Martial arts Origin. India or China.

so i have been reading this book called, "The Bodhisattva Warriors" its position is that india created the originally form of martial arts that we all see today, like the jui-jitsu techniques, much of the striking and pressure points. it makes it seem like it is only thought that china was the spawn of the original martial arts becuase monks from india had so much influence on china and china ljust made it very popular.

i hear all the evidence that this book gives and i would like to believe this book, but i would also like to hear arguements from both sides. ever supposed Chuan Fa practitioner i meet swears up and down that the shaolin temple was the spawn of the first martial arts. at least the MA's we see today were have said to get there heritage from them.
akers.


i have brought this thread up before, but i was a little less knowedgable than i am now. and this book was written by a Chuan Fa practitioner if anybody cares.

 

I thought Ninjas used it to kill dinosaurs 65 million years ago!

 

Not a single person can actually answer with full satisfaction, from a christian p.ov. it would have to be the middle east where any fighting has evolved....because cain killed abel....where ever the first recorded strike is, is suggestion of the beginnig of fighting.....

 

im not talking about the first ever martial art, i mispoke. i meant the the origin of what most of us us today. like jui-jitsu, pressure points the so called deadly stuff....

not a history buff but wooshoo in china dates back to 2000 B.C.

not really looking to argue symantics here.

 

The book looks interesting... but you'll find that perhaps not many others here on MAP have read it. I would be interested to see how academically sound the work is. The contents which can be viewed here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/087...12?_encoding=UTF8&p=S008&j=1&ns=1#reader-page

Look like they'd make for some great reading. But what I am more curious about is his footnotes. I'd also be curious if there was a review of this work in the Journal of Asian Martial Arts. Usually one of the best sources for reviews of martial arts books.

Much of what follows in a thread like this is usually a seperation down nationalistic or ethnocentric lines. Those of Indian background digging there heals in one side and the sinocentrist's digging in on the other.

A discussion like this is problematic as no one can ever agree on a definition for the term 'martial art'... where does a word like that start and end? Is there is a truly singular definition?

Are we speaking of martial arts as codified by forms and silky pajama's? Or can we count the techniques used in battle by the Persian mercenaries fighting for Alexander?

It's interesting food for thought - but you might find that it turns silly very fast with all the people that know very little about India and the other lot that have ridiculous fantasies about China.

FWIW - here's the cover of the book mentioned.

 

I just want to add on to slipthejab's thoughts......we can't really say if it was india or china.......because the boundaries of the today's countries are not the same...same goes for culture.....One book I read suggests trading routes between what was considered europe and to the islands as far as japan.....this is an open ended question....

 

before reading this one i have read a bunch of books on martial arts and they talked very little about the history. they either say that they are the origins of there martial art or just give some short anwser as to who is.


is htere any other books with such in depth research/knowledge given that anyone knows of.

 

im confuses. does this sentece mean that the book suggests that there were trade routes between europe and Japan. if not let me know please. as i said i am not a history buff so please bare with me.

 

When I say what was considered europe and islands as far as japan....yeah it's sketchy...I don't know how far the population was back then...So I don't know how much of europe was considered europe and how much of asia was considered asia......

 

At the moment I'm not aware of any books that directly deal with the issue that the book you've mentioned does - that is - China or India being the origin of martial arts.

The most common perception would be that India has very little if any martial arts that survive to this day. There are arts like Indian Wrestling (Pahalwani or Mallavidya) and Kalaripayattu... perhaps of a handful of others that you may hear of - but in general the perception is that there are not many martial traditions that survive in India.

On the other hand you have loads of idiots that believe that feudal China was won by martial arts like the ones people today study. They somehow have it down that battlefields were full of people doing Phoenix-eye fist and Shaolin Kung Fu... that as we know it is crap. Or at least it certainly didn't work against the Mongol invaders.

So again much of it comes down to a semantics battle right off. Definitions of what you're looking for need to be clearly defined if you want clear answers. Not that there isn't a lot of interesting conjecture in between... but there is a lot of BS in between as well.

