are launched from very low stances, deep crouches, or even creeping posi-
tions. These stances are regarded as “signatures” of silat.
Most sources contend that silat originated on the Indonesian island of
Sumatra, located just across the Strait of Malacca from the Malaysian
peninsula. The art originated in Sumatra during the period of the
Menangkabu Empire. The art developed and proliferated from the seventh
to the sixteenth centuries, becoming a network of systematized arts by
about the fourteenth century. The art was exported to Malaysia to the
Malaccan court and undoubtedly influenced bersilat, which enters
recorded history in about the fourteenth century.
Silat is an amalgam of indigenous Indonesian martial traditions and
imported traditions from India, China, and the Middle East. In contempo-
rary Indonesia the Japanese arts (e.g., jûdô and karate) and weapons (e.g.,
the katana,the classic Japanese single-edged, curved sword) have exerted
an influence on some schools. The earliest non-Indonesian influences are
likely to have been introduced in the area of the Sumatran seaport of
Palembang during the period of the Mahayana Buddhist Srivijaya Empire
(seventh to twelfth century A.D.) by Indians and Chinese who landed at the
seaport. In noting the variety of influences on silat from abroad, Donn
Draeger asserts, “In pentjak-silat can be found Nepalese music, Hindu
weapons and combative styles, Siamese costumes, Arabian weapons, and
Chinese weapons and combative tactics” (1972, 32). From Chinese wushu,
silat derived its circular movement patterns, weapon names (e.g., pisau,a
type of knife), and probably the use of animal forms in its various styles;
Draeger and Robert Smith contend that both wushu and silat animal forms
were inspired by early Indian combatives, however. Hindu culture can be
seen in silat’s grappling tactics, and the prototype of the tjabang(a short
metal truncheon roughly in the shape of a blunt trident, resembling the
Okinawan sai) is probably the Indian trisula.With the arrival of Islam in
the archipelago, the Arab jambia probably provided the prototype for
many Muslim pentjak silat blades. In the twentieth century, contemporary
Japanese martial arts influenced modern silat tactics, techniques, weapons,
and belt ranking (Draeger and Smith 1980, 32–33).
On the other hand, the most common oral traditions attribute the ori-
gins of the art to a native Indonesian inventor. Legend claims that a west-
ern Sumatran woman created the art after watching a fight between a
snake and a bird or, another variant states, a large bird and a tiger. This is
a legend that silat holds in common with other non-Indonesian martial arts
such as taijiquan (tai chi ch’uan). If not of independent origin, this narra-
tive may have been passed along with the animal styles common to the var-
ious systems of silat as an element of the Chinese heritage. This borrowing
would be consistent with Draeger and Smith’s arguments noted above.
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