Need help > Challenge me with Martial Arts Myths

Someone just did. He used the name Ta-Mo. But it's all the same dude (real or otherwise). Damo, Bodhidharma, Daruma...

 

To answer the question about the highest capoeira cord, the answer is that all schools use a different ranking system, but it seems that the mestres (masters) tend to have a white cord. The colors of the cords up until the title of mestre differs from school to school.

Cords aren't completely in line with tradition, and some schools reject the idea.

 

As for this one: The West didn't or doesn't have indigenous martial arts. Neither did fill-in-the-blank

The Native Americans had their own distinct martial arts systems. Armed and unarmed. Talk to any Creek or Seminole folks and they can tell you about it. Guy named Owl Goingback has written quite a few things about native american martial arts.

Kintanon

 

it really worked? hmm maybe you werent proficient at your striking skills? tkd does give you a limited ability of creating angles and striking combos with your hands and feet simutaniously (sp?) a played around with a friend of mine, i wore boxing gloves and he was showing me stuff he learned in aikido, he then told me to go at him full contact because he was confident on his self defense ability (did i think he said 3 years of aikido, not sure only met him like twice) and he couldnt really check well against low kicks and i did a few fakes and it just led to more openings

 

Umm, the standard Aikido defense against a low kick is to step backwards. It's a self defense style. I've worked out with plenty of Aikido-ka, and once you start going full speed with them you'll get a lot of surprises. They like to move out of the way of your strikes until you give them one they can use, then you get to fly.

Kintanon

 

Regarding the "too deadly to spar" thing:
In the Shui Hu Zhuan (aka The Water Margin, Outlaws of the Marsh, All Men are Brothers), there are several accounts of warriors meeting with one another and deciding to test eachother with a "friendly" bout of fighting with staves or a Shui Jiao match.
Keep in mind, this book was written six hundred years ago, and takes place about eight hundred years ago. It's several thousand pages long, and is all about the warrior culture Ye Olde China.
A very good example of this is in Chapter 2, when Arms Instructor Wang sees "Nine Dragons" Shi practicing a staff form. Seeing that a lot of the movements are flashy and not applicable to real combat, Wang offers to give him a few pointers. Shi becomes enraged and challenges Wang to a fight with staves. Now, as Wang was being hosted by Shi's father, he didn't want to injure the young man and insult his family. Thus, he agrees to a "friendly match" (ie, a sparring match) where he handily defeats him.
This anecdote not only demonstrates that the warriors of medieval China did in fact spar (and with wooden weapons and no safety gear, to boot), I find the part about Nine Dragon's skills being flashy and weak very interesting, as it shows that the showy movements we would associate with contemporary wushu have been around for hundreds of years.

 

Some more myth thingies

I am new here, so I guess that I don't really have the right to post anything this advanced yet, but here goes. Um...let's see. Is shotokan really based on Japanese swordsmanship? I have heard that the concept of ikken hisatsu(sp?) is a japanese swordsmanship concept and that renzo koken (continuous fist fighting) is the original concept of all karate. I have heard about the TKD kicking people off of horses myth - my wing chun teacher used to say it all the time to try to discourage people from practicing taekwondo . I am not sure if it is true, but from reading the Muye Dobo Tongji, it is highly doubtful. The Korean armies primarily used weapons such as swords, spears, and arrows. Exactly why they would be doing high kicks when they could just slice, shoot, or skewer the horsemen with their weapons is completely beyond me, but you never know.

 

No, Shotokan is not in any way based off Japanese sword techniques. Karate comes from Okinawa, which a) was not a part of Japan until recent times and b) due to a lack of iron deposits and ancient laws against owning weapons, did not have swords. So in short, no.
As for the kicking people off of horses thing, there was a thread on that a while ago. Search the TKD or General Discussion forums.

 

Thanks for clearing that up McClaw. Thanks for also pointing out that Okinawa was not originally part of Japan, this fact is misunderstood by a lot of people. Sorry to have digressed on the TKD thing, I just read it in an earlier post so I thought that I would comment on it. I was told that the main difference between Okinawan karate and Japanese karate was that Japanese karate incorporated principles from Japanese swordsmanship. Something about Funakoshi was trying to make karate more Japanese or make karate more acceptable to the Japanese. I was also told that one of his precepts, imagine the hands and feet as swords, was a play on Japanese swordsmanship, too. I wasn't sure how accurate such claims were, especially when looking at goju-ryu or wado-ryu. Ikken Hisatsu also supposedly came from Japanese swordsmanship, or so I'm told. I noticed that Okinawan karate doesn't utilize Ikken Hisatsu, but that it utilizes renzo koken. Shotokan is Japanese karate and not Okinawan karate, why the switch in principles? Help me out here, I am confused

 

I'm just about back to the point where I'm going to start writing.

As far as Shotokan, my understanding is that it is "Japanese" and not "Okinawan." I need to do more research on the overall history and development of the various schools of Karate.

- Matt

 

According to his grandstudents, Gong Baotian did not have a staircase in his house. He supposedly just had a brick jutting out between the first and second floors.

While I think it's a very good idea to clear up confusion and set the record straight on many issues, make sure you don't get overzealous. For example, for all my criticism of Shaolin and Bodhidharma myths, I have to admit on observation of some Indian martial and Yoga practices that some are strikingly similar to Northern Shaolin Longfist and Buddhist Qigong.

For example, while the "Heaven" section of our so-called Buddhist qigong system, Yijin-jing, looks like pure Chinese qigong, the "Man/Arhat" section looks quite similar to Yoga, an element not present in "Daoist" schools of qigong.

