung/sikin panjang tip.

The hilt does have some resemblance to a hulu tapa guda. You can see on on D. Buttins site here : http://old.blades.free.fr/pics/picsw...ang/kle03p.jpg

There is some semblance (some exmples even have a distinct central protrusion) and, more vaguely, to the hulu cangge gliwang and hulu iku ite. I think this hilt could very well have evolved within northern Sumatra (without having a definite extant ancestor). However, similar hilts pop up far and wide over the archipelago and are not restricted to Sumatra.

That being said I think there is a strong case to be made for it being an Aceh sword

Northern Sumatra seems to be a good guess (including other kingdoms and possibly even some Batak regions).

Regards,
Kai