Viluppuram, which Edward had guided me to, was an ordinary provincial town with no special features that foreigners would rarely visit. However, when I visited the park in the centre of the town early in the morning, I was lost for words at the impossible sight.
The head coach of this club was Master Ulaga Durai. He was over 60 years old at that time, but was active as a mallakhamb player in his youth and has continued to teach mallakhamb as a volunteer while working after settling in his home town of Viluppuram. The actual techniques he showed us were beyond my imagination.
A single wooden pillar stands in the park square. It was buried to a depth of several tens of centimetres so that it does not wobble, and the height will be 2m50-60cm. Approximately 20cm diameter at the base, and it tapers slightly upwards, and the top is constricted like the grip of a baseball bat. At first glance, it looked like a very long version of the Mukdal club used in Kushti.
A naked boy wearing only a pair of trunks leapt towards the pillar like a sliding kick! The boy twisted his body in the air and attached himself to the pillar with his back up, in a crab-scissors position. The boy’s upper body, which swung downwards under gravity, was supported by his strong back muscles so that his upper body did not touch the ground.
In the next moment he twisted his body, grabbed the pillar above with his hands and climbed up, twisting himself like a snake. He then performed a pendulum-like movement on the vertical pillar, weaving in and out of various techniques and moving his body at a dizzying pace, gradually climbing higher and higher.
The boy reached the top, kept amazingly and exquisitely balance there. Then with one leg hooked behind his head, he supported himself and floated with only his hands, stretched his opposite leg out horizontally and finished a pose!
This is one of the most advanced postures in yoga and is usually difficult to achieve even on a flat floor. Despite, this boy performed it on the top of the pillar less than 10 cm in diameter. Moreover, all the transitions from pose to pose are done on or beside the vertical pillar against gravity, without ever going down to the ground.
After untying his legs and repositioning himself, the boy made an even more outlandish move. Holding the top of the pillar and supporting it with his right hand, he hooked the instep of his right foot on the neck of the pillar, pushed on it with the sole of his left foot to create tension, then quickly released his hand and stood sideways with only his foot against the pillar. This might be understandable if I think about it calmly and logically, but actually seeing it in front of my eyes, it was a sight that would not be possible in everyday life.
And the improbable spectacle continued. The boy gripped the top of the pillar with one hand and pushed the pillar with the other, doing with his hands what he had just done with his feet, ‘standing upside down’ right angle to the pillar and horizontally to the ground.
As I stared at him, speechless, the boy spun around and changed his postures, finally standing on the top of the pillar again and landing on the ground in a backflip. The finish. His expression was young as he poses with his right hand raised, a little embarrassed. He was probably still in his early teens. The gap between his innocence and its amazing technique left me stunned and unable to do anything but stare at him.
The marvel of mallakhamb cannot be fully expressed in words or pictures, so you’ll just have to watch the video of it in action. I didn’t have a proper video camera at the time and the video below was taken on another occasion. The composition of the moves is a little different, but it is a top-level performance.
Mallakhamb first appears in history in an ancient document from 1135, where it was presented as a basic martial arts exercise under the name Manasollasa. Later, in the mid-1800s, it was introduced in a new guise by the famous Kushti wrestler Balambhatta Dada Deodhar, which marked the dawn of modern Mallakhamb.
In the early days, it was popularised as basic training for Kushti, but eventually, its excellence was recognised. It was established as a purely one-sport event and entered the All-India Gymnastics Competition in Delhi in 1958. Afterwards, the Mallakhamb was popularised widely and now spreading across India, particularly in Maharashtra as its centre.
As far as I have seen and heard, Mallakhamb can be divided into 3 main categories.
0. Preparation: On a mat laid out on the ground, the exercises start with basic movements such as forward and backward turns, and progress in stages to more difficult techniques such as leg openings, bridges, and even forward and backward rolls with both ankles behind the head. The movements give the impression of a combination of yoga asana and floor exercise and are practised by both boys and girls as basic body-building and preparatory exercises for mallakhamb.
1. A uniquely shaped mallakhamb pole is erected on the ground on which acrobatic exercises are performed, mainly in various yoga postures. It is performed by the aforementioned boy and is referred to simply as Mallakhamb, but is also called Pole Mallakhamb to distinguish it from the others. The boys were the main actors in this, as they do it naked only wearing trunks, but girls wearing leotards are also starting to participate these days gradually.
2. A pillar, slightly shorter than a Pole Mallakhamb, is hung from a tree branch or other settings with a rope, and the same exercises as the Pole Mallakhamb are performed on the swinging pillar. It is generally referred to as Hanging Mallakhamb and is extremely challenging.
3. It starts with hanging a 3cm thick cotton rope from a height of about 10m above the ground and climbing the rope with the crotch of the hand and toes and eventually stepping up to the stage of performing a variety of difficult yoga poses on the rope. Many of the postures overlap with those of the Pole, but many are unique, as they require skilful rope handling techniques. This is called Rope Mallakhamb, which I believe originally evolved from Rassa, a form of kushti training. Generally, girls are the main players.
At the event held the following day, I was able to see Mallakhamb in all its forms – pole, hanging and rope – and I could not help but be amazed at the virtuosity. Even on a solid and stable Pole, it is difficult, but in the case of Hanging and Rope, the players continuously create extremely advanced yoga poses while constantly swaying in an unstable state hanging from the top. Moreover, the speed was extraordinary.
I challenged a little myself, but in the case of Pole Mallakhamb I could do nothing but cling like a cicada to the pillar, to my shame, and in the case of Rope Mallakhamb, just putting my weight on the soft rope held between my toes caused me severe pain and even climbing straight up was not easy.
Mallakhamb was originally developed as a body-building exercise for warriors. This is evident from the fact that the name mallakhamb means warrior (malla) pillar (khamb).
The ancient warriors thought like this that if they could freely manipulate their bodies against a nearly 3-metre-tall, earth-rooted giant, they would have no difficulty in doing so against a human of less than two metres at the most. It was the same with a swaying, wiggling, elusive giant as an opponent.
They perform highly advanced yoga postures, which would be enough to get them into a surprise human show in Japan, but only as a basic preparatory exercise. Once they have perfected the technique on stable ground, they then perform it on the extremely unstable pillar and rope in a continuous rapid flow. Moreover, the pillar and rope are not placed horizontally to the ground but stand vertically. The difficulty of the task is unimaginable.
Their superhuman movements are reminiscent of those of wild animals such as monkeys and snakes, while at the same time showing a skill that far surpasses them. The nature of the rope and pole, which are attached vertically, means that the player’s own body weight acts as a burden in all exercises. The idea of it may be to manipulate the body in any situation as intended with high flexibility as a prerequisite, to fight against the enemy freely under extremely irregular conditions.
This is also a fundamental difference from the American training system. Their philosophy, symbolised by the so-called universal machine, was to regard the human body as a machine and to have humans perform simple, mechanical exercises that should be performed by machines.
Certainly, it worked excellently for making particular muscle groups bigger and stronger. That is why universal machines became popular all over the world. But is muscle size and strength the only thing that matters when human bodies perform certain complex actions? Has another, most important aspect, the sense of controlling movements, been forgotten?
Yes, in order for humans to exercise, they need ‘smart’ muscles that are directly linked to a sense of movement. Eliminate all irregularities and have humans perform vertical movements that even simple machines can easily do. No amount of such weight training is going to develop smart muscles.
Kushti’s rassa and mukdal, Kalari’s meipayattu, the rotating stick technique and mallakhamb. What they all have in common is that they all involve highly human movements that can never be replaced by machines, which are always performed in a flexible and responsive manner in irregular situations.