Have a look at the videos of these Indian MA training methods:

http://www.kalaripayattu.org/movie.htm#

and tell me it doesn't remind you of Northern Longfist. In the Rooster form he even performs what is called "Golden Rooster Standing on One Leg" in CMA.

Now, to go so far as saying CMA originates from India and all other Asian arts from CMA would be a great exaggeration, possibly fueled by nationalistic motives. However, I can't deny a similarity between the "mother" of northern CMA, Longfist, and this traditional Indian martial art, nor can I deny a similarity between Yoga and the Buddhist system of qigong.

So, while Bodhidharma himself may not have taught any martial arts and while Chinese were practicing martial arts and qigong before Indian influence, I think it would also be incorrect to say there's nothing to this whole "Bodhidharma brought martial arts to Shaolin" (which we might read as "Indians brought their martial arts and energy work to China, significantly influencing the development of China's own martial arts and energy work") idea.

So what I'm saying is, that while it is good scholarship to look at stories with a critical eye, I think we also have to look into why these stories came about, and at least admit the possibility to ourselves that sometimes, legends may be true.

 

hey i was wondering if you could reasearch into challenge matches between western bare knuckle boxers/wrestlers aginst kung fu masters during the late 1800's early 1900's? when i did CMA the instructor said many chinese martial artists's beat the boxers hands down, however he gave no evidence to support this. are there any records of such fights....


also it has been claimed their were various gong sau challenge matches between kung fu societys in the 60's with many deaths/ serious injurys, is this true, and if so, what styles had emnimity towards each other?

good luck,regards Tj

 

I have some (appologies if previously mentioned):

* Full-twist punch delivers more power and is more accurate than a vertical or 3/4 punch because of the corkscrew motion like a bullet shot out of a barrel.

* heel palm pushing nose (septum) into the brain causing death.

* Chi as an energy, Chi as a concept, or Chi as a body dynamic.

* All MA forum moderators are always right.

* Unarmed Okinawans (secretly skilled with Karate) fought fully armed Samurai during the Satsuma invasion, and the knuckle prints in Samurai armor of the period proves it.

* Your obi holds your pants up.

* Legitimate 10th dans exist in Budo who are either westerners and/or under the age of 55.

* If the dojo is more expensive, it means it's better instruction.

 

I, knowing many people from India, a few Buddhists, and a Eastern Philosphy Professor, it would seem that India has the first start.

The long history of ancient civilization is the long path of martial arts. "Structured Civilizations" would be the primary start of "Developed Martial Art Systems"

The idea of one person bringing a "Developed Martial Art System" to a group of people practicing a Buddhist method is far-fetched.

Legends are not to be taken a complete truth. Story telling via a raconteur was a method of entertainment. Thus, the tales would be lavished for a higer response.

 

Tell that to Christians.

Regardless, I didn't say we should swallow legends wholesale, just that we shouldn't always assume they have no basis in fact. Ancient people could embellish and mythologize, but they could also report what happened accurately, especially when in possession of a standardized written language, which Chinese at the time of Bodhidharma were.

 

The problem with much of Chinese history (and much history in general regardless of where it comes from) is the following:

1) History is written primarily by the victors. Making it very easy for them to make out their systems/ways/whatever as being the best and deadliest. Often times history is a justification or a rationalization rather than any sort of objective recording of the facts of an event or era.

2) Much of what gets written at a given time has been later rewritten to make the current people in power seem more legitimate/powerful/rigtheous. In China this continues up to the present day. This also happens in the US and other western countries as well. The act of ommitting something from writing is also a form of rewriting history as well. One only has to look at the amount that the average American textbook covers the Vietnam war as compared to the Revolutionary war.
The Vietnam war gets scant mention in syndicated school books while the Revolutionary war gets chapters.

3) Nationalism creeps in. In China nationalism is the lifeblood of the nation. Given that the vast majority of the people have very little exposure to the outside world they are often very ignorant of developments in other countries - either at the present moment or historically speaking. I am often shocked to find that many Chinese people have very little grasp of Chinese history... given that such a vast number of Chinese in China work manual labor/farming and have very little formal education... I shouldn't be. This is slowly changing... unfortunately much of what they learn is steeped in nationalism and nonsense from the CCCP. They are however these days getting more and more access to the outside world - through the internet, the Chinese diaspora and media leaks into China.

As for the Chinese having a standardized written language at the time of Bodhidharma... hmmm I don't really know that it makes much difference one way or the other... if someone is intent on tweaking history to suit their regime they will tweak it regardless of what their written language is like.

I do however agree with the essence of your post that we shouldn't discount legends wholesale as having no basis in fact. They should however be taken with a rather large grain of salt in light of the motiviations of the people that continue to tell them.

 

I agree. I was just pointing out the existence of a standard written language because a previous poster was saying "raconteurs embellish," as if the problem is that we're playing a huge game of telephone and Bodhidharma is just a campfire story. In fact, the more serious difficulties are the ones you mention.

 

Hmmmn,,,,you took it too literally.....however one must have a verbal/visual testimony before actual written transition.

 

I was under the impression that washing your belt was a common sense sort of a thing. You don't wash it because it will shrink!
When we are promoted and I don't know if this is true at other dojos. Our previous belts are tied in a knot and we are forbidden to untie them. We are told that they contain the knowledge of that belt level and to untie them would mean losin all knowledge of the lessons we learned during that belt stage.

 

I've washed my belt several times and it hasn't shrunk. I try not to follow any esoteric traditions apart from the ones that show politeness to your instructor and fellow students (when in Rome... and all that). You should try untying one of the knots and see if you do lose any abilities.