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Welcome back to Art History for All. I’m Allyson Healey. If you walk through a large museum and take note of the different galleries you can visit, some may seem familiar and make a lot of sense: of course an art museum would have a Medieval gallery, or a gallery of 19th century French Art, or a gallery of Native American art, or even a gallery of decorative arts. Some museums, however, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, may also have a gallery of arms and armor. Now what would weapons and armor be doing in an art museum?
Arms and armor are, just like decorative objects, paintings, or sculpture, designed objects. They have a more specific and practical function than a painting on a wall has, but a craftsman put thought into their design all the same. This is especially true of weapons and armor that were intended for ceremonial or ritual purposes, as they are usually less utilitarian and are able to feature imagery in the way that an ordinary warrior’s breastplate or sword might not. This is the case with a blade in the Met’s collection that I want to discuss in this episode—a Southeast Asian weapon known as a kris or keris. This kris is notable for the images that are carved into the blade itself, not just the hilt or grip. Clearly, this would have been impractical to actually use to cut or stab, so what might its actual purpose have been? Are the images carved into the metal part of a narrative, or just ornamental? What makes a weapon a weapon, and what makes it a work of art?
I’ve once again been limited in my resources on this topic due to the nearest university library still being closed to the general public, so I would not be surprised if I missed out on some crucial info that can only be found in a physical book or in a non-English source. If you can fill in such a gap, you are always welcome to send corrections with citations to allysonh@arthistoryforall.com.
This episode may be about a sword, but it’s really not as violent as you might expect. So you’re safe to sit back, relax, and listen as I unsheathe and examine this carved kris.
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A description of Kris with Sheath, 18th-19th century, listed as Malaysian in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession number 91.1.899a, b. Made of iron and wood with gold details, measuring 47.8 cm long and 10.2 cm wide without the sheath, and weighing 306.2 g, or 10.8 oz.
The image the Met makes available online only shows the blade itself without the sheath—it is a straight blade that comes to a point at the tip and flares out towards the hilt, carved with stylized figures on the metal’s surface. From the tip of the blade going down, we see a figure depicted frontally, followed by another figure depicted from the side, followed by a building of some kind with a tiled roof. Below this stacking of images is an image of two figures in another structure with a tiled roof, appearing to hold hands. Below this grouping is another stylized figure with long slender arms, touching what appears to be a sort of flask or vessel. A similar image sits below this one, but this time the figure’s clothing appears wrapped around their entire body, not just their lower half as before. Finally, at the base of the blade, there is a carving of a figure, likely a deity, sitting on a lotus on the back of an elephant, accompanied by a tiny guard of some kind who peeks out above the bottom of the blade. The elephant’s trunk protrudes from the side of the blade, a typical feature of the kris called the “belalai gajah” in Malay, or, appropriately, “elephant’s trunk”.[1] A band of floral ornament finishes the flared bottom of the blade, and its design is highlighted in gold. The even lighting of this archival-quality photograph prevents us from easily seeing the pattern of the blade’s metalwork, though a little of it is discernible near the base.
The hilt of the kris is primarily wood, shaped into a sort of pistol grip with some minimal carved scrollwork to ornament it. Where it attaches to the blade, it is covered in finely worked gold ornament that resembles a ball made of tiny stars.
Unfortunately, this photograph only allows us to see one side of the kris, so it is unclear whether the other side of the kris has a mirror image of the carving we see here or some other type of imagery.
