11 ms·

Sri Lanka’s ancient, almost lost martial art

148 points by samizdis 5y ago

cmrajan 5y ago
I could see close parallels with ancient martial art Kalaripayattu [1] practiced in southern Indian state of Kerala. It's very popular and still being practiced there [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalaripayattu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalaripayattu
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- chupchap 5y ago
  I agree. The kacha, kalari all look too similar to be a coincidence. Similar style is followed in TN as well.
- chakkepolja 5y ago
  weapons as well, such as Urumi seem to be common to both.
- throwmaway99 5y ago
  I am not surprised. Sri Lanka shares a lot of culture and history with India. Afterall one of the origin stories of sri lanka is king Vijaya was banished from India and sailed to Sri Lanka where he met the locals then and established the kingdom that later became Sri Lanka. When I am working abroad and miss home food and I can't find a Sri Lankan shop, I often substitute it with Kerala food, which I believe some of our main dishes are inspired from. Both Kerala food and Sri Lankan food makes heavy use of coconut milk in preparing their dishes.
  - chana_masala 5y ago
    What about Tamil food? There are lots of ethnic Tamil in Sri Lanka
throwmaway99 5y ago
As a Sri Lankan it breaks my heart whenever this type of topic is brought up, the amount of damage colonizers including the British did to my country, my culture is just heart wrenching. How the British and other colonizers go unpunished for all what they have done not just to my country, but to so many other countries in the past is just unbelievable. But on a more positive side, more and more Sri Lankans are starting to realize what's missing and are actively trying to bring back some of the knowledge and wisdom that was lost all those many years back.
- publicola1990 5y ago
  Not related to the article, but would you be able to comment on why Sinhala is classified as an Indo-European language, rather than as a Dravidian language?
  - ummonk 5y ago
    Languages are classified based on relatedness, not geography. Just as you have an Indo-Aryan language, Sinhala, that made it down to Sri Lanka, you also have a Dravidian language, Brahui, that stuck around up in Pakistan.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      The famous example of an "out of place" language is Madagascar, where they speak a language you'd expect to find spoken by Pacific islanders.
  - cmrajan 5y ago
    Not OP, but Sinhala is classified as Indo-Aryan having developed when Buddhism spread to Srilanka and separate from Dravidian family of languages which is mostly limited to Southern part of India
  - umanwizard 5y ago
    Because it is descended from Sanskrit which has been known to be an Indo-European language since the very beginning of comparative linguistics. It is genetically unrelated to Dravidian languages, but it does have a lot of Dravidian loanwords.
joe_the_user 5y ago
While all the damages of the British occupation of Sri Lanka and elsewhere is terrible, I believe banning martial has been common the world over, especially before the modern era. I think various Chinese rulers as well as the Maoist banned some martial arts, Russia banned everything but Sambo in the Soviet era, Capoeira was developed in Brazil as a "secret martial art", martial arts were banned in Okinawan at one point (home of Karate and related arts). Being an oral tradition, martial arts tend to be always fracturing and in danger of dying out. Source: lots of martial arts contacts plus I practice an art known seriously to only one other person I know of in the world.
- ummonk 5y ago
  Banning martial arts was a common practice. An equally common practice has been claiming your martial art was banned and suppressed in the past, to give it legitimacy and an aura of mystery. With any given martial art, it's hard to determine whether it was actually banned or not.
  - satao 5y ago
    > An equally common practice has been claiming your martial art was banned and suppressed in the past, to give it legitimacy and an aura of mystery Do you have any source for this claim?
- chakkepolja 5y ago
  It's comparable to gun control, except that it kills the traditions of undocumented martial arts. But the people in power don't care about that.
  - joe_the_user 5y ago
    Yes, I was just going to add the similarity to gun control. But I'd also add that the urge for control isn't limited to states. When these arts were valuable, masters would be selective and kind of abusive, about who they let learn the secrets. The long, seemingly pointless exercises one had to go through to learn obscure art X were basically tests of loyalty and efforts to instill loyalty.
chakkepolja 5y ago
