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Martial Arts Of The World - Webs

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claim to fame was that it trained its monks to run for many<br />

days and nights without stopping. <strong>The</strong> basis for such tales is<br />

the khora, or pedestrian mandalas, run by Tibetan monks<br />

around sacred mountains. Buddhist monks ran clockwise, while<br />

Bon monks traveled counterclockwise. (This difference had to<br />

do with which direction the practitioner held to be the most<br />

important, the female/left or the male/right. <strong>The</strong> landowning<br />

classes, which included priests and soldiers, generally preferred<br />

the right-hand path, while the mercantile classes, which included<br />

artisans, merchants, potters, burglars, hunters, and prostitutes,<br />

generally preferred the left-hand path.) Analogous<br />

dances appeared in Islam and Christianity about the same time.<br />

<strong>The</strong> Islamic and Christian dances represented the angels in<br />

heaven and the progression of the planets. Only men did such<br />

dancing, as women’s dances were considered lewd. Such dances<br />

also reinforced Hellenistic medical theories, according to which<br />

standing strengthened the spine, walking removed afflictions of<br />

the head and chest, and well-regulated breathing tempered the<br />

heat of the heart.<br />

1042 Warrior-monks establish a Western Saharan Islamic nomocracy<br />

known as the Almoravides (al-murabbitun—those who gather<br />

in the fortress to wage the holy war). By the 1080s, these fundamentalists<br />

had conquered Morocco and invaded Ghana and<br />

Iberia; Rodrigo Díaz, known as El Cid, was the Christian hero<br />

of the Iberian defense.<br />

About 1063 Following his reported intervention during a battle in Sicily,<br />

Saint George becomes the patron saint of Norman warriors. Pious<br />

English soldiers continued seeking Saint George’s assistance<br />

well into the modern era, and he was reported to be personally<br />

supporting British forces as late as 1914.<br />

1066 According to the Chronicle of Saint Martin of Tours, Geoffroi<br />

de Preuilli, the man “who invented tournaments,” is killed during<br />

a tournament at Angers. <strong>The</strong> Germans rejected the French<br />

claim to primacy in inventing tournaments, citing as evidence<br />

similar equestrian games played by the retainers of Louis the<br />

German in 842 and King Henry the Fowler ca. 930.<br />

About 1070 An Englishman known as Hereward the Wake exchanges blows<br />

with a potter, the two men agreeing to stand up to each other’s<br />

blows in turn, with the better man to be judged by the result.<br />

<strong>The</strong> blows seem to have been open-handed slaps to the side of<br />

the head rather than punches to the jaw, but in the parlance of<br />

the day the game was known as boxing. In the nineteenth century,<br />

the story caused Sir Walter Scott to claim that Richard the<br />

Lion-Hearted played similar boxing games.<br />

About 1075 Norman clergy start dubbing Norman knights. <strong>The</strong> reason<br />

seems to have been that the clergy wanted to exert control<br />

over the men-at-arms by blessing preexisting initiation rites.<br />

Rituals varied from place to place. <strong>The</strong> practice of “striking<br />

me kneeling, with a broadsword, and pouring ale upon my<br />

head” (Burke 1978, 39–41) is associated with eighteenth-century<br />

journeyman initiations rather than medieval aristocratic<br />

practice.<br />

Chronological History of the <strong>Martial</strong> <strong>Arts</strong> 797

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