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One look at the Met’s kris, or even any of the krises you see when you do a Google Image search, and its differences from what we in the West may think of when we think of a sword or dagger are pretty clear. The flared shape of the blade’s base alone is unusual, but appears to be the common element across krises, which otherwise vary in size, ornamentation, and even whether the length of the blade is straight, like the Met’s, or wavy. How such a blade evolved is up for debate, but it is fairly universally acknowledged as a stabbing, rather than a slashing or cutting, weapon. This is made even more clear by the pistol grip common to many krises, including the Met’s, which requires the user hold it a specific way that really only lends itself to stabbing,[2]
The history and origin of the kris is just as hotly debated as the evolution of its shape, due in part to the many layers of myth and legend that have accumulated around the idea of the kris over time. A 2000 article by Malaysian political scientist and historian Farish A. Noor pinpoints a proto-kris emerging in mainland Southeast Asia as early as 1 CE, but it seems as though the kris did not reach its ultimate form until around the 14th century, and after 1600 or so there was little change in the blade’s form.[3]
With the spread of Hinduism and the establishment of Hindu courts led by dewarajas, or “god-kings,” throughout Southeast Asia from around the third century BCE to the seventh century CE and beyond, the kris became not just a practical weapon, but also a part of these courts’ mythology. A 1956 examination of krises by scholar A.H. Hill mentions several Javanese Hindu kings to whom the introduction of the kris is attributed: the king Sakutram was allegedly “born with a [kris] pasopati by his side.”[4] Hill also mentions a warrior-chief in Javanese folklore who is said to have removed his phallus and transformed it into a kris, gifting it as an heirloom to his younger brother.[5] However the kris came to be integrated into Hinduized court life in Southeast Asia, it eventually became a key ritual object for such courts, a means though which dewarajas could display both their earthly and their cosmic power. Noor emphasizes the integration of the kris into the Hindu cults of Siva and Vishnu in particular, as well as its association with major figures and narratives in Hinduism, including the Mahabharata.[6] This is highly relevant to the Met’s kris, as the museum itself identifies the images carved on the blade as “probably” episodes from the Javanese version of the Mahabharata, called the Mintaraga.[7]
Around the same time that the kris began making appearances in retellings of Hindu narratives, it also began to acquire magical powers. Courtly epics and dramas often featured blades that flew around, doing their masters’ bidding.[8] As Hill tells it, krises with certain patterns in the folded metal of their blade were considered lucky, and some types of lucky krises, or keris bertuah, were even said to be able to wound or kill someone if they were only pointed at them, or even if they stabbed their footprints or photograph.[9] “An exceptional keris,” Hill writes, “may even jump out of its sheath at the approach of danger and do the owner’s fighting for him on its own. Before the 1914-18 war there was a keris in the Taiping museum which was supposed to fly out at night, kill someone, clean itself and return to its showcase before morning.”[10] End quote.
Aside from the Taiping Museum kris’s alleged powers occurring around World War I, Hill doesn’t specify when certain beliefs about krises’ powers developed, whether they were necessarily connected with Hinduism, or whether some of them emerged following the conversion of a great portion of maritime Southeast Asia to Islam beginning around the fifteenth century. Even as the conversion from Hinduism to Islam required the denial of many aspects of Hindu belief, the kris and its mystique seemed to persist. Noor characterizes the Islamic conversion of the Indonesian-Malay world as a total reinvention of that world “along with all its symbols and markers of identity.” This included the kris, as Noor describes in the following passage:
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“The Hindu empus [master kris-makers] and pandais [general weaponsmiths] had claimed that their krises were forged from meteorite iron, a gift from the heavens. But the Muslims replied that Allah had created the heavens, and all the meteorites flying around the heavens were his property as well. The Hindu deities may have been present during the forging of the primordial kris, but had not Allah created the raw materials? These discursive skirmishes continued for generations: and in the midst of this process of social transformation, the station and role of the kris within the complex cosmological framework of Indonesian-Malay society suffered a radical demotion. For with the consolidation of Islam’s hold on the Malay world, the squadrons of magical flying krises were finally grounded.”[11]
