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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

#91
post #63
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next , more things will be banned in SL by Chinese. SL has willingly adopted and accepted and welcomed Chinese oppression.

Not sure why you and I are getting downvotes for pointing out facts. probably paid shills/rajapaksha fan bois are downvoting any comments critical of the current government.

Straight up Chinese shills

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

#92

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…

>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.

They're dead. Are you suggesting we punish their offspring for having their DNA?

You might consider punishing all the ancient Indian invaders your country had as well since that also completely changed your country.

This silliness about having to punish someone for stuff that's happened way in the past and has nothing to do with anyone alive today needs to stop.

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

#93

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.

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.

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

#94
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem with this logic is where does it end. Should modern day Italians pay for what Rome did? Turks for Ottomans? Mongols for Genghis Khan and his children’s empire? The Danish/Norwegian Vikings for taking over large parts of the British isles? The Moscow Rus for taking over the land that became Russia? Basically human history is one long bloody path for conquest and sadly rarely do the victors pay for the cruelty…

Well sure our history is one of pathetic murderous species, with few exceptions. That doesn't make it anyhow being OK with what your/their ancestors did, does it. Whataboutism about ancient civilizations does detract from current topic, Great Britain is the same place as 80 years ago, same government, same everything. Heck, almost the same queen. Same for France for example. But sure you can try desperately to come u…

If you said this about any other country not inhabited by anglo-saxons or "white" people you'd be called a bigot and justifiably so.

No one alive today should feel guilt/responsibility for something people they've never met did, full stop.

>But sure you can try desperately to come up with excuses to avoid any responsibility and enjoy the riches your ancestors stole from poor folks.

Yes because that's how the world works. There is no responsibility. You're here today because you had ancestors that fought and survived, many of them probably doing "immoral" things. Just because your "riches" are less than others doesn't mean you deserve to have them. Why should YOU get to enjoy anything they have? All I see is a jealous naive individual asking for handouts. Sorry but that doesn't grant you the right to take from others.

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

#95
post #59
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 a…

Reminds me of neopaganism in the West, where some people in the movement will claim there's an unbroken tradition.

Do you think this is fed by a preoccupation/pride in the culture with their practices and beliefs being incredibly ancient? I think it's pretty well-known that that's a thing in India, but I don't know to what extent it also exists in Sri Lanka.

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

#97
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, Bruce Lee and static? What are you even talking about? He's one of the earliest examples of MMA I can think of in how he tried to draw from different martial arts to create jeet kune do, which was not just created for movies. Edit: As a concrete example, he grew up with Wing Chun. But he realized that the static stance was a huge detriment in real fights, so he took the boxing footwork from Ali, which was a lo…

"Bruce Lee's movie fighting style" then, which has little to do with his proper fight training, like Jean Claude van Damme's fight choreography has little to do with his fighting background. Apart from that, I do take issue with the for some reason increasingly popular notion of Bruce Lee's fighthing being some sort of proto-MMA. MMA is not just taking something from various sources and calling it " -fu" or " tang do…

So, exactly what Bruce Lee did. Read his books. He talks about how he was disappointed with traditional martial arts and how he was always interested in finding the most effective techniques and ideas.

I honestly don't understand why you're so eager to criticize what he did when you don't seem to know much about what he actually did and what his thoughts were about martial arts.

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

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, Bruce Lee and static? What are you even talking about? He's one of the earliest examples of MMA I can think of in how he tried to draw from different martial arts to create jeet kune do, which was not just created for movies. Edit: As a concrete example, he grew up with Wing Chun. But he realized that the static stance was a huge detriment in real fights, so he took the boxing footwork from Ali, which was a lo…

Yeah, but even Jeet Kune Do has already died out almost entirely in favor of a combination of (Muay Thai, BJJ, and either Greco-Roman wrestling or Judo) aka MMA. Maybe throw in some Krav Maga for defense against common street attacks and you're set. Realistically, hybrid martial arts have been around for a long time. When I was a kid (long before the MMA hype train), I did Karate, but it also involved learning ~30 ju…

Well, clearly. He developed JKD decades ago before MMA was ever a thing as we know it now. That's not a slight on JKD, and if he were still around, whatever art he'd be practicing now would be closer to modern MMA than JKD. He was entirely against keeping up techniques/ideas out of tradition. His philosophy was to find what works. If it turns out something stops working, replace it. He was never so married to any idea of a "perfect" martial art or anything. He was always experimenting and trying to evolve away from traditional MA which was entirely stick in tradition and unable to progress/improve.

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

#99
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from multiple opponents, those all seem like fairly minor variations on MMA technique in the sense that defending against the legal MMA attacks naturally defends against the illegal ones as well, and similarly the same skills that allow a fighter to land legal attacks would allow them to land illegal ones in a non-sport situation. It seems unlikely an overall inferior MMA fighter could win just by focusing on s…

Attacking eyes, fingers, groin, etc. would change everything. Everyone thinks grappling is more “realistic” than pre-MMA striking styles, but they forget that most of those grappling positions leave tons of delicate targets wide open for poking, ripping, gouging. The effective techniques in MMA are just as defined by the ground rules as any other martial art. Real “anything goes” fighting would be as different from M…

It changes things, sure, but I think the person best able to adapt and take advantage of those differences would be the better overall fighter, not the person who has practiced more eye gouges or groin kicks. Against a more skilled opponent your attempts to groin kick or break a finger or whatever will most likely lead you to be knocked out or otherwise submitted just like your attempts to choke or side kick would under MMA rules. Being in a position to make those attacks generally implies that your opponent is either less skilled or is deliberately leaving those openings because they know the rules, and could avoid doing so if the rules were different or there weren’t any rules... because ultimately they’re the one in control if they’re a lot better than you at the core skills of fighting.

That said, given two otherwise equally skilled fighters, of course the one with more experience under the specific conditions would have an advantage.

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

#100
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> martial arts tend to be always fracturing and in danger of dying out. Makes me wonder how many we’ve already lost that aren’t documented

The reality is that most "martial arts" are mostly performative, as the principles of actually useful hand to hand combat are fairly universal and anything that isn't effective and efficient "evolves" out quickly. E.g. wildly flaying weapons, static Bruce Lee style kicking/punching only h2h fighting styles, etc. - spectacular for movies and demonstrations, but little use in actual fighting. So anything that's "lost"…

> Take aikido. Why are there so many people doing that?

I blame Steven Seagal here.

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