The Ancient Origins of Martial Arts and Its Endurance Through Time
Understanding the Importance of Reviving the Oldest Martial Arts Forms amidst Modern Challenges
I asked ChatGPT to list all the martial arts forms in the world. It listed the top 10 well-known ones. From Japan we have Karate, Judo and Aikido. The Chinese gave us Kung Fu and the Koreans had Taekwondo. The British contibuted Boxing which was also popular in Thailand in the form of Muay Thai. Wrestling also made the top ten list but its orgins dates back to many ancient civilizations, so a clear orgin story is hard to find because in its purest form it is nothing but a no-holds-barred fight where one emerges over the alpha.
Each one of these martial arts forms stay relevant to this day, popularized as sports in schools and as franchise opportunities for small-businesses. So if I asked you to name the oldest martial arts form in this world I am more than certain that you would name one of these popular ones. Frankly, I would have done the same.
Hey ChatGPT, What is the Oldest Martial Arts in the World?
This time the result was a shorter list, and while the AI engine added a disclaimer that determining the oldest art form is not easy due to these practices evolving overtime and taking new form, the top result was a martial arts form that is said to be at least 3000 years old1, older than the Kung Fu and Jujitsu, called the Kalaripayattu, from my birthplace of Kerala, India.
I will not be surprised if this is the first time you are hearing about Kalaripayattu, which is exactly the point of this article. In an era when health and fitness has become synonymous with well-being and lifestyle, when entrepreneurs are tribalizing new forms of fitness regimes, when many of the popular martial arts forms like Karate, Taekwondo, Jujitsu and Wrestling have become marketable franchisees, how did the oldest of them all get left behind as merely the exotic indulgence of the few?
If I can figure out how other Asian martial art forms managed to capture the awe of the western world very early, or how newer fitness regimes like Crossfit battled its way through a turbulent path of social critique from naysayers to the medical professionals, or how the practice of Yoga that orginated from the same ancient teachings of India managed to break free to become an everyday necessity for millions across the globe, maybe then I could draw parallels to understand why Kalaripayattu missed its chance for global adoption.
But first, what is Kalaripayattu? To answer this I will take you on a journey through history, from its origins to the influence it had on other martial arts forms in the 5th century, about a golden age before its unexpected and imposed early decline, about its bold return to a legacy that sustained the tests of time, to the growing popularity of Kalaripayattu in the 21st century India.
The Origin of Kalaripayattu
kalar·i·pay·at·tu
The literal translation is simple. Kalari means “battleground or battlefield”. Payattu means “the art or practice of fighting”. However, this practice of fighting in a battlefield has a mythical relevance.
It is said that when Lord Vishnu in his avatar of Parashurama created Kerala, he trained 21 of his disciples in the art of Kalaripayattu and built 108 training schools or Kalaris that would teach this warfare in order to protect the land that we commonly referred to today as God’s Own Country.
“The practice of Kalaripayattu is the journey of the warrior”, says Lakshmanan Gurukal in a NatGeo India interview this year2. He goes on to say that the warrior conditions his body to become his eyes in the battlefield through acute knowledge of the 64 marma or vital points, drawing energy from them as his life force, and targetting them to find the opponents weakpoints. Is it possible that George Lucas imagined the Jedi and the force within from inspirations of these ancient teachings from Southern India?
The warrior’s journey in mastering the art of Kalaripayattu spans across 4 phases: Meipayattu, the conditioning of the mind and body; Koltharipayattu, the practice of fighting using wooden weapons; Ankatharipayattu, the practice of fighting using metal weapons; Verumkai or Kaipayattu, the pratice of fighting using hand to hand combat.
The Influence of Kalaripayattu
In 5th century India, there exsisted a South Indian prince by the name of Bodhidharma, born into a warrior class family in Kanjipuram Tamil Nadu. While very little is known about his childhood and upbringing, it is said that he was a Buddhist who was also trained in Kerala’s martial arts style of Kalaripayattu. What is known for certain is that he left his home upon attaining elightment, and travelled north to China to spread the philosophies of Zen Buddhism.
Bodhidharma is known to have taken refuge in the early Shaolin monastery where he would teach physical and mindfulness techniques to Shaolin monks, that would then form the foundations of the well-known martial arts form of Shaolin Kung Fu. The books he wrote at the time of his Shaolin teachings are a testament to this indisputable fact.
In the age of AI where human creativity is challenged by machine learning, I take pride in saying that my writing is organic. Please leave a comment and share this article with as many humans as you can. Thank you!
The Golden Era of Kalaripayattu
The 4th to 6th century saw India unified under the rule of Ashoka, a Buddhist-convert. According to Wikipedia3, “this period, witnessing a Hindu religious and intellectual resurgence, is known as the Classical or Golden Age of India. During this time, aspects of Indian civilisation, administration, culture, and religion spread to much of Asia.”
It was a time when South India became a well-traversed region by travellers from far and wide, in their pursuit to attain spiritual knowlege and share beliefs across cultural boundaries.
There fore, it is believed that many of the far East Asian martial art forms like Karate and Jujitsu draw close similarities to techniques in Kalaripayattu, and it is reason why Kalaripayattu is considered to be the “mother of all martial arts forms”.
The Early Decline of Kalaripayattu
In 2022, Gurukkal SRD Prasad received the fourth-highest civilian award of the Republic of India, the Padma Shri, for his scholarly contributions and teachings of Kalaripayattu. He runs Sree Bharath Kalari which was the first training school formed in the post-independence era of India in 1948, by his late father Gurukkal Chirakkal T. Sreedharan Nair4.
According to the Gurukkal5, Kalaripayattu had its most prominent period between the 15th and 17th centuries, after which it started to decline with the arrival and political upheaval of the Portuguse conquerors, the insurgence of the Mysore rulers, and by the rule of the British empire.