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The general demystification of the kris, Noor continues, also allowed kris-making to become less rarified, and after the mid-18th century it had become more of a “folk craft” in some places than an exclusive and mystical practice.[12] At the same time that Islam spread across the region, European colonizers also began encroaching upon Southeast Asia, and as a result the kris had to take a backseat to different kinds of weaponry, such as ballistics, that were more effective against an invading force than a single stabbing blade.[13] Krises did, however, remain a common part of Indonesian and Malaysian dress, with multiple European sources commenting on how they were worn in the belts of almost all adult men. European colonizers, particularly the Dutch and British East India Companies in the case of Indonesia and Malaysia, eventually absorbed Southeast Asia into their empires, and among the many things that they dismissed or denigrated in the process of establishing ideological control were the cosmologies and belief systems of which the kris was a part. This went hand in hand with disarming Malaysians and Indonesians entirely: British colonial administrator Frank Swettenham said in 1908, quote: “In 1874, every Malay had as many weapons as he could carry: say, two daggers in his belt, two spears in his hand, a gun over his shoulder and a long sword under his arm. The boys were usually content with two or three weapons. Now, the men carry umbrellas, and the boys slates and books.”[14] End quote. Under British rule in what is today Malaysia and Singapore, only British colonial forces were allowed to bear arms. The kris became a museum piece to the colonizers, a relic of a time long past, now unnecessary under the new colonial order. At the same time, modernizing Islamic reformers in Malaysia, while pushing back against colonialism, also pushed back against Malaysian traditions with pre-Islamic origins, including the bersanding wedding ceremony, the cukur rambut hair-shaving ceremony for babies, Malay burial rites, and, of course, the kris.[15]
It was probably in light of these perspectives on the kris that the Met’s example was initially acquired. As the credit line on the Met’s website reads, this blade was part of a bequest to the museum from the collection of Edward C. Moore in 1891. Born in New York City in 1827, Moore was a silversmith who contracted and eventually sold his business to Tiffany & Co., where he improved upon Tiffany’s silver manufacturing processes.[16] His success as a silversmith allowed him to build a collection that at its height may have contained around 4000 objects, at least 1600 of which he bequeathed to the Met upon his death. Most of the objects highlighted in an 1892 article on his collection are glass, but the author also notes Moore’s collection of blades and weaponry, saying, quote: “Besides the Japanese swords there is a small collection of antique arms, damascened knives from Malay, darts from Burmah, [sic] and Persian daggers with ivory hilts, inlaid with gold and silver, and African knives.”[17] End quote. The kris I’ve chosen to look at today was doubtless one of those “damascened knives from Malay” mentioned here.
Moore’s collection was in part a research endeavor, providing inspiration for his work at Tiffany and for that of other Tiffany craftsmen, with much of the collection on display at Moore’s Prince Street design studio.[18] This explains his collection’s incredible breadth in terms of materials, forms, and types of objects. But where exactly did Moore get all these objects from, especially those from so far away, like the kris? We don’t know much, especially considering his collection wasn’t catalogued while he was alive, but there are references to Moore traveling to London and Paris, especially for the World’s Fairs in which Tiffany exhibited work.[19] It seems he built relationships with dealers and auctioneers in those cities, through whom he likely acquired the bulk of his collection. How those middlemen got hold of objects like the kris is down to pure speculation without the benefit of a full provenance record. The kris might have been legitimately traded for and then bought by dealers, or, and I’m inclined to think this is more likely given the colonial structures at play, it was stolen and sold to a dealer for a tidy profit.
Illegitimate acquisition might be even more likely due to what the carvings on the kris’s blade imply about its use. As I mentioned earlier, the Met cautiously identifies these images as “probably” scenes from the Javanese version of the Mahabharata, called the Mintaraga.[20] The Mahabharata is a religious epic over two thousand years old, with connections to even older oral and bardic literary traditions.[21] It is deeply complex, featuring a great many characters, and as Indian literature scholar James L. Fitzgerald puts it, quote, “To synopsize the story of the Mahabharata in abstract oversimplifies it to the point of boredom or turns it into Oriental curiosity.”[22] End quote. Essentially, condensing the entire Mahabharata is unwise not just because of its length but because of its context, a context made even more complex when we try to consider how such an epic changed and adapted outside of India in places like Indonesia and Malaysia. So I won’t be summarizing the whole Mahabharata for you, just the parts directly relevant to the kris at hand.
