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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

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