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Martial arts have existed on the South Asian subcontinent since antiquity.
Two traditions have shaped the history, development, culture, and practice
of extant South Asian martial arts—the Tamil (Dravidian) tradition and the
Sanskrit Dhanur Veda tradition. The early Tamil Sangam “heroic” poetry
informs us that between the fourth century B.C. and A.D. 600 a warlike, mar-
tial spirit predominated across southern India. Each warrior received “reg-
ular military training” in target practice and horse riding, and specialized in
use of one or more weapons, such as lance or spear (vel), sword (val) and
shield (kedaham), and bow (vil) and arrow (Subramanian 1966, 143–144).
The heroic warriors assumed that power (ananku) was not transcendent,
but immanent, capricious, and potentially malevolent (Hart 1975, 26, 81).
War was considered a sacrifice of honor, and memorial stones were erected
to fallen heroic kings and warriors whose manifest power could be perma-
nently worshipped by their community and ancestors (Hart 1975, 137;
Kailasapathy 1968, 235)—a tradition witnessed today in the propitiation of
local medieval martial heroes in the popular teyyamcult of northern Kerala.
The Sanskrit Dhanur Vedic tradition was one of eighteen traditional
branches of knowledge. Although the name “Dhanur Veda” (science/
knowledge of archery) reflects the fact that the bow and arrow were con-
sidered the supreme weapons, the tradition included all fighting arts from
empty-hand grappling techniques to use of many weapons. Knowledge of
the Dhanur Vedic tradition is recorded in the two great Indian epics, the
Mahabharataand the Ramayana,whose vivid scenes describe how princely
heroes obtain and use their humanly or divinely acquired skills and powers
to defeat their enemies. They train in martial techniques under the tutelage
of great gurus like the Brahman master Drona, practice austerities and
meditation giving one access to subtle powers, and may receive a gift or a
boon of magical powers from a god. A variety of paradigms of martial
practice and power are reflected in the epics, from the strong, brutish
Bhima who depends on his physical strength to crush his foes with grap-
pling techniques or his mighty mace, to the “unsurpassable” Arjuna who
uses his subtle accomplishments in meditation to achieve superior powers
to conquer his enemies with his bow and arrow.
The only extant Dhanur Vedic text—chapters 249 through 252 of the
India 173