Prince Abiyoso Hadiningrat held the hilt of his kris firmly as he fed its black blade into the kiln. He then pressed the edge of the heated blade to his tongue before cooling the dagger in a basin of air kembang, or water infused with the petals of various flowers. Then, he repeated the steps.

To the untrained eye, Abiyoso’s actions may have seemed like a traditional Indonesian stunt, just as performers in a trance appear to eat glass or stab themselves with their krises in the kuda lumping or barong dances in Java and Bali, respectively. But the venerated elder maintained that there was a method to the apparent madness.

“I had to ensure that the kris struck the right balance between hot and cold,” said the scion of the Pakubuwono dynasty of Surakarta, Central Java. “After all, it does symbolize striking a balance in nature.”

A timeless ritual

Abiyoso’s moves were part of puja rahayu ningrat (noble, merciful veneration), an age-old Javanese ritual closely intertwined with the kris. The tradition is the centerpiece of the 2022 Keris Indonesia for Peace and Humanity exhibition at Bentara Budaya, which was held from Nov. 23 to 27 to mark the 17^th anniversary of UNESCO’s designation of the dagger as a form of Intangible and Oral Cultural Heritage.

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