art of pentjak silatexists the magical tradition of Kebatinan.The esoteric
techniques of the art, it is said, permit practitioners to kill at a distance by
the use of magic and to render themselves invulnerable. In Java, it was be-
lieved that the supernormal powers conferred by silat (rather than world
opinion and United Nations intervention) had forced the Dutch to aban-
don colonialism there in the aftermath of World War II. Lest it be believed
that such traditional beliefs are disappearing under the impact of contem-
porary Southeast Asian society, however, James Scott reports that when an
organization claiming thirty thousand members in Malaysia was banned,
among the organization’s offenses were teaching silat and encouraging un-
Islamic supernatural practices by use of magical chants and trances.
The beliefs in invulnerability acquired by esoteric martial practice fos-
tered by the Harmonious Fists (the Chinese “Boxers” of the late nineteenth
to the early twentieth centuries) represent an immediate analogy to this
Southeast Asian phenomenon, but belief in the magical invulnerability en-
gendered by traditional martial arts is not limited to Asia. Brazilian
capoeira, many of whose practitioners enhance their physical abilities by si-
multaneously practicing Candomble (an African-based religion syncretized
in Brazil), maintains beliefs in the ability to develop supernormal powers.
In addition to the creation of the corpo fechado (Portuguese; closed body)
that is impervious to knives or bullets, oral tradition attests to the ability
of some capoeiristas to transform into an animal or tree, or even to disap-
pear at will.
Worth noting is the fact that not only are individual martial artists
transformed into ethnic folk heroes in instances of political conflict, beliefs
in the invulnerability developed by the practice of the martial arts are fore-
grounded in such contexts, as well. Capoeira, silat, and Chinese boxing
have each been reputed to give oppressed people an advantage in colonial
situations. Martial resistance and supernatural resistance are not invariably
yoked, however. For example, in the late nineteenth century the Native
American Ghost Dance led by the Paiute prophet Wovoka promised to
cleanse the earth of the white man by ritual means, at least as it was prac-
ticed among the tribes of the Great Basin. A contemporary religiously fu-
eled guerilla movement, God’s Army, led by the twelve-year-old Htoo
Brothers in Myanmar, manifests no martial arts component in the sense
used here. Thus, utilizing magical beliefs embedded in martial arts is com-
mon in grassroots rebellions, but not inevitable.
On the other hand, folklore is an inevitable feature of the martial arts.
Certainly, these traditions cannot be treated as, strictly speaking, histori-
cally or scientifically verifiable. Neither should they be discounted as non-
sense, however. The sense they embody is an esoteric one of group identity,
a metaphysical sense of the ways in which martial doctrines harmonize
Folklore in the Martial Arts 133