and unlike contemporary Krabi krabong practitioners, he fought while
mounted on an elephant.
The curriculum of Krabi-krabong consists of training in six different
weapon categories: staff, gnow(bladed staff), single sword, double sword,
mai sau(wooden club worn on the forearm), and the combination of spear
and shield. In addition, Krabi-krabong utilizes empty-hand techniques that
are said to be the battlefield ancestors of modern-day Muay Thai. Practi-
tioners train in pairs, using full contact and live blades.
Before each training session, match, or demonstration, it is required
to perform the dancelike Wai Kru ceremony. The Wai Kru are ceremonies
that show respect for the master teacher (Kru, Khru, or guru). Although the
dances’ structures and names vary from locale to locale, all are an integral
element of Thai culture and permeated by the Thai variant of Buddhist be-
liefs. There is, as Faubion Bowers notes, an intimate connection between
dance and combat throughout Thai tradition.
Vietnam
The likely origin of the Vietnamese people was southern China. Throughout
the country’s turbulent history, contact with and interference by China have
been a fact of life. The Chinese Han dynasty overthrew the Vietnamese Trien
dynasty, itself probably a Chinese family, in 111 B.C. In A.D. 39 a revolt led
by the Trung sisters gave a brief respite from China’s dominance. Chinese
rule resumed in 44. Eventually, in 939, Vietnam regained independence, al-
though China held sway over Vietnam’s rulers until the French era.
Vietnam’s history has been one of southward expansion, of internal
geographical division (either because of formal administrative divisions or
because of informal power assumed by regional viceroys), and of attempts
to assert the control of the central government over the actions of local
leaders. There has been little peace in Vietnam’s evolution.
The political situation in Vietnam, therefore, both kept the martial
arts systems in the nation closely tied to Chinese fighting arts and pre-
vented the kind of systematization and nationalization that have prevailed
within many other traditions. One effect has been considerable confusion
about the martial arts of Vietnam and a dearth of knowledge, particularly
in the West, regarding the history of the subject.
The Vietnamese martial arts (vo thuat) have remained responsive to
local imperatives, as distinct from the standardization developed in Japan
or in the People’s Republic of China. Even after the reunification of the
north and the south, a universally accepted body for the classification and
standardization of martial arts has yet to emerge publicly in Vietnam.
Thus, there are an indeterminate number of schools, some practicing fam-
ily traditions, others based in regional tradition, most clothed in secrecy,
Southeast Asia 547