Did eastern martial arts come from the west?

[Benjamin Parker]

I read that Alexander the great's men were trained in pankration so I'm wondering if thats were EMA came from, they conquered india and the selucids expanded further into india and so perhaps someone who knew pankration (say a retired soldier with nothing better to do ? ) started teaching it and his students taught it and some of them went to asia and started teaching what they learned?... also when Alexander conquered egypt perhaps he also assimilated egyptian wrestling? can anybody help me with this theory?

[Nathan Calvert]

This is an interesting theory but it has one major flaw, and that is time. In China the earliest style of martial art still in practice Shǒubó can be found as early as 1800 BC, well before Alexander the Great was even born. as far as tracing back history to one specific martial art in one specific part of the world it simply can't be done.

[Nathan Calvert]

sorry this computer entered my reply twice

[Sal Bertucci]

Yeah, the "need" to fight is found in every corner of the world, and since all humans are essentially the same, the discovery of certain techniques could appear anywhere in the world at the same time. If you go back to the Portuguese stick fighting thread, you'll find similar remarks. For example, some people had a hard time believing that it actually originated in Portugal, but was imported from India. Which only makes a very moderate amount of sense. I mean honestly, people have been fighting for how many THOUSANDS of years, and there are stick (large and small) all over the world. Go figure to think that two people on opposite sides of the world might pick up a six foot stick, and, both independently, decide that "the best way to hit someone with this stick is like this".

[Maxime Chouinard]

Thats called diffusionism (or in that case, over zealous diffusionism). It became popular in the 1940's to explain some parralels between different cultures. While it makes sense in many fields, often it is missused. Some will try to make links between everything to get to the original or prove the superiority of one. In the case of martial arts, especially before written materials, it is nearly impossible to make solid links. Every culture fought, be it for war or fun, and even if they didn't had precise systems, more likely than not parents and elders had a method or tricks to teach their sons which became more and more codified. And even if there was at some points links between certain styles, what they are today is probably completely different.

And now this theory seems even more popular: "Kalaripayatt is the ancestor of every EMA, Musashi invented the niten style from portuguese sailors rapier styles (now that's two false myths in one), Jogo do pau is from India, kung fu is the ancestor of japanese martial arts...." You can read those theories from pseudo historians in many black belt type magazines. I heard the thing about pancration before, while it could have been influential, nothing can prove it, it could even be the other way around for all we know.

[Brian Brush]

As mentioned by other folks, it's difficult to believe that Pankration is the mama of all martial arts. However, I think it's a safe bet to say that Pankration influenced Indian martial arts, and through them, other arts of Asia. That kind of blending is still evident today, and if rumors are true, has been true at other times in the past. Some good examples are the melding of Muay Thai with western Boxing, Savate with SanShou kickboxing, and Spanish bladework with Escrima.

It's obvious that fighting has been a huge part of all human history. However, I'd be willing to bet that not all of the fighting styles we've developed have been codified and passed down in a systematic manner. While Nathan mentions a Chinese system from 1800 BC, I have never heard of it before, and wonder how valid any mention of this fighting style is, not out of disrespect for anothers opinion, but because many Asian martial arts shroud their origins in legend and myth.

I like to think that Pankration may have exposed Indian martial artists to a codified and systematic method of passing along martial traditions. This could explain why the legendary Bodhidharma showed up in China and started teaching the Shaolin Monks his way of fighting. He knew the system.

Anyway, it's all speculation. Fun speculation, but close enough to assumption to make the proverb true.

[CalebChow]

I think the oldest Chinese martial art involved pictures of techniques using a type of spiked helmet...but it was a long time ago since I saw that so I'm not sure.


EDIT: Actually I think it was earlier than 1800 BCE...

[Nathan Calvert]

I like to think that Pankration may have exposed Indian martial artists to a codified and systematic method of passing along martial traditions. This could explain why the legendary Bodhidharma showed up in China and started teaching the Shaolin Monks his way of fighting. He knew the system.

Anyway, it's all speculation. Fun speculation, but close enough to assumption to make the proverb true.

I find your thoughts on the origins of Indian martial arts very interesting. Respectfully i don't agree with it one hundred percent but would rather not argue on every small detail. as for the martial art that i mentioned Shǒubó, it was the the term for what we know today as kung fu during the Shang dynasty. Like you said its all Fun speculation

[Nathan Calvert]

I think the 1800 BC martial art involved pictures of techniques using a type of spiked helmet...but it was a long time ago since I saw that so I'm not sure.

I have never acctually seen pictures of it but i would love to if you could tell me where to find them

[CalebChow]

I think the 1800 BC martial art involved pictures of techniques using a type of spiked helmet...but it was a long time ago since I saw that so I'm not sure.