The Met’s explanatory text points to a specific scene from the Javanese version of the story, in which the god Shiva tests protagonist Arjuna’s worthiness for battle in single combat, disguising himself as a hunter. A little further research reveals that in the original story, Arjuna’s victory in this test leads Shiva to give him “the secret of the terrifically destructive Brahma-head or Pāśupata weapon.”[23] An analysis of a possible depiction of this Pāśupata astra on an architrave at the gate of the sixth century Mahadeva Temple in Nagari, Rajasthan, explains some of the possible origins and form of the weapon.[24] One of its other names may mean it is actually a head of Brahma, the creator god whose fifth head Shiva chopped off and turned into a begging bowl. The topmost figure on the kris we are looking at could be holding a bowl, although due to the stylization of the figure and the limits of only looking at a digital image, it’s difficult to tell. Nowhere else on the blade does a bowl or skull appear, although the objects next to the two middle figures on the blade may be long-necked vessels of some kind. The passages from the Mahabharata quoted in the analysis of the architrave give us more of a sense of the capabilities of this bowl-turned-weapon:
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“Arjuna asks Śiva… ‘If it pleases you to grant me my wish, Bull-bannered God, then I wish that divine weapon (astra) the dreadful Pāśupata weapon, my lord, which is called Brahma’s head (brahmaśiras), gruesome…of terrible power, which at the horrible end of the Eon will destroy the entire world. With it I may burn down in battle the Dānavas and the Rākṣasas, the evil spirits and Piśācas, Gandharvas, and Snakes. From its mouth…when properly spelt…issues forth thousand of tridents, awful-looking, clubs, and missiles like venomous snakes. With it I shall embattle Bhīṣma, Drona, and Kṛpa, and the always rough-spoken son of the sūta. This is my wish, my lord, who took Bhaga’s eyes, so by your grace I may go forth competent!’”[25]
“The token that was held out at the beginning in the first relief [on the architrave] was thus finally obtained by Arjuna… The Mahabharata again describes the scene. ‘Hearing this, the Pārtha (Arjuna) hurriedly and attentively purified himself; and when he embraced the feet of the lord of the universe, the God said to him, ‘Now learn!’ Then he taught the best of the Pāṇḍavas about the missile (astra), along with the secrets of its return, this missile that is Death incarnate… When the moment came, there was an outcry of conches, drums, and kettledrums by the thousands, and a huge quake occurred. The Gods and the Dānavas witnessed how that fiercely burning dreadful missile stood bodily deployed (mūrtimat) at the side of the boundlessly lustrous Pāṇḍava.’”[26]
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The Pāśupata weapon’s power is catastrophic, terrifying, unavoidable. It is also repeatedly described as a “missile”, a projectile or flying weapon. Given what we’ve learned about the kris’s mythic powers of flight, it’s possible that the depiction of the story of Arjuna’s test by Shiva on the kris’s blade is intended to draw a parallel between the powers of the Pāśupata weapon and the physical kris itself. This idea, combined with the fact that the carvings on the kris make it largely unusable as a practical weapon, heavily implies that this kris was used not for combat but for ritual purposes, possibly even religious ones. However, not being able to find any descriptions of how this episode from the Mahabharata is specifically retold for a Javanese audience, I can’t really make any pronouncements.
