Bali or Lombok or ?

A. G. Maisey · 7th October 2022, 12:32 AM

I'm inclined to run with Bali, but really, I find a lot of difficulty in labelling Balinese style keris either "Bali" or "Lombok", the Balinese themselves regarded the Lombok colonies as parts of their realm, the parts of Lombok that were not Balinese colonies were populated by people from other places, such as the Bugis & the Sasaks, and sometimes we do find an overlap of indicators so we might decide that a keris that is in essence Balinese, does also tend towards Javanese, but if Javanese, then we need to also consider Blambangan, because there were Balinese living in East Jawa, and Javanese living in West Bali.

A lot of Balinese keris are shorter than the large ones we usually expect to see, in fact, a lot of older Balinese keris were made in East Jawa, and were used by people other than the elites & nobles.

Big keris = Big Man (hierarchically), and there are a whole lot more little people than there were knights & nobles.

7th October 2022, 12:32 AM	#7
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 7,131	I'm inclined to run with Bali, but really, I find a lot of difficulty in labelling Balinese style keris either "Bali" or "Lombok", the Balinese themselves regarded the Lombok colonies as parts of their realm, the parts of Lombok that were not Balinese colonies were populated by people from other places, such as the Bugis & the Sasaks, and sometimes we do find an overlap of indicators so we might decide that a keris that is in essence Balinese, does also tend towards Javanese, but if Javanese, then we need to also consider Blambangan, because there were Balinese living in East Jawa, and Javanese living in West Bali. A lot of Balinese keris are shorter than the large ones we usually expect to see, in fact, a lot of older Balinese keris were made in East Jawa, and were used by people other than the elites & nobles. Big keris = Big Man (hierarchically), and there are a whole lot more little people than there were knights & nobles.