similarly bewildering variety of names as well. At the very least, then, there
were likely differences of practice in some respect among these differently
designated martial arts. Particular elaborations handed down from a
known or imagined person or place would have taken on the structure of
a“school”named for its origin.
Weapons and Military Tests
Although theComplete Essentials from the Military Classicspresents an
astonishing variety of weapons, most martial arts were confined to the
usual battlefield choices. Swords (sometimes with a shield) and spears for
contact weapons, and bows and crossbows for distance weapons. The
astonishing array of weapons in theComplete Essentials, real and imag-
ined, only came into use in the realm of literature as a means to distinguish
characters from one another. Formulations like the“eighteen weapons”
created an impossibly broad and impractical standard of martial arts skills.
The only weapon that seems to have had any real use outside of the four
mentioned above is the staff. There were some variations of use among
these weapons, though it is difficult to pinpoint how widespread these
practices were. Other differences were possibly simply the quality of the
martial artist using the weapon. This mainstream of weapons use was
reflected in the military exams used intermittently during the Song
Dynasty.
Staffs had always been used as weapons, but in the Song they began to
take on a more prominent role. There were, for example,“Staff Societies”
in several northern regions that maintained family traditions of practice. A
biographical entry on Wang Huan shows a family tradition of staff use:
“At that time, Wang Huan’s father was called‘Iron Staff Wang’. When
Huan was young he struck a rock with a staff; the rock shattered and was
completely smashed.”^27 Skill with a staff was a particularly useful martial
art because wooden poles would have been cheap and readily available to
most rural people. Farmers would always have had some sort of pole
around, requiring no investment in a specialized metal weapon. Staffs
would also have been widely used in martial arts performances because
they could be used with less likelihood of serious injury. In later descrip-
tions of weapons instructors, staff and spear were frequently mentioned
together, and these weapons had a somewhat intertwined relationship.
Many of the movements would have been the same, with the spear the
much more lethal weapon. Particularly in peacetime, staffs would have
been useful for civilians who wanted to defend themselves with less
Weapons and Military Tests 135