The question of ritual and religion with regard to this kris is complicated. If the Met’s dating of this kris to the 18th or 19th centuries is correct, then it was made well after the Islamization of Malaysia and Indonesia. If that is the case, then why would a largely Muslim society make a dagger like this that glorifies a story from the Mahabharata? As Noor notes, Hindu traditions did not simply disappear with the advent of Islam in the region. Instead, Islam layered new meanings on top of Hindu and Buddhist ideas, obscuring them, but not destroying them completely.[27] Islam’s prohibition of idolatry meant that many images of Hindu deities were heavily abstracted or obscured with “arabesques, floral tapestries, and geometric patterns.”[28] The images on the Met’s kris have sticklike arms and elongated heads with pointy noses, reminiscent of the figures in Javanese wayang kulit, or shadow puppet plays. Knowing this, things begin to fall into place—according to Sanskrit theater scholar James R. Brandon, writing in 1970, the most popular shadow plays in Java are from the “Pandawa cycle,” set during the timeline of the Mahabharata.[29] Brandon also notes that wayang kulit, despite some Muslim leaders’ efforts, was never truly converted into a Muslim art form, describing the essentially Hindu basis of the plays as “too firmly set by this time to be penetrated…by Islamic thought.”[30] Wayang kulit seems to have straddled the line between Hinduism and Islam, and thus figures inspired by the elongated forms that allegedly developed to skirt Muslim anti-idolatry rules would be the perfect choice for a craftsman of this period who wanted to carve images into a blade.[31] Whether this kris was actually used as part of Hindu-based ritual or treated as a mere curiosity remains to be seen. Thus, the Met’s kris is sheathed in mystery not just in relation to its provenance, but also in relation to religion and ritual.
A general uncertainty surrounding krises persists, particularly in regard to whose cultural patrimony they rightly belong: that of Malaysia or that of Indonesia.[32] There is a shared heritage between the two, and a sense of kinship that defies the borders set during the colonial era. However, since the 1980s, disputes over territory, as well as tensions over Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia, have strained this kinship bond.[33] These and other more minor disputes have prompted the two nations to butt heads over who “owns” which heritage. All of Indonesia’s entries in UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Heritage of Humanity as of 2011 were contested items of cultural heritage with Malaysia, including the kris.[34]
Questions of ownership, provenance, and religion aside, what role do krises play in the modern, post-colonial world? A 1987 article in the Los Angeles Times by Bill Tarrant highlighting kris-makers on Java suggests that it wasn’t very long ago that much of the mystique surrounding the kris still held strong, especially on Java. Tarrant highlighted an 18th-generation empu, Jiwodiharjo, whose workshop at the time produced up to 200 kris a month, mostly from ordinary iron and nickel, while palace craftsmen still used pieces of a nearby meteorite.[35] Even in the 70s and 80s, Tarrant says, there were reports of strange occurrences involving krises rattling against the wall or flying out of a Muslim cemetery, as former Singaporean ambassador Lee Khoon Choy claimed to have observed.[36] At the time of Tarrant’s article, he says most men on Java owned a kris “at some point in their lives,” and the blades were as much tourist curiosities as mystical or ritual objects. By 2000, however, this seems to have changed significantly, at least in some places, with UNESCO noting that since the 70s, “kris have lost some of their prominent social and spiritual meaning in society.”[37] Noor remarks rather harshly upon some Malaysian men renting krises to wear on their wedding day, and discusses in a footnote how both state religious authorities in Malaysia and opposition Islamic groups have condemned the so-called “cult of the kris”.[38] “What began as a knife,” Noor says, “has been reduced to a knife — as kris tiepins, letter openers, and paper cutters litter handicraft centres [sic] and tourist shops.”[39] End quote. But there are some contexts in which the kris, or at least its image, still serves something like its intended purpose. An article in Black Belt Magazine discusses the Indonesian martial art pentjak silat and how its blade variations, including those that use the kris, were still being taught as recently as 2011.[40] The Philippines edition of the magazine Tatler noted that the wavy blade used by the main character in the Disney film Raya and the Last Dragon seems to be inspired by the Filipino version of the kris.