 

The Shaolin temple wasn't originally martial. At first they were just regular old monks. They transcribed writings, studied, meditated, did monk stuff. It was a buddhist priest from India that taught them excersize movements to help them stay in shape. These original movements were later adapted to various purposes, some martial. While Shaolin temple is the source of most CMA and CMA are at least distant influences on many martial arts today, the monks of Shaolin learned those first movements from an Indian priest. I can't think of his name though... Bodhidarma or something. Something Indian.

 

LOL!
Yeah something Indian... errmm... maybe the Bodhidarma.

 

yeah see the arguement i heard a few months ago was that the indian guy only showed them a few stretching exercises and that was it.

the book i read doesnt talk about this guy a whole lot. it mostly talks about how the philosiphies of monks from india influenced the way MA was looked at over there. and it talked about what happened after medical teachings were shared like surgery and massage and pressure points. although i dont think india was the founder of accupuncture, the book says it is, but i saw on the news of writings from about 10,ooo years or more that had accupuntcure on it. plus some bodies they find frozen in the ice have tatooes and al of accupuncture spots.

 

brahman - that's the problem right there with a convo like this... just seeing something on TV and remembering part of it doesn't count as credible.

99% of what's on TV is crap.

 

lol, very true.

 

Ok, couple things:

First -

No. This is a folk history that does't match up against the fact. Proto longfist and other Chinese fighting styles predate Shaolin by nearly 400 year (more in some stories). They were first documented in the time of the Yellow Emperor (And also associated with him, though it was common practice to do so, even though he most likely had little role in their development).

Further the Myth of Boddidharma/Damo doesn't seem to hold up under careful examination. I point you to this well written article by Shifu Chris Toepker that surveys a wide amount of work that calls the Damo creation story into question:
http://www.hungkuen.net/history-damo.htm

Ok onto India and its role in the creation of Martial Arts. While I will argue that many Indian concepts can be found in Asian Martial Arts, Chinese in particular, it is silly for any nation to claim sole creation rights (including China). In part what we think of as India, China, Japan and other countries are all modern creations. While these areas existed in the past, they weren't (even China) codafied nations. Beyond that there was a significant amount of trade and movement between regions allowing for the sharing of ideas. Hence the transmission of martial knowledge.

But the fact is the histories don't add up. While we know that some of the earliest martial evidence can be found in areas like modern Iran, Egypt and Greece, there isn't a lot of evidence to suggest that these migrated east in anything resembling thier original form. Further, the fact is that the human body is the same no matter where you are and thus there are only so many ways to move. Thus it's easy to isolate techniques from say Native American wrestling and compare them to Ju Jitsu. But there is nothing to suggest that either the Japanese created Native American wrestling or visa versa.

Finally, you need to understand that India is, like most nations, in a bit of a "creation" grab right now. Much like Aiuayurvedic claims to creating Chinese Accupuncture, its important to see these claims about Indian creation of the martial arts in a modern nationalistic context.

I have more to say, but I'm out of time for the moment. I'll pull some more thoughts together later.

- Matt

 

yeah, i just spat out the legend. And i know that there were definetely CMA before Shaolin, but you have to admit most CMA today can trace roots back to Shaolin in one way or another.

good point with the comparing of Ju Jitsu and wrestling.

 

I don't believe this is the case either. I believe that there are Hakka and Muslim arts that are pretty much separate. Ditto Shui Jao (sp?) and other Mongolian derived arts. And I'm not sure about some Daoist arts as well.

- Matt

 

it is my firm belief that the martial arts originated in the predatory nature of man. therefore, it i also hold that fighting is universal and most likely endemic to all regions. influences may have come from contact between peoples (be it peaceful trade of outright combat).

no one race or people can claim ownership to the first systematic dissemination of the martial arts. there is no one true art. only one true desire to put some nasty hurt on another human being.

 

definately not the arguements i was expecting. maybe i should narrow my topic down a bit.

i need to come up with a topic that deals soley on the creation of martial arts between india and china. i gotta find a way to make it contraverial though, cause if its not contraversial then no body will make replies.