One sad thing about these ancient martial arts is, they were great for the battle conditions of the ancient era, but they were not sufficiently improved for modern situations. I don't know much about angampora in particular, but Kalaripayattu (which is a related martial art from Kerala) has sadly become more of a performing art than martial art these days.
- RajuVarghese 5y ago
  They could follow the path taken by judo and karate and become a sport (ie mock fighting) or a form of self-defense. That will include meditation, mental control and confidence-building which are all benefits. The original purpose of hand-to-hand combat will not be of much use in these times.
- watwut 5y ago
  In think they performing art is adaptation for modern situation. We dont need to strangle people or gauge their eyes out anymore in fight. We dont have warlord clans fighting over influence nor trying to eliminate other clans. And where those exist, they use guns. Martial arts as they existes were attempts to become as deadly as possible. The fight was about killing or seriously harming the other - stuff that leads to prison now.
  - chakkepolja 5y ago
    Well there's Krav Maga. Kalaripayattu / Silambam / Angampora could have been more skewed towards armed combat with the weapons of that era, which is fair. But martial arts have a place for self defence.
- Delk 5y ago
  Another reason why martial arts have evolved into sports or towards other non-combative priorities is that practising martial arts in an actual combative way is harsh and rough. Most people don't really want that, at least not on a level that might be required for practising and testing actual combat effectiveness. I suppose it might be possible for a martial art or tradition to be both actually martial and mainstream if it's part of the local culture e.g. for a significant proportion of men to engage in rough and actually violent martial arts and events. My perspective might be limited, but I don't think most modern societies do that.
stryan 5y ago
Angampora is a fascinating martial art, but while British colonialism is/was a scourge across the world there's little evidence that they actually banned the martial art. While I generally don't like to use reddit posts as sources, this one[0] is well researched enough and includes its (long list of) sources that I figured it counts. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/kh9gfb/the_british_banning_of_sri_lankan_martial_art/ https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/kh9gfb/the_brit...
- chalst 5y ago
  There's something about martial arts that encourages mythologising. The Reddit post you link to also mentions the uncritical assertion that Angampora is 5000 years old. Gillian Russell wrote a nice essay about the nature of received wisdom among many martial arts practitioners: Epistemic Viciousness in the Martial Arts. https://fightsciencesresearchinstitute.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/epistemic-viciousness-in-the-martial-arts/ https://fightsciencesresearchinstitute.wordpress.com/2008/10...
  - ctack 5y ago
    The linked paper doesn’t seem to exist :/
    - yorwba 5y ago
      https://web.archive.org/web/20100705171320/https://artsci.wustl.edu/~grussell/epistemicviciousness.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20100705171320/https://artsci.wu...
      - RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
        Just getting into this, but already fascinated. Great article.
- hliyan 5y ago
  Sri Lankan here. I'm probably going to catch some flak from enthusiasts for this, but what you see in this article is essentially a modern recreation. As far as I know, nothing except the name itself has survived antiquity (if this actually existed, it faded long before Europeans arrived). Enthusiasm in this art form was rekindled due to a fictionalized depiction in a TV show named Dandubasnamaana about 15-20 years ago, if I remember correctly. I've already had a complete Sri Lankan history education by then and I had never heard the word "Angampora" before this TV show. This is true of most Sri Lankans.
redis_mlc 5y ago
Fantastic photos! I didn't see any techniques that I would borrow, but maybe I need to look into Angampora some more. throwmaway99: According to Dr. Thomas Sowell, colonized countries gained a large advantage in learning the colonial language, so I suppose that's the bright side.
fumblebee 5y ago
I love atlasobscura's content, but why can't I easily opt out of cookies? I would pay good money for a solution to the cookies popup problem.
- herla 5y ago
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-about-cookies/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-a... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...
znt 5y ago
> A traditional exercise to strengthen arms involves the assistance of an elephant. Well that sounds kind of impractical.
- smabie 5y ago
  I just don't believe this article at all. No way this is even true.

