From: todd@reed.edu (Todd Ellner)
Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts
Subject: Re: How to choose a Martial Art discipline?
Date: 13 Apr 92 17:28:07 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Reed College, Portland OR

I e-mailed this to Guro Khan but thought it might be interesting for
others here.

[Khalid Khan claims Silat Sumba as the mother of the Filipino martial arts]

This is an interesting theory, and I would love to look at your references
some time. I'm looking into connections between Spanish training methods
and Northern Filipino footwork at the moment. The meaning of the old
Spanish "magic circles", "circles of death", and other training aids has been
lost along with the Spanish style of fencing. Strangely enough, some of the 
Filipino and Indonesian arts I study use exactly the same diagrams for
footwork and strike training. Did Filipinos and Malays adopt European
training methods? Did the reverse happen? Are the principles of movement
and strike angles universal so that two unrelated but sophisticated 
systems would develop similar vocabularies? I don't know. I guess that's
what research is all about.

Anyway, back to your hypothesis. It is difficult evaluate your claim in the 
absence of your references, but I am skeptical for a number of reasons:

-   People have been fighting one another for thousands of years. In that time
    groups of people (villages, tribes, etc.) have learned how to fight if only
    from experience. The Indonesian Archipelago, in which I include the
    Phillipines, has never been a peaceful place; there has been ample
    motivation and opportunity for people in that part of the world to learn
    how to fight. It does not seem likely that everyone in the Phillipines
    fought with no sophistication until, suddenly, they learned how to 
    from the Sumbanese (any relation to the Sundanese?). It is perhaps more
    likely that regions, islands, villages, whatever developed their
    own fighting methods and adopted elements and techniques from other
    areas in the normal course of interaction be it trade, war, or migration.

-  The motions people make in everyday life strongly influence the motions
    they make in trained systems of movement. Certain dance motifs and 
    types of movement are found in the folk-dance of fisher-folk around
    the world which are distinct from the dance elements of pastoral, 
    farming, and hunting peoples. The same thing can be said, albeit with
    a little less hard evidence, for martial arts movements. Given that the
    historic lifestyle of many people in that part of the world was similar
    (farming on land carved out from a tropical rain forest and in the 
    mountains coupled with a lot of fishing/trading/piracy) and that the tools
    used were similar (e.g. the big-heavy-two-foot-knife) it is not surprising
    that the techniques developed were not very different. It is not necessary
    to posit a single center of development.

-  You mention the possibility that the word Kali came from Kalimantan
    (Borneo). I maintain that there are other good candidates for the origins
    of the word. First, Kali means movement in at least a few Southern 
    Filipino dialects. Calling one's fighting arts "movement" seems at least
    as likely as taking a contraction of the name of another island near
    where they might have originated. Second, there is a consonant shift 
    between the Southern part of the archipelago and the Northern. Keris
    (the kris) in Java becomes Kalis in Mindanao. Hence, the art of the Kris
    (and Kalis-Kalis or Pagkalikali in nearby parts).

-  I have a question about your view of Pentjak Silat Sumba. When you say
    that it is the ancestor of the Filipino arts do you mean that the particular
    expression which we see today is the same style that gave rise to Kali
    hundreds of years ago? Or do you mean that the Silat of the Sumba region
    _at_that_time_ gave rise to Kali and allow that it may have changed
    considerably in since then? The latter I might grant. The former I find
    hard to believe. Even the most conservative martial arts schools change
    after centuries, and the Malay/Filipino peoples have a remarkably 
    pragmatic attitude towards their fighting arts: practicality over stasis.

In short I do not deny that there was significant exchange of martial arts
techniques throughout that part of the world. What I deny is the strong
form of your hypothesis, that all of the Filipino fighting arts are derived
from the style of one particular group of islands and that there are no
significant indigenous elements in anything from Tapada to Serrada.
-- 
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Todd Ellner  todd@reed.edu 
"What has the study of biology taught you about the Creator Dr. Haldane?"
JBS Haldane:"I'm not sure, but He seems to be inordinately fond of beetles."