— by Allen Pittman
Traditionally, the Chinese have credited India and the Buddhist Sage Tamo as the source of much in their martial arts. My teacher Hung (see About Allen, or Teachers and Karma) also believed India was important for it’s contribution to martial culture.
Some years back (’85,’86?) my first student, T.J. Prince, mentioned Shaivism to me as he had done some reading on it and found the archetype of Shiva and the doctrines around him very resonant with Ba gua. I read some on Kashmir Shaivism and looked over the symbols and some of the vocabulary and found it very similar to certain Taoist / Shaman ideas.
Khilton Nongmaithem, Christel Stevens and Allen Pittman
The articles of Phillip Zarelli on Kalaripyattu (a South Indian Martial Arts/Dance) in The Journal of Asian Martial Arts also impressed me with their range and depth, particularly as they detailed aspects of devotion and healing which most Chinese arts only touch on or have as a side-branch. It seemed to me the Indians kept more of their art intact than the Chinese (by this I mean their rituals and medicines and more elaborated weapon systems).
In 1995 I visited with retired Inspector Ravindran of Madras who, as he told me, has found physical evidence as well as the actual temple in India, that Tamo had left from, to eventually reach China. Inspector Ravindran is both a scholar of Indian philosophies and a Kalari teacher in his own right, and so I tend to take his claim seriously. I have not contacted him since ’95 and have yet to see his research emerge into the public eye. If he manages to read this, I would be glad to hear from him. There is much to research in India!!
Temple of Dance
About four or five years ago, Dainis Jirgensons of Maryland introduced me to Khilton Nongmaithem (see Links), who is the carrier of the martial tradition of Manipur (far North India and next to Burma) and also a folk dancer of that tradition. Dainis also introduced me to Christel Stevens, who is the treasurer of the North American Indian (India Indian, not Native American Indian!) Dance Federation. Christel and Khilton both have something to say about the overlap between Dance and Martial Arts and the background to see the relation clearly and we spent an afternoon together discussing it. Suffice to say that Dance and Martial Arts have in history always been related, not just in India but also around the world and they present a sort of chicken-and-egg quandry as to which came first.
My research indicates the Gao system of Ba Gua, as I was taught it, is in its 24 exercises, Northern Shaolin. The 64 tactics or “Ho-tien” forms are from the Taoist tradition (the correspond to the I-Ching or Book of Changes hexagrams), probably from one of the Taoist Temples or Military Academies. The Circular or “Mother Palms” bear little or no similarity to other Chinese martial arts forms (this may not be true of other Ba gua styles) but have identical movements to those found in the Classical Dance Traditions of India, particularly Bharata Natyam and even the oldest dances of Odissi.
In short, the Ba Gua circle as I know it is, in all probability, a Shiva dance imported from India. Now it is important to realize Shiva dances are many and ancient and in their oldest forms were martial dances. I will not here, go into great detail but have found around 20 movements identical and even the ending postures (“veneration to the guru”) are identical! So I believe it is safe to say the Gao system is an amalgam of Shaolin, Taoist and Hindu tradition.