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Sri Lanka’s ancient, almost lost martial art

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Re: Sri Lanka’s ancient, almost lost martial art

#51

Post by 101_101 »

imasrilankan wrote: post #25
throwmaway99 wrote: post #3

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 starti…

As a Sri Lankan, most of us like to whinge about our past. We like to think we're the only country that was "oppressed" and the colonizers are the reason for all our current problems.

This guy gets it.

Re: Sri Lanka’s ancient, almost lost martial art

#52

Post by chana_masala »

101_101 wrote: post #49
throwmaway99 wrote: post #3

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 starti…

LMFAO GTFO with your proud history dude. SL is currently run by a corrupted family (Rajapaksha's). they have been accused of crimes(most of those cases got dropped for some reason. LOL). they changed the constitution so their brother, who is a dual citizen can take a seat in the parliament. they pardoned convicted child killers, war criminals & murderers. they exploited racism to get into the power. they even let con…

What you're arguing is basically whataboutism. One can still be proud while recognizing the faults of e.g. Rajapaksha. Besides, is the parent poster Sinhalese or ethnic Tamil? Doesn't really matter but there is more than one type of Sri Lankan

Re: Sri Lanka’s ancient, almost lost martial art

#53

Post by 101_101 »

chana_masala wrote: post #52
101_101 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LMFAO GTFO with your proud history dude. SL is currently run by a corrupted family (Rajapaksha's). they have been accused of crimes(most of those cases got dropped for some reason. LOL). they changed the constitution so their brother, who is a dual citizen can take a seat in the parliament. they pardoned convicted child killers, war criminals & murderers. they exploited racism to get into the power. they even let con…

What you're arguing is basically whataboutism. One can still be proud while recognizing the faults of e.g. Rajapaksha. Besides, is the parent poster Sinhalese or ethnic Tamil? Doesn't really matter but there is more than one type of Sri Lankan

you should look up the definition of the whataboutism, because my comment doesn't have anything to do with that. also, I didn't mention anything about nationality or ethnicity. maybe you should go back and reply to the correct comment.

Re: Sri Lanka’s ancient, almost lost martial art

#54

Post by danenania »

saiya-jin wrote: post #35
brigandish wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How the British and other colonizers go unpunished I have to wonder how it's possible to decide whom to punish when the vast majority of those involved are dead, if any are left, and what you would punish them with? Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm cutting down the population of "colonizers", you did point at "the British" so it should be up to you to clarify the bounds.

In this case its super easy - Great Britain, a specific state next to continental Europe. Punishment as such can be done ie financially via direct aid. Building schools and hospitals. You name it. But this would be a direct admission how monstrously they fucked up this world for centuries and that's something no politician will admit, no matter what they think personally. Also, we talk about most of western Europe he…

There’s also a question of how far back to go. With few exceptions, human history is an unbroken procession of brutal conquests. Many colonized peoples were oppressors at some stage in their history. That doesn’t justify the horrors of colonialism, but it does complicate attempts to make absolute moral (or legal) judgments against one group or another based on the crimes of their ancestors.

Re: Sri Lanka’s ancient, almost lost martial art

#56

Post by yorwba »

ctack wrote: post #47
chalst wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The linked paper doesn’t seem to exist :/

https://web.archive.org/web/20100705171320/https://artsci.wu...

Re: Sri Lanka’s ancient, almost lost martial art

#57

Post by chakkepolja »

publicola1990 wrote: post #36
School-Cotton wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Kannada is very influenced by Sanskrit, but still is a Dravidian lang. Is there more Sanskrit influence in Sinhala compared with Kannada?

It's more about linguistic structure than origin of words.

Kannada, Telugu & Malayalam, even pre-dravidan-movement Tamil have lot of borrowed sanskrit vocabulary, but they retain structure of Dravidian languages.

Also most common words used are also Dravidan origin.

For example:

Kannada - Naanu, Tamil - Naan, Telugu - Nenu, Malayalam - Njan

Etc..

Another small thing unique about Dravidian languages is clusivity, there's exclusive 'we' and inclusive 'we'. While modern Kannada, unlike Tamil / Telugu, doesn't retain this feature, some dialects such as Havyaka retain this feature.

Re: Sri Lanka’s ancient, almost lost martial art

#58

Post by chakkepolja »

watwut wrote: post #40
chakkepolja wrote: post #16

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.

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 t…

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.

Re: Sri Lanka’s ancient, almost lost martial art

#59

Post by hliyan »

stryan wrote: post #19

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_brit...

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.

Re: Sri Lanka’s ancient, almost lost martial art

#60

Post by MaxBarraclough »

simonh wrote: post #44
austinjp wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, MMA is a one-on-one sport, with all that entails. No multiple opponents, no small joint manipulation, no gouging, no biting, no spitting, no striking the neck or back of the head, no kicking the head of a downed opponent.... etc etc. All of which could happen in actual combat and non-sport fighting.

There was a famous Greek fighter who competed in the original Olympics who's preferred tactic was to break all the fingers of his opponent first, before finishing them off. It was pretty normal for fighters to lose teeth or suffer broken bones.

This guy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sostratus_of_Sicyon
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