148 points by samizdis 5y ago

I could see close parallels with ancient martial art Kalaripayattu [1] practiced in southern Indian state of Kerala. It's very popular and still being practiced there [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalaripayattu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalaripayattu

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chupchap 5y ago
I agree. The kacha, kalari all look too similar to be a coincidence. Similar style is followed in TN as well.
chakkepolja 5y ago
weapons as well, such as Urumi seem to be common to both.
throwmaway99 5y ago
I am not surprised. Sri Lanka shares a lot of culture and history with India. Afterall one of the origin stories of sri lanka is king Vijaya was banished from India and sailed to Sri Lanka where he met the locals then and established the kingdom that later became Sri Lanka. When I am working abroad and miss home food and I can't find a Sri Lankan shop, I often substitute it with Kerala food, which I believe some of our main dishes are inspired from. Both Kerala food and Sri Lankan food makes heavy use of coconut milk in preparing their dishes.
- chana_masala 5y ago
  What about Tamil food? There are lots of ethnic Tamil in Sri Lanka

throwmaway99 5y ago

As a Sri Lankan it breaks my heart whenever this type of topic is brought up, the amount of damage colonizers including the British did to my country, my culture is just heart wrenching. How the British and other colonizers go unpunished for all what they have done not just to my country, but to so many other countries in the past is just unbelievable. But on a more positive side, more and more Sri Lankans are starting to realize what's missing and are actively trying to bring back some of the knowledge and wisdom that was lost all those many years back.

publicola1990 5y ago
Not related to the article, but would you be able to comment on why Sinhala is classified as an Indo-European language, rather than as a Dravidian language?
- ummonk 5y ago
  Languages are classified based on relatedness, not geography. Just as you have an Indo-Aryan language, Sinhala, that made it down to Sri Lanka, you also have a Dravidian language, Brahui, that stuck around up in Pakistan.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    The famous example of an "out of place" language is Madagascar, where they speak a language you'd expect to find spoken by Pacific islanders.
- cmrajan 5y ago
  Not OP, but Sinhala is classified as Indo-Aryan having developed when Buddhism spread to Srilanka and separate from Dravidian family of languages which is mostly limited to Southern part of India
- umanwizard 5y ago
  Because it is descended from Sanskrit which has been known to be an Indo-European language since the very beginning of comparative linguistics. It is genetically unrelated to Dravidian languages, but it does have a lot of Dravidian loanwords.

joe_the_user 5y ago

While all the damages of the British occupation of Sri Lanka and elsewhere is terrible, I believe banning martial has been common the world over, especially before the modern era. I think various Chinese rulers as well as the Maoist banned some martial arts, Russia banned everything but Sambo in the Soviet era, Capoeira was developed in Brazil as a "secret martial art", martial arts were banned in Okinawan at one point (home of Karate and related arts). Being an oral tradition, martial arts tend to be always fracturing and in danger of dying out. Source: lots of martial arts contacts plus I practice an art known seriously to only one other person I know of in the world.

ummonk 5y ago
Banning martial arts was a common practice. An equally common practice has been claiming your martial art was banned and suppressed in the past, to give it legitimacy and an aura of mystery. With any given martial art, it's hard to determine whether it was actually banned or not.
- satao 5y ago
  > An equally common practice has been claiming your martial art was banned and suppressed in the past, to give it legitimacy and an aura of mystery Do you have any source for this claim?
chakkepolja 5y ago
It's comparable to gun control, except that it kills the traditions of undocumented martial arts. But the people in power don't care about that.
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  Yes, I was just going to add the similarity to gun control. But I'd also add that the urge for control isn't limited to states. When these arts were valuable, masters would be selective and kind of abusive, about who they let learn the secrets. The long, seemingly pointless exercises one had to go through to learn obscure art X were basically tests of loyalty and efforts to instill loyalty.

chakkepolja 5y ago

One sad thing about these ancient martial arts is, they were great for the battle conditions of the ancient era, but they were not sufficiently improved for modern situations. I don't know much about angampora in particular, but Kalaripayattu (which is a related martial art from Kerala) has sadly become more of a performing art than martial art these days.