[41] A quick Google search to see if there are any other prominent krises or kris-analogues in pop culture reveals that the 2009 video game Demon’s Souls, developed by Japanese studios, features a weapon called “Kris Blade.”[42] The original version of the Demon’s Souls sword is startlingly close to the real thing, from the wavy blade to the pistol-grip hilt.[43] Its 2020 remake version, however, is significantly more stylized, albeit rendered with more detail. The Mortal Kombat game series also features a wavy-bladed kris, the proprietary weapon of demon fighter Ashrah.[44] Both these virtual versions of the kris make reference to the real blade’s magical connections, with Demon’s Souls describing it as “an aid for incantations” and Mortal Kombat conceiving of it as a holy item that purifies the user with every demon it kills. Other video games and series like EverQuest, RuneScape, and Diablo II have also included krises, without the added magical boost. These digital blades, with their varying degrees of visual detail and 3D modeling, maintain the mythology of the kris for newer generations, or reduce it to a visually cool but “low-level” weapon, depending on the function it serves within the game itself. This ties in with Noor’s critique of the commodification of the kris—where once it was a significant ritual object, a piece of Malaysian and Indonesian culture, it has in many cases become a mere ornament or a tchotchke to be collected, even if only virtually.
The slow commodification of the kris is one reason why more updated scholarship on the kris’s history, form, and uses would be extremely welcome; such scholarship might also further emphasize the kris’s role as a significant part of Southeast Asian culture and hopefully prevent efforts to “expel” kris mythology from some areas due to Islamic opposition, as Noor warns may happen.[45] Another reason for more updated scholarship was discovered in a Welsh riverbed in 2017—a rusty 18th century kris was found there by a fisherman, raising questions of how such a blade even got there.[46] Carmarthenshire museum curator Gavin Evans said at the time that the discovery prompted reconsiderations of the importance of Carmarthen as a trading port, but I’d argue it also prompts us to reconsider key aspects of the history of the kris that may have gotten lost behind the admittedly more exciting flying, rattling, poisoning, and so on. Might this waterlogged kris have been a tourist object? Or a ritual object that was either looted or unscrupulously sold? What is the provenance of krises that turn up in Europe and North America, really? The legendary aspects, the iconography, and the form of krises are all fascinating, but especially in a moment when so many museums are taking a second look at their collections and realizing how many of their objects were acquired unethically, the non-magical movement of krises through trade, theft, and looting deserves investigation, too. The kris’s many transformations, from practical weapon to ritual object to collectible artwork and more, emphasize the sheer complexity of histories and cultures, and show us just how arbitrary some of the categories and divisions we impose on our world can be.
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Thank you so much for listening to Art History for All. You can find a transcript of this podcast with links to images and citations at arthistoryforall.com. Subscribe, rate, and review Art History for All wherever you like to listen to podcasts, follow us on Twitter and Instagram at arthistory4all, with the number 4, and if you really enjoyed the podcast, please consider leaving a tip at ko-fi.com/arthistoryforall. This podcast was produced and narrated by Allyson Healey, and the theme was composed by Bruce Healey. Credits for other music can be found in the episode description or at the end of the transcript. Main episodes premiere on the last Monday of every month. Thanks so much for listening, and remember to look closely—you never know what you might see.
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[1] Geoffrey Hodgson, “Keris Types and Terms,” Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 29, no. 4 (176) (1956): 89.
[2] A.H. Hill, “The Kěris and Other Malay Weapons,” Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 29, no. 4 (1956): 15-16.
[3] Farish A. Noor, “From Majapahit to Putrajaya: The Kris as a Symptom of Civilizational Development and Decline,” South East Asia Research 8, no. 3 (2000): 244.
“little change” according to A.H. Hill, “The Kěris and Other Malay Weapons,” Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 29, no. 4 (1956): 17.
[4] Hill, 18.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Noor, 247, footnote 16.
[7] “Kris with Sheath | Malaysian,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accessed April 19, 2021, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/21837.
