Royal Dragon,
I found this on that web page:
"It is said all martial arts of this earth were created under the Sun of Shaolin.
This statement could not be more true. Virtually all Chinese arts as well as many Korean and Japanese arts have been either directly developed at Shaolin, or influenced in some way. Part of this has to due with the fact that Shaolin often trained troops for the Emperors of China. Another part of it has to do with the fact that it is centrally located in the heart of China and often served as a sanctuary for those wishing to change their lives. But regardless of why, martial arts have flourished there for the last 1500 years."
That sounds like the stereotypical belief that before Bodhidharma taught the monks at the ShaoLin temple, the martial arts of Asia were but rudimentary in nature… So the Mongols must have just had rudimentary wrestling techniques and the Indonesians were just monkeys without a clue? No, I know you didn’t say that, but that’s what lines like that insinuate. Yes, China (particulary after the Mongols conquered it) had a MAJOR influence on the arts, languages, and cultures of its neighbors… particularly since it was the flight of people escaping from the Mongol horde (and later, Imperial persecution) that led to a major migration that displaced or added to the native populations in South and South-East Asia. That’s one of the factors behind the displacement of the Innu (spelling?), the ORIGINAL natives of the islands of Nippon, and the physical differences of ancient Koreans (pre-Mongol invasion) and modern Koreans.
Further, if you really go back in history, India was conquered by Alexander the Great (only about 200 years after Buddha lived), whose Greek/Macedonian armies took on new ‘recruits’ from conquered peoples and trained them in their techniques. These were used as supplemental troops and as militia to maintain order after the main Greek forces had already moved on. Due to Alexander’s ill-fated crossing of the Gedrosian desert, many Greeks and Macedonian troops (and their families) were left behind in India. The Hellenistic influences are still seen in India today, from the statues, to the literature. In fact, one of my Indian friends, from an upper caste, proudly declared to me that his family has Greek blood in their line. So, Greeks probably mixed with the existing Vedic people… and it was from this culture that Bodhidharma came from. The Indians had their own culture and martial arts when Alexander the Great came, but like any intelligent people throughout the world, I’m sure that they learned what they could from their conquerors. Empires come and go, after all.
Now, the Greeks didn’t develop Pankration by themselves. Before the Greek nations, there was the Hittite Empire, which existed at the same time as the Egyptian Empire, it’s primary rival… and both of whom were invaded by the Sea People, likely from one of the inner Mediterranean cultures. Before them there were the ancient Bablyonians and the Sumerians, both of whom we know to have had boxing and grappling. So, probably all codified martial arts, both Western AND Eastern owe their existence to the Fertile Crescent civilizations… which predated European and Yellow River civilizations by tens of thousands of years!
Beyond the simple ‘truism’: “a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick”, there lies truth behind it. The difference is the WHY and the HOW.
The ‘Eastern’ martial arts existed in Eastern cultures, with Eastern philosophies, and Eastern requirements dictated by environment and physical attributes. That’s the WHY.
Techniques were (and still are) added upon... almost never subtracted, so the finished product is like an onion... ever-growing as more layers are added. So as more artistic aspects are added, the original art becomes buried underneath tradition. The good AND the bad. That's the HOW.
Now, Kung Fu and other traditional Eastern martial arts are presented with the problem of sorting the chaff from the wheat. Most don't bother and just keep adding more layers to their art, never taking away. Soon you have a large number of different 'styles' and you then develop techniques to counter the other 'styles' and the problem is exacerbated. That's why you have so many different techniques... and they don't make Eastern martial arts any more superior than any other art. There's an old fable about a fox and cat... it involves hounds on a hunt.
A Fox was boasting to a Cat of its clever devices for escaping
its enemies. “I have a whole bag of tricks,” he said, “which
contains a hundred ways of escaping my enemies.”
“I have only one,” said the Cat; “but I can generally manage
with that.” Just at that moment they heard the cry of a pack of
hounds coming towards them, and the Cat immediately scampered up a
tree and hid herself in the boughs. “This is my plan,” said the
Cat. “What are you going to do?” The Fox thought first of one
way, then of another, and while he was debating the hounds came
nearer and nearer, and at last the Fox in his confusion was caught
up by the hounds and soon killed by the huntsmen. Miss Puss, who
had been looking on, said:
“Better one safe way than a hundred on which
you cannot reckon.”
Western arts suffer for different reasons. Traditionally, cultures in the West tend to discard that which they no longer use, particularly when it comes to warfare. As firearms became more effective, armor was discarded or reduced… because it no longer served a purpose. As armor disappeared, the large cleaving blades were replaced by smaller and lighter blades, because they no longer had to overcome heavy metal armor. During this time, hand-to-hand remained practical and about as simple as the Romans had it (“pancrace” spelling?), which was pretty much Greek pankration. From pankration, we perhaps had boxing and wrestling (Which came first, the chicken or the egg? No rules “pankration” or rules lat(?)/wrestling and boxing/pugilism?) with kicking becoming its own ‘style’. Again, reduction for sport, rather than the addition of complexity. There was sport fencing, separate from traditional sword-play. Armed separate from unarmed. (Really, did the ancients really consider the art of fighting different, whether there was a weapon or not?) The various styles of Western martial arts are all different aspects of a whole… separated for the convenience of sport, with addition and subtraction constantly in play, changing techniques for sport and later making them combative, again. Then there are other divisions based upon geography and ethnicity. For example: Zipota and Savate utilize the same techniques, for the most part. Chausson is nothing more than a sea-based version of the same, with some unusual elements thrown in. It’s a different kind of HOW. Same effect, in a way. How can Western martial artists make their sportive arts combative? Often the sport must be taken out and the combative put back in… with the separated parts (punching, kicking, trapping, unbalancing, and grappling) put back together again. What do you put in and what do you take out?
So, when you talk about ‘traditional’, it means a lot of things… depending on WHO, WHEN, HOW, and WHAT. The tradition of excising useful bits for the sake of sport (French Federation’s Boxe Francaise, for example, or the Chinese Communist Party’s Wushu), the tradition of adding more specialized material, with dubious application, to an already bloated art (Northern/Southern Shaolin <Insert sub-style> <Insert family/prefecture> Kung Fu), or a mixture of stuff (Capoeira “from the sailors and from the slaves” or Wing Chun “East meets West… that’s western boxing, complete with zipper punches”).
To hear people say that such-and-such style or practitioners can beat so-and-so, is annoying. It’s not because some ‘styles’ lack in certain areas, though that is a factor. It’s not just because a school/salle/stable/dojo teaches a certain way, though that’s certainly a factor. It’s because, ultimately, the distinction of ‘style’ is but a figment of imagination. Styles only exist when we allow them to.
With reference to ‘traditional’ Kung Fu, by the time an obese style can be digested, the practitioner is ready to die of old age… with no guarantee of outcome, despite the many years of effort. For every ‘undisputed master’ there must be dozens of ‘not-good-enough masters’ and hundreds, if not thousands, of ‘not-even-close masters’.
From the sounds of it, ‘great’ internal (and otherwise) masters are extremely rare… and only seen in top form by a select few. For if such destructive ‘secret’ techniques did exist, we know that mankind’s penchant for greed and destruction would ensure the demonstration and propagation of such knowledge. Gunpowder, anybody?
Sounds like the “Great Pumpkin”, Linus.
[To all… sorry for this long post. I got carried away. 
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