Notes on two knives in the Pitt-Rivers Museum
G.C. Woolley’s brief note examines two weapons in the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford, questioning the identification of both as keris and arguing for their reclassification based on morphological and functional evidence.
The first knife, from the John Harvey collection (Java, 1845–1847), is a one-piece blade-and-handle weapon whose outline resembles the tumbok lada but with a double-edged lower half and a hilt figure facing the edge rather than the side, as in the keris. Woolley concludes it cannot be called a keris but may represent a talisman of equivalent magic value cast in the tumbok lada form (p. 39). The second weapon, labelled “very rare type of keris with open work blade and unusual grip? Java,” is subjected to more detailed analysis: its asymmetrical blade lacks the characteristic silang and dagu widenings of true keris, its grooves do not flare into the thumb-hollow typical of ordinary blades, and its arched holes have no parallel in genuine keris (p. 40). Woolley further notes that the symmetrical ganja resembles a rapier or halberd guard, and that the hilt is sized for a European hand and balanced for cutting rather than thrusting. He concludes that the weapon should not be called a keris and, if Malay at all, represents a freak or experimental adaptation, possibly of a heavy halberd blade (p. 40).