RajuVarghese 5y ago
They could follow the path taken by judo and karate and become a sport (ie mock fighting) or a form of self-defense. That will include meditation, mental control and confidence-building which are all benefits. The original purpose of hand-to-hand combat will not be of much use in these times.
watwut 5y ago
In think they performing art is adaptation for modern situation. We dont need to strangle people or gauge their eyes out anymore in fight. We dont have warlord clans fighting over influence nor trying to eliminate other clans. And where those exist, they use guns. Martial arts as they existes were attempts to become as deadly as possible. The fight was about killing or seriously harming the other - stuff that leads to prison now.
- chakkepolja 5y ago
  Well there's Krav Maga. Kalaripayattu / Silambam / Angampora could have been more skewed towards armed combat with the weapons of that era, which is fair. But martial arts have a place for self defence.
Delk 5y ago
Another reason why martial arts have evolved into sports or towards other non-combative priorities is that practising martial arts in an actual combative way is harsh and rough. Most people don't really want that, at least not on a level that might be required for practising and testing actual combat effectiveness. I suppose it might be possible for a martial art or tradition to be both actually martial and mainstream if it's part of the local culture e.g. for a significant proportion of men to engage in rough and actually violent martial arts and events. My perspective might be limited, but I don't think most modern societies do that.

stryan 5y ago

Angampora is a fascinating martial art, but while British colonialism is/was a scourge across the world there's little evidence that they actually banned the martial art. While I generally don't like to use reddit posts as sources, this one[0] is well researched enough and includes its (long list of) sources that I figured it counts. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/kh9gfb/the_british_banning_of_sri_lankan_martial_art/ https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/kh9gfb/the_brit...

chalst 5y ago
There's something about martial arts that encourages mythologising. The Reddit post you link to also mentions the uncritical assertion that Angampora is 5000 years old. Gillian Russell wrote a nice essay about the nature of received wisdom among many martial arts practitioners: Epistemic Viciousness in the Martial Arts. https://fightsciencesresearchinstitute.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/epistemic-viciousness-in-the-martial-arts/ https://fightsciencesresearchinstitute.wordpress.com/2008/10...
- ctack 5y ago
  The linked paper doesn’t seem to exist :/
  - yorwba 5y ago
    https://web.archive.org/web/20100705171320/https://artsci.wustl.edu/~grussell/epistemicviciousness.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20100705171320/https://artsci.wu...
    - RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
      Just getting into this, but already fascinated. Great article.
hliyan 5y ago
Sri Lankan here. I'm probably going to catch some flak from enthusiasts for this, but what you see in this article is essentially a modern recreation. As far as I know, nothing except the name itself has survived antiquity (if this actually existed, it faded long before Europeans arrived). Enthusiasm in this art form was rekindled due to a fictionalized depiction in a TV show named Dandubasnamaana about 15-20 years ago, if I remember correctly. I've already had a complete Sri Lankan history education by then and I had never heard the word "Angampora" before this TV show. This is true of most Sri Lankans.

redis_mlc 5y ago

Fantastic photos! I didn't see any techniques that I would borrow, but maybe I need to look into Angampora some more. throwmaway99: According to Dr. Thomas Sowell, colonized countries gained a large advantage in learning the colonial language, so I suppose that's the bright side.

fumblebee 5y ago

I love atlasobscura's content, but why can't I easily opt out of cookies? I would pay good money for a solution to the cookies popup problem.

herla 5y ago
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-about-cookies/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-a... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...

znt 5y ago

> A traditional exercise to strengthen arms involves the assistance of an elephant. Well that sounds kind of impractical.

smabie 5y ago
I just don't believe this article at all. No way this is even true.