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who lives in Kediri, near the city of Tabanan ((our research village!!)); he officiates at ceremonies for the local Pande organization, Banjar Beratan Pandes, in Singaraja ((why Singaraja, is on the north coast?)) quite an old man when this book is written from chap. 16 on "The Balinese Kris" (pp. 161-170): by 1908, when the Dutch invaded with their rifles and muskets, the kris obsolete as a weapon but never just a weapon; also a 'tenget' (charged) object, full of the mysterious power of steel and the secrets of smithery as a kris is passed from generation to generation, accumulates power and acquires a personality of its own Eiseman refers to a kris, kept in Jimbaran, that is said to have been handed down directly from a god, and is used today to sever the cord that holds the mask on a sacred Barong some kris are so powerful that they must be stores without a roof overhead and never pass under anything people are said to run amok because the kris wants to, etc. word kris was translated dozens of ways from the original Malay ((?))- kriss, creese, creeze, etc. used all over the Indonesian islands, as far east as the Philip- pines, and as far west as the Malay Pen. earliest records of kris are 13th century relief carvings on the wall of Candi Panataran, a temple in East Java, a Majapahit stronghold that a century or so later came to Bali Eiseman now produces some very puzzling comments on technology, as follows: "Pure iron is not inherently hard or though, the characteristics we associate with steel. Raw iron ore, in various forms, con- sists of elemental iron combined with oxygen - essentially rust - as well as other impurities. The first task of the smith is to reduce this ore, release the oxygen to produce a workably pure ingot of iron. The product of this reduction with the technology available to the early smiths was wrought iron, a relatively soft and impure substance. A kris made of wrought iron would be no better than a Bronze Age weapon. Thus it was the transformation of wrought iron into steel that represented the skill, the magic, of the smith's craft. Steel making before the technological age was a very highly skilled craft whose object was achieving an almost paradoxical combination of qualities, hardness and toughness. Steel is an alloy, iron with the addition of small amounts of other metals and carbon. Today such exotic materials as molybedenum and chromium are added for strength and other, such as copper, are added for rust resistance. But the key ingredient is carbon. And a difference of a mere one-half of a percent in carbon con- tent will produce a steel that is either much too brittle, or much too soft. Balinese smiths used the crucible process to produce working ingots of steel, melting the wrought iron in a crucible to let the waste gasses escape and pouring the slag off the top of the mix. This steel was pure enough, and contained enough carbon, to be worked on the anvil. The smith then shaped these ingots into kris, using an incredi- bly laborious process of hammer welding. Hammering a hot bar of 11