[8] Noor, 248.
[9] Hill, 42-43.
[10] Hill, 43.
[11] Noor, 256.
[12] Noor, 257.
[13] Noor, 258-59.
[14] Quoted in Noor, 269.
[15] Noor, 272.
[16] “The Edward C. Moore Collection,” The Collector 3, no. 13 (1892): 199.
[17] “The Edward C. Moore Collection,” 201.
[18] Elizabeth L. Kerr Fish, “Edward C. Moore and Tiffany Islamic-Style Silver, c. 1867-1889,” Studies in the Decorative Arts 6, no. 2 (1999): 44.
[19] Fish, 46-47.
[20] “Kris with Sheath | Malaysian,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accessed April 19, 2021, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/21837.
[21] James L. Fitzgerald, “Mahabharata,” in The Hindu World, ed. Sushil Mittal and Eugene Thursby (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), 52-53, https://www-proquest-com.proxy01.its.virginia.edu/docview/2131208462/bookReader?accountid=14678.
[22] Fitzgerald, 53.
[23] Fitzgerald, 63.
[24] Hans T. Bakker and Peter C. Bisschop, “The Quest for the Pāśupata Weapon,” Indo-Iranian Journal 59, no. 3 (July 2016): 248-250, https://doi.org/10.1163/15728536-05903011.
[25] MBh 3.41.7–12; tr. van Buitenen, quoted in Bakker and Bisschop, 248.
[26] MBh 3.41.17–22 (tr. van Buitenen), quoted in Bakker and Bisschop, 250.
[27] Noor, 260.
[28] Ibid.
[29] James R. Brandon, On Thrones of Gold: Three Javanese Shadow Plays, University of Hawaii Press, 1993, 11.
[30] Brandon, 7.
[31] Brandon, 6.
[32] Jinn Winn Chong, “‘Mine, Yours or Ours?’: The Indonesia-Malaysia Disputes over Shared Cultural Heritage,” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 27, no. 1 (2012): 1–53.
[33] Chong, 14-16.
[34] Chong, 31.
[35] Bill Tarrant, “On the Cutting Edge of the Supernatural: Indonesia’s Rattling, Flying, Magical Kris,” Los Angeles Times, May 24, 1987, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-05-24-mn-2314-story.html.
[36] Ibid.
[37] “UNESCO – Indonesian Kris,” accessed June 3, 2021, https://ich.unesco.org/en/lists.
[38] Noor, 275.
[39] Noor, 277.
[40] David E. Steele, “Pentjak’s Silat’s Deadliest Blades: The Kris,” Black Belt Magazine, July 6, 2011, https://blackbeltmag.com/pentjaks-silats-9-deadliest-weapons/pentjaks-silats-deadliest-blades-the-kris.
[41] Franz Sorilla IV, “Disney’s Raya And The Last Dragon: Southeast Asian And Filipino Cultural References,” Tatler Philippines, March 5, 2021, https://ph.asiatatler.com/life/disneys-raya-and-the-last-dragon-the-southeast-asian-cultural-references-you-will-find-and-more.
[42] Kris Blade – Demon’s Souls Wiki Guide – IGN, accessed June 30, 2021, https://www.ign.com/wikis/demons-souls/Kris_Blade.
[43] “Kris Blade – Demon’s Souls English Wiki,” accessed June 30, 2021, http://demonssouls.wikidot.com/kris-blade.
[44] “Ashrah,” Mortal Kombat Wiki, accessed June 30, 2021, https://mortalkombat.fandom.com/wiki/Ashrah.
[45] Noor, 275, footnote 62.
[46] Chantal da Silva, “18th Century Asian Sword Discovered in Welsh River,” The Independent, May 5, 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/18th-century-asian-sword-welsh-riverbed-discover-local-boatman-river-towy-carmarthen-malaysia-uk-a7719466.html.