I have never acctually seen pictures of it but i would love to if you could tell me where to find them

It was quite some time ago and it may have been a more recent artist's depiction, but I'll try to find it.

[Brian Brush]

Thanks for the reply Nathan. Shoubo, I believe, is just a generic term for fighting arts, which could be anything from the way my grandfather taught me to punch, to a codified system. If it's like the more modern term of kung fu, it can cover a lot of different things, because kung fu really means hard work. Admittedly though, we don't really know a lot about the origins of martial arts in Asia, because they can be pretty secretive, and they mix myth and legend with fact.

Has anyone read Stephen Pressfield's book "Gate of Fire"? The way he deals with training among the Spartans has more in common with methods of training the military than it does training in a dojo or an ecole. They trained to fight as a unit. Alexader's success came out of the same kind of training. I've read that the Persians were held off by the Spartans and their allies for so long because they hadn't trained to fight in units. Perhaps it was this idea, of fighting as a unit, that rubbed off on the warriors of India, and crossed into China. Maybe the demonstrations of kung fu we've seen in films, with hundreds of participants, are a remnant of this unit-based training. Who knows.

'Tis fun though.

[Nathan Calvert]

Thanks for the reply Nathan. Shoubo, I believe, is just a generic term for fighting arts, which could be anything from the way my grandfather taught me to punch, to a codified system. If it's like the more modern term of kung fu, it can cover a lot of different things, because kung fu really means hard work. Admittedly though, we don't really know a lot about the origins of martial arts in Asia, because they can be pretty secretive, and they mix myth and legend with fact.

I apologize if my last reply was not as clear as i wanted it to be, when i said Shǒubó was the term for what we today know as kung fu what i ment was by that was that today kung fu is normally defined as a generic term for any of the styles of Chinese martial arts. At the time the term Shǒubó was uesd the kung fu was a term for mastery in any kind of skill.

[Maxime Chouinard]

I like to think that Pankration may have exposed Indian martial artists to a codified and systematic method of passing along martial traditions. This could explain why the legendary Bodhidharma showed up in China and started teaching the Shaolin Monks his way of fighting. He knew the system.

Like you said that is only speculation. We can't know for sure if India didn't had any codified method of instruction, thinking that it all originated from Greece is a bit ethnocentric without any proof. If different cultures without any contact can establish calendars and agriculture, then codified fighting systems are not necessarily unique to one.

As for Bodhidharma, he supposedly made his trip to Shaolin centuries after Alexander's death, and the first writing of his visit is made a millenium after it actually happened (composed in 1624, but no mention of him before 1827). Some historians today doubt he even visited Shaolin. Actually some of the fist monks are said to be expert in martial skills, way before Bodhidharma's supposed visit and many researcher now point at a prehistoric origin for chinese martial arts.

[Randall Pleasant]

...many researcher now point at a prehistoric origin for chinese martial arts.

I have issues with those conclusions of those researchers. A quality researcher with indepth knowledge of both martial arts and China would consider the following points:

If a codified system of martial instruction is not written down or shown in art then it does not leave behind any type of artifacts to indicate its existance in the past.
If a codified system of martial instruction is written down then it is by default done so within the historical period of that culture.
China has an extremely long historical period - approximately 4,000 years!


Unless there is other important related information you did not mention I would consider those conclusions little more than wild guessing rooted in a very bias view.

[Gene Tausk]

I read that Alexander the great's men were trained in pankration so I'm wondering if thats were EMA came from, they conquered india and the selucids expanded further into india and so perhaps someone who knew pankration (say a retired soldier with nothing better to do ? ) started teaching it and his students taught it and some of them went to asia and started teaching what they learned?... also when Alexander conquered egypt perhaps he also assimilated egyptian wrestling? can anybody help me with this theory?

This is an old "argument" of East influencing West and vice-versa. I am assuming you are talking about unarmed and not armed combat here (in which case this belongs on the Unarmed thread, but so be it). Armed combat is dependent on many variables, including (but not limited to): technology, environment, necessity and culture, which is why you have a great disparity and variance in arms and armor around the world.

As for unarmed combat, the idea that Indians, Chinese, Japanese, etc. did not know how to kick, punch or wrestle until someone came around to show them seems to me to be completely unrealistic. Every culture of which I am aware has some sort of folk wrestling tradition. Wrestling is probably one of the oldest sports and martial systems of humanity. If you are saying that pankration helped to influence Indian fighting arts after Alexander's invasion, yeah, that would make sense. If you are saying that Indians (and the people and cultures of the Indian subcontinent) had no idea of unarmed combat until Alexander showed up......that's asking a bit much.

Just like there are still people out there who think that Europeans had no idea about "real" fighting until they encountered Far Eastern peoples.