Silambam
சிலம்பம்
Also Silambattam, Kambu silambam.
Martial art Tamil Nadu
What it is
Silambam is the Tamil staff art: a bamboo stave about the height of the practitioner, spun, struck and blocked in patterns that are practised alone and then against an opponent. It is mentioned in Sangam literature and was a trade of the Tamil country for centuries, taught in village akhadas and carried abroad by Tamil migration. Today it is practised as a sport with competitions and gradings, and as a display art at festivals, and the older combat teaching survives alongside in family lines.
How it is built
The stave, the silambam, is of bamboo, cut and seasoned, and its length is measured to the user. The footwork, the kaaladi, comes first: sixteen or so patterns of stepping that everything else is built on. The spinning, the suzhi, is both defence and display, and a practitioner can keep a circle no attacker can enter. Strikes are to the head, the knees and the hands. Related weapons follow: the maduvu, deer horns; the surul pattai, a flexible blade; the vaal and kedayam, sword and shield. Varma, the vital points, is taught in the older lines as it is in Kerala.
How it is learnt
The question a family actually has
Begun at seven or eight, often in the village or at a school club, with footwork drilled for months before the stave is spun at speed. The early training is done on sand in the open and in the evening. An hour a day is normal and competitive practitioners train far more. Gradings now run to a set syllabus under state and national federations, and a student may compete within two or three years, which is much faster than the older teaching allowed. The family lines that keep varma teach it only after years and only to those the master has judged.
Whose lineage is whose
Where a claim is contested, by whom
Tamil tradition attributes it to Agastya and the siddhas, which is a lineage claim rather than a history. It is attested in Sangam poetry and in the Tamil martial culture that produced the kalari of the border districts. The twentieth century saw it organised into a sport: the Silambam Federation, state associations, weight classes and point scoring. Practitioners differ on whether this has preserved it or hollowed it, with the sport side arguing that it put the art into schools and the traditional side that scoring for touches rewards the opposite of what the art taught.
Worth knowing
The circle nobody enters
The suzhi, the spin, is the thing a crowd gathers for: a practitioner spins the stave around the body in figures so fast that the stave becomes a blur, and in the older teaching the point is defensive. An attacker cannot reach through a properly kept circle and must wait for it to break. Festival demonstrations add fire to each end of the stave, which is spectacle, and the masters are usually clear that it is spectacle and that the circle is the art.
From the village ground to the school syllabus
For most of its life it was taught in the open at the edge of a village by a man who had learnt it from his father, for no fee or for a share of the harvest. Tamil Nadu now runs it in schools, with a federation, belts in some systems, and national competitions. Girls compete in numbers, which the older teaching did not generally allow. Whether the thing being taught in a school hall for points is the same art as the thing taught on sand for a fight is the live argument, and both sides have a case.
Where the regions differ
- Tamil
- Kerala
- Telugu
- Kannada
- North
- Maharashtra
- Bengal
- Punjab
- Assam
- Sri Lanka
- Nepal
- Gujarat
- Odisha
- Mithila
- Kashmir
- Tulu Nadu
- manipur
- rajasthan
- konkani
- sindhi
- jharkhand
- himalayan
- kodava
- Tamil Nadu
- Practised across the state, with Thanjavur, Madurai and the southern districts the strongest, and demonstrations at temple festivals.
- Kerala
- The southern Kerala kalari shades into it at the border and the two share the varma teaching.
- Sri Lanka
- Carried to the Tamil north and east, and to Malaysia and Singapore with the plantation migration, where it is taught in temple grounds.
Connected to
Deities
Festivals
Related arts