The Knaud

[jagabuwana]

I also haven't read the book yet, but am interested to.
JustYS - the point you highlighted also caught my eye, for similar reasons and questions. I don't think it's fair that I ask what Knaud's conclusions and findings are without trying to read the book myself first, so I'll refrain from that, but I hope that the association with Panataran is more than just the keris being of the same kind of style that is depicted at Panataran.

I also wonder whether there is much to be said about the situation that surrounds the gifting of this keris to Knaud the physician. The story as I know is that Knaud treated Paku Alam V's son for an illness, and the keris is apparently PA-V's gift of gratitude to Knaud for his service.


I don't believe Knaud was keris-interested in the same way Groneman was and even if he was I don't know if he had the means (or desire) to question what he was told about a keris. He was also Dutch, which I can only assume meant that he was viewed with some ambivalence by a people and culture who sometimes view even people of related cultures ambivalently, but I don't know how directly relevant this is. Despite being Dutch he apparently was also interested in Javanese mysticism, so had to have been exposed to the idea of a keris having isi and tuah.

With all that in mind, I do find it difficult to believe that this keris is everything that is claimed about it. Yes it was gifted freely with gratitude, but I have often seen this keris described as a pusaka. I don't think pusakas are gifted in this way, and gratitude does not seem to be a factor in determining the next custodian of a pusaka.

If the author referred to notes or correspondences as evidences for their conclusions or speculations, then I wonder if they considered that the concept of a consistent truth or fact is hard to pin down in or irrelevant in Javanese culture and many other Indonesian cultures. I myself have been confronted with what the Western side of my brain sees as deliberate embellishments or interpolations, by people I love and trust in my family and extended family, concerning tosan aji and other related things. It got to the point that I really wondered what the point of being shamelessly lied to was - nothing I was told could have been historically true or consistent.
How can the story about an object that I know be different to the story my sister or my mother knows, despite being told by the same person?
How is it that who we know to be two distinctly different people in history can now be described as the same person?
How can one historical person be buried in several locations, with all grave sites considered to be the real resting place of the person, with no custodians of the burial site disputing the claim of the other?

I know better to now know that I wasn't being lied to, and these people I know are not liars - they just operate in a completely different world to me and that matters in fundamental, sometimes irreconcilable ways.

The word I find that comes closest to this in English is retcon - a portmanteau of retroactive continuity. Here's a fine definition from the first paragraph of its wikipedia page:

Retroactive continuity, or retcon for short, is a literary device in which established diegetic facts in the plot of a fictional work (those established through the narrative itself) are adjusted, ignored, supplemented, or contradicted by a subsequently published work which recontextualizes or breaks continuity with the former.

It goes on to explain that authors use retcons under the "assumption that the changes are unimportant to the audience compared to the new story which can be told".

In Western cultures we accept this in film and literature, and even then, sometimes with passionate argument and dispute. We confine it to the world of fiction that we consume for enjoyment. We do not expect to find retcons in real things with real histories because we associate it with incorrectness at best or manipulation and Orwellian-ness at worst.

We know by now that that is not the case in other cultures - certainly not the culture from which the keris came. To gift a legitimately old keris to someone is not a cheapskate's offer, but perhaps its gifters felt that it needed something more than what reality could permit. And as we know, in some cultures reality may not be an obstacle to elevating something to a status more befitting of the situation, the persons involved, or posterity.

[A. G. Maisey]

Those comments of yours are very pertinent JG. Your own socio-cultural background has permitted you to immediately see one of the major fault-lines in the Knaud argument.

In fact, David Van Duuren delves pretty deeply into the back story of the Knaud's acquisition and gives us a lot of info that we, or at least I, did not previously know. For example:-

Charles Knaud was not a "doctor" in the European sense of the word, he claimed to have trained under a Javanese dukun, and his powers of healing came from a Javanese, not a Dutch, foundation.

Dutch doctors had already attempted to heal the young prince, but had failed, Charley Knaud enters the scene, detects that the prince has been subjected to guna-guna, ie, black magic, and promptly cures him.

What we know of CharleyK mostly comes from his grand nephew John Knaud who wrote an article about CharleyK many years after his death. According to this article CharleyK was an eccentric, a painter, and an art collector who had a very high degree of interest in Javanese beliefs.

