Sunday, February 3, 2008

Do not Let Our Grandsons Study About Kris to Foreign People !!!

“…should our grandsons study about kris to foreign people…?”
When I was interested to explore and write about kris, the statement above hasn’t flashed in my mind yet. When it was getting enjoyable and more enjoyable in knowing kris further with reading various literatures, I saw a little note on the cover of a book titled ”Kembang Rampai Warta Pameran Tosan Aji Yayasan Masagung”, which has the sentence above. Then I realized the importance of knowing and loving the various national cultures, including kris between them, that is getting more abandoned by the young generations these days.
As a religious nation, our ancestors always made daggers and other sharp-bladed weapons accompanied with prayers. For example, prayer so that their own-made krises do not—hopefully—hurt the krises’s owners or anybody else. In the 7th, 8th, and 9th century, the krises that were made were named Buddha krises, where for our ancestors, prosperity is their main target of living. Be a leader, a prosperous leader. Be a farmer, a prosperous farmer, and so on. In the Hindu Era, the kris culture followed the developments, because the people were divided by castes, which were Brahmana, Ksatria, Waisya, Sudra and Paria with different targets and ambitions of living, for example, Brahmana with their monastery benefits, Ksatria with their leadership and soldiership benefits, and others. In the struggling era, krises were used as weapons by the freedom fighters to expel the colonizers.
Kris is an artifact that is a ‘fusion’ of the material knowledge, metal handiwork knowledge, chiseling knowledge, carving knowledge, etc. In Indonesia there are various technologies of making kris, and the marvelous thing here is that our ancestors who lived a long time ago already knew the technique and various knowledge about tosan aji, which is even according to my own mind, is quite complicated and there were several things that cannot accepted logically.
Like in Javanese philosophy, there was an ancient guide which said that the completeness of a Javanese adult can be said ‘perfect’ only if he already completed 5 criteria, that are curiga—kris/weapon, turangga—horse/vehicle, wisma—house, wanita—wife and kukila—bird/entertainment/hobby.
The weapon meant here, besides kris, could also meant useful wisdom and knowledge, provisions of education with use of facing the obstacles of living.
So, friends, let’s know our culture better from now on! Do not let foreign people know our culture better than we are!

2 comments:

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