Thread: silat

Originally Posted by haumana2000

Yeah, me being from Hawai'i I know first hand that some of my friends dads there have cock farms, though they are Kapu,( off limits) to all but a select few of course. There is a book called Iron Butterfly, that details an escrimadors ship travels and his encounters with the native martial arts of Hawaii, and how they exchanged information.

Very good book, by the way

Mike

I have practiced and continue to practice both. Yes there are similarities. I have touched on this before, there are similarities in both groups of peoples, with several migration theories though it largely depends upon who you ask. the biggest difference is the lack of metalworking in the polynesian islands most are either coral or volcanic. which of course creates a big difference. traditional Mea Kaua or weaponry was crafted from hardwoods. shark teeth, and stone, which puts an emphasis on striking, or thrusting vs, slashing, although with a good leiomano (shark) blade this was highly possible. also different is the lack of bow and arrow (pana in the PI.) in polynesia, they had them but for some reason used them for sport rather than war.

GREAT BOOK SIKAL! one of my favorites!

I think metalic weapons were rare in some areas of the Philippines before the spanish invasion... I read somewhere about a chinese text concerning raids by a filipino tribe on mainland China (12th century?)... These peoples had spears with metal blades fixed to them, the spears were attached to thin ropes in order to retrieve them as metal was very precious, I will look for it...

This was a common trait of Polynesian spears as well, there were two types ihe short thrusting spears about 6ft, and pololu long ones usually double that length. ihe were almost always barbed and did contain the retention cord that you spoke of called Ka'ane. Though they did not have metal, if the spear broke, he still could retain the other end as a club (newa) or use the cord as well, because lua depts, were skilled in using flexible weapons. As far as the fighting arts, go, The Lua is generally more fitted to the larger body types of the Polynesians than the smaller Filipinos, simply due to the strength involved. The techniques are not brute strength by any means, as I have seen some pretty large Hawaiians perform the moves as fluid as the Hula, but in general the moves are more linear, and grappling oriented. Most people consider the hula as very feminine, but the traditional male hula (Kahiko Kane) is very strong, and there is a also remnants of the Lua perfomed in a dance from the island of Molokai, called Hula kui' na Molo'kai. Molo' kai' refers to the rolling motion of the waves, and kui' means to strike. Hawaii'ans did use sticks in much the same way as FMA, but generally preferred a longer staff (ko'ko'o')

This is an interesting link to filipino weapons:
http://vikingsword.com/rila/krieger.html

Originally Posted by Crucible

I think there's only one person doing Philipine silat as we'd recognize it, here in the US. But I believe she's only doing it for performance and not teaching it to the public. I'll PM you a link. Most people doing Philipine silat here have actually never been to the P.I. or Mindanao and its usually Indonesian silat mixed in with escrima and some other things.

That's not quite true. The Filipino Silat that Guro Dan Inosanto, for instance, teaches comes predominately from John Lacoste who had traveled and trained in many parts of the PI. And I don't think he's the only one but others are eluding me right now. But there's definitely that source for Filipino Silat. Of course, Guro Dan has also trained in Indonesian and Malaysian Silat, too. But he is able to isolate the Filipino Silat when he wants to.

Mike

Mike,
Please feel free to correct me and list anyone else that comes to mind. Guru Dan isn't someone I automaticly think of as doing Philipine silat. I'm aware of GM Lacoste's Mindanao connections and travels but he wasn't very forthcoming about who and where he learned from so its difficult to verify. I've seen silat and kuntao from pesilats from two diffrent tribes, and know of about 10 diffrent kinds of silat in the P.I. From what I've seen of footage of Jaunito Lacoste and Inosanto blend there's nothing I recognize in my experiance as coming from Mindanao or Sulu. Its possible he may of picked up paticular things or techniques but over all I wouldn't categorize it as silat as practiced in Mindanao, especially to krys who's studying a style that's been preserved for over ten generations.