The keris itself was brought into the spotlight after Charley got hold of it, then it disappeared, it was commented upon by N.J.Krom, it was rediscovered in 2002.

In his book, David Van Duuren is rather dismissive of the back story, he concentrates on the keris itself, not the embroidery surrounding it. You yourself understand that convention in Javanese society is that reality must never be permitted to get in the way of making a story, or anything else for that matter, better or more interesting than it really is. The truth of something is often so exceedingly boring, one of the reasons why gratuitous truths are never welcome.

So, let us just concentrate on the keris itself. I will continue to call it a "keris", but frankly, when I look at many of the physical features of The Knaud, I am forced to think of it as a "keris-like object", rather than a keris.

What questions can be directed at the physical characteristics of The Knaud?

[JeffS]

Withdrawing my comment.

[JustYS]

Hi jagabuwana,

I agreed with you, I will try to get hold of this book as well.

Hi Alan,

Looking at the keris itself, my first impression is that the pawakan looks awkward. The sharp bent above the gandhik seems to me lack of harmony.

[A. G. Maisey]

Perhaps we might consider the dimensions & proportions?

Does this keris have a separate gonjo or is gonjo iras?

Have we looked closely at the pesi?

Have we considered the actual blade sculpting that is covered by the bronze overlay?

Lots of things going on here gentleman. Can we relate all these things to the Keris Buda form?

Harmony?

Well, from that perspective it is certainly no symphony.

[JustYS]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Perhaps we might consider the dimensions & proportions?

Does this keris have a separate gonjo or is gonjo iras?

Have we looked closely at the pesi?

Have we considered the actual blade sculpting that is covered by the bronze overlay?

Lots of things going on here gentleman. Can we relate all these things to the Keris Buda form?

Harmony?

Well, from that perspective it is certainly no symphony.

Thank you for posing these questions Alan.

To my untrained eyes, Knaud Keris has round pesi, which would not be conform to Keris Buda that typically square pesi?

[A. G. Maisey]

Thank you for your comments JYS.

In fact, I've been looking at pictures of that Knaud for years, I mean literally years. I've probably looked at The Knaud pictures more than I've looked at any other keris or pictures of keris.

In spite of all that looking I could not make up my mind in respect of two little questions, just little questions, maybe most people would not think that these little questions were even questions, just idle, wandering curiosity. But to me these questions were the single biggest unanswered questions about The Knaud, and they were unanswerable, because The Knaud was lost, but then it just sort of magically reappeared again, it came into the hands of a highly respected writer on the keris, David Van Duuren, and a door opened.

Mr. Van Duuren took the whole legend apart, top to bottom, and in the process answered many questions, something that I am very grateful for. But he did not answer the two questions that had worked their way to the top of my question list.

So, after reading his book, I wrote to him and asked if the gonjo was round or square, most especially if it was round or square at the point where it exited the gonjo, I also asked if there was any evidence if it had ever had a metuk fitted, and if it had an integral (iras) gonjo or if the gonjo was separate to the blade.

Mr. Van Duuren responded promptly and without equivocation:-

1) the pesi is round
2) there is no evidence of a metuk
3) the gonjo is iras, ie, it was forged as integral with the blade

I currently have custody of four typical keris buda, well, three are typical, the fourth is much larger than typical, but also of typical buda form, one of the three has lost its original gonjo and its gonjo has been replaced. All four have or had gonjos that were forged separately to the body of the blade.

Apart from these four KB's I also have two transitional keris, that is, keris that bear some features of a KB and some features of the Modern Keris. Both these transitional keris have gonjos that were forged separately to the body of the blade.

In the past I have had other KB's that I passed on to other people. I have also handled KB's that belonged to other people, or that were for sale and I did not buy.

I have only ever seen one genuine old KB that had a gonjo iras and that keris was a cast bronze keris.

I have never seen a genuine old KB that had been made with a round pesi.

In Jawa, the very first thing that any keris literate person looks at in order to form an opinion on the age of a very old keris is the pesi at the point where it emerges from the gonjo. If it has a round pesi it is eliminated from consideration as being of extreme age.

So, is it possible for me to accept that a keris with a round pesi and an integral gonjo actually was produced prior to the collapse of Majapahit?

But the pesi and the gonjo are only two questionable characteristics, there are also other things that raise questions.