Jump to content
IndiaDivine.org
Sign in to follow this  
Guest guest

Kalaripatu

Rate this topic

Recommended Posts

Guest guest

on wikipedia.com, an online encyclopedia, i looked up kalari and the article seems to be written by someone who vehemently denies that kalari is the oldest form of martial arts. He or she keeps saying that it has no documentation older than the 13th century and there is no documentation of the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma coming from South India, instead he came from central asia.

 

Does anyone know of any concrete evidence that supports kalari? Any book names or anything? any references to kalari?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest guest

wikipedia is a very good website that has alot of Information on Hinduism.

 

I don't think Kalri is the oldest but it is certainly older than Kung Fu.

I believe it is Shastra Vidya being the ancient matial art of the Vedic people that is spoken of in the Mahabharata, that the Pandavas were trained in. Kalari is a distinguished and altered form of Shastra Vidya. There are very few teachers of the genuine Shastra Vidya in India today and a Sikh group have taken it upon themselves to teach whatever they have retained from it to others. I say retained as most of Shastra Vidya has been lost through time. That just goes to show how useless some of our Hindu people are. They let they great art of Shastra Vidya die.

 

Here is a link to the Sikh group that teach Shastra Vidya.

 

http://www.shastarvidiya.org/

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest guest

["wikipedia is a very good website that has alot of Information on Hinduism."]

 

Wikipedia has often good information but should not automatically be taken as only source or as guaranteed 100 % right. It has a acceptable degree of objectivity though.

 

About Kung Fu ( Wu SHu ): The martial art we call today Kung Fu is not seen as something that is at one time imported as a whole but is the result of development over many centuries in China. Its the result of hardworking Chinese who constantly invented and modified techniques etc over the ages. Thats why - with or without basictechniques originated outside China- the thing called Kungfu is for sure to be called a Chinese made martial art. Accepting the Bodhidharma( Damo )legend/history does not change that, right?

 

By the way...the above also counts for other very famous Asian fightingsystems like: Taekwondo, Muy thai,Silat, Karate ( "don't dance! fight!") /images/graemlins/grin.gif These systems are said to have undergone some influence from Kungfu on their turn but apart of this and sharing similarities they also have own techniques, features, weapons and history.So again : their achievements in the first place. No Chinese or somebody else changes that.

 

[" I say retained as most of Shastra Vidya has been lost through time. That just goes to show how useless some of our Hindu people are. They let they great art of Shastra Vidya die."]

 

About Kalari(payat/yit/tu etc). It sure looks interesting but like you said : it seems to have been badly preserved and much is lost (unlike the above mentioned martial arts who are all good documentated,continiously developed and widely practiced for ages )

Kalari of today seems to be for a great part a revived thing that in its "reconstruction" process( at least in Europe late decades ) on its turn incorparated also some things from eastern systems.( to my suprise acknowledged by several revivers, some of them former practicers of East/SouthEast Asian systems ).

 

Dont get me wrong, even with this latter influence Kalari surely does have its own distinguishable features and weapons but.. knowing Kalari as a mostly revived art (with a badly recorded history /tradition compared to Kungfu and others ) claims like 'Kalari is older/origin of Kungfu 'will sound very odd to many if not most others.

Like I said, even with the legend of Damo, Kungfu is Chinese in first place.

 

Speaking of legends..Some will say Alexanders army and Greco-Bactrians introduced greek Pankration martial art when the former and latter established kingdoms in India ( 700 years before birth of Bodhidarma ). They do have a point there. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

Anyway, introducing some of it or not is not the issue( and does not make all fighting "greek " neither) but historically speaken Pankration ( pan= all, kratos power )is the oldest truly (non-mythical) documented martial art, truly practiced as a martial art AND as a sport on the Olympics of 650 BC (!) fightingrules are described and techniques like punching, kicking, choking, elbowing, low sweeps with the legs etc etc. ) Everything was allowed, accept BITING or poking in the eye /images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

 

 

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

YEs unlike kungfu and other asian martial arts....most of kalari has been...what ever we have now is because of re-construction. Kalari may not be the oldest martial art in india, but it is the oldest among its asian counterparts.

The kalari of today is a mere shadow of what ancient kalari was like.

If you read the warfare in the mahabharata you will see some of things people were capable of doing back then.

There has also been a kalari show in china where a kalari group performed in front of a chinese audience.

 

http://in.rediff.com/news/2004/aug/22kalari.htm

 

Not just kalari there is also a martial art called thang-ta which is from manipur but it is a medieval martial art not a ancient one like kalari.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
Sign in to follow this  

×
×
  • Create New...