The Portuguese introduced new weapons and changed the ethics of warfare in India, from the honorable ways of duels in Kalaripayattu, to the hidden ambushes and assinations using guns. In 1804, under the British rule, Kalaripayattu was banned to counter the rise and rebellion of the armies under the warrior prince of the royal dynasty of Kottayam, Pazhassi Raja and his trained Kalaripayattu mercineries.
The British banned Kalaripayattu weapons, and raided Kerala households to confiscate hidden weapons and prosecute those who disobeyed. When the Kalaripayattu schools were shutdown and it was prohibited to take lessons or teach in private, the practice gradually faded away to be cherished in memories of a once glorious time.
The Return of Kalaripayattu
It was in 1905 when the fight for India’s independence from the empire was taking shape, that the Swadeshi movement was initiated to gain independence from all foreign manufactured goods. The movement gradually morphed into one that inspired India to reclaim her national identity, thus emboldening the remaining Kalaripayattu masters to reemerge from the shadows of a British oppression.
Secretly, these masters would resume their teaching of Kalaripayattu in villages, to gradually revive the martial arts form from a hiatus of 100 years. It would take another 50+ years, after India gains her independence in 1947, that Kerala would officialize the practice by forming the State Kalaripayattu Association.
Since then, many Gurukkals made it their life goal to carry forward the legacy of teaching this practice to worthy disciples, who then followed suite in their masters footsteps. From the late historian and renowned Chirakkal T. Sreedharan Nair who passed the mantle to his son Padma Shri SRD Prasad, to the 81-year old Padma Shri Meenakshi Amma who runs a training school to this day, Kalaripayattu is promoted today as a practice of fitness and discipline, irrespective of caste, creed, age or gender.
The Legacy of Kalaripayattu
It is true that Kalaripayattu is making a comeback in 21st century Kerala. There is a new wave of interest spreading across Kerala households to enroll children at an early age. This is primarily due to the efforts of many prominent Kalaris such as the Vallabhatta Kalari under the leadership of Padma Shri Sankaranarayana Menon Chundayil aka Unni Gurukkal, who have been instrumental in promoting Kalaripayattu overseas. Till date they have opened 17 centers across the globe including the UK, UAE, US, France, Belgium and Sri Lanka.
According to Black Belt Magazine6, “Unni Gurukkal descended from a family of Kalaripayattu practitioners said to have lead the armies of a local principality during the middle ages. He started training with his father in the family art at the age of six.”
With Unni Gurukkal’s passing on 6th June 2023, the responsibilty to carry his legacy forward rests on the shoulders of his children K.P. Krishna Das (State president, Kalaripayattu Association), K.P. Rajeev Gurukkal, K.P. Dineshan Gurukkal and K.P. Nirmala and his grandchildren.
The Popularity of Kalaripayattu
My research into Kalaripayattu began with a simple naive question on Reddit7: Why is Kalaripayattu still not a mainstream and international phenomenon? It has led me to a new found fascination for this martial arts form that has withstood the trials of time. I am in awe of the perseverance of the masters past and present, of their struggles endured in the 20th century for independence, to their struggles ahead in the 21st century for revival.
According to a 2021 article in Indica Today8, the main critique for Kalaripayattu’s faded popularity seems to be its perceived inability to standardize and scale in contrast with martial art forms like Karate, which was standardized in the 1920s - 30s and now considered an Olympics Sport. It’s a fair point but I disagree with this line of thought.
Why are tourists from around the globe visiting Kerala to receive Ayurveda treatments? Because the 900 different Ayurveda herbs and medicinal plants that are used to create the essential oils for treatment, are abundantly found in the tropical forests of Kerala. Ayurveda is not scalable and it prevented the Monsanto’s of the world from mass producing it.
Similarily, Kalaripayattu must be institutionalized as the sacred art of Kerala as is Ayurveda to India, and we need to protect it from globalization. Instead of promoting worldwide adoption, Kalaripayattu must be localized to the region that it originated from, and be practiced in its original intended form, thus enabling more tourism around Kalaripayattu.
The Kerala Government in concert with the State Kalaripayattu Association must trademark and protect the usage of the brand and nomeclature of Kalaripayattu. Similar to how Greg Glassman protected his brand of CrossFit from being misused and misrepresented, unaffiliated and unaccredited schools or fitness centers such as KalariLAB.com must be scrutinized for modifying the ancient teaching practices and for creating new program structures to suit their business model.
The popularity of Kalaripayattu is deep rooted in the mythology, history and traditions of the people and culture of Kerala, and the future of Kalaripayattu lies in our hands.
India's 3,000-year-old martial art still practiced today for BBC REEL by Priyanka Mukherjee on May 27, 2022
Kalaripayattu: The Ultimate Martial Art? by National Geographic India on Feb 21, 2023
Wikipedia contributors. (2023, August 9). Kalaripayattu. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 16:31, August 10, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kalaripayattu&oldid=116944229
MUST WATCH: The Way of the Malabar Warrior - a 1981 documentary film by Sri Pervez Merwanji featuring Sri Chirakkal T Sreedharan Nair (1909 -1984) and his Sree Bharath Kalari (estd.1948), Valapattanam, Kannur
Origins of Kalarippayattu-- SRD Prasad narrates for Archival and Research Project (ARPO) on March 17, 2023
Unni Gurukkal, One of India's Oldest Kalaripayattu Masters, Passes Away for Black Belt Magazine by Mark Jacobs on June 12, 2023
Why is Kalaripayattu still not a mainstream and international phenomenon? by Raj Menon for REDDIT on June 28, 2023
Why Kalari Faces Hurdles in its Popularization by Ananth Krishna Subhalakhsmy for INDICA TODAY on July 14, 2021