Martial Arts Of The World - Webs

Relief carving
on the headstone
of an Indian
warrior outside
Meherangarh Fort
in Jodhpur, India.
(Jeremy Horner/
Corbis)
176 India
called a kalari), North India’s mushti
(wrestling) and dandi (staff fighting),
and Karnataka’s malkambh (wrestler’s
post). Among these, Kerala’s kalarippayattu
is the most complete extant
South Asian martial tradition today.
Kalarippayattu is unique to the
southwestern coastal region known today
as Kerala State. Dating from at least
the twelfth century and still practiced by
numerous masters today, kalarippayattu
combines elements of both the Sangam
Tamil arts and the Dhanur Vedic system.
Like their puranic and epic martial counterparts,
the kalarippayattu martial practitioners
traditionally sought to attain
practical power(s) to be used in combat—powers
attained through training
and daily practice of the art’s basic psychophysiological
exercises and weapons
work, mental powers attained through
meditation or actualization in mantra as
well as ritual practices, and overt physical
strength and power. Sharing a set of
assumptions about the body and body-mind relationship with yoga, practice
began with “the body” and moved inward through the practice of daily exercises
from the early age of seven. Kalarippayattu was traditionally practiced
primarily by Nayars, Kerala’s martial caste, as well as by a special subcaste
among Kerala’s Brahmans, the Yatra Brahmans; lower-caste
practitioners known as chekavar drawn from among special families of
Tiyyas (a relatively low-ranking caste); Muslims (especially Sufis in northern
Kerala); and Christians. The art is practiced by both boys and girls for general
health and well-being as well as the preparation of martial practitioners;
the external body eventually should “flow like a river.” The state of psychophysiological
actualization was accomplished through practice of dietary
and seasonal restraints, the receipt of a yearly full-body massage, development
of the requisite personal devotional attitude, and practice of exercises.
Kalarippayattu’s body exercise sequences (meippayattu) link combinations
of yoga asana-like poses (vativu), steps (cuvat), kicks (kal etupp), a variety
of jumps and turns, and coordinated hand and arm movements performed
in increasingly swift and difficult succession and combinations back and
forth across the kalari floor. The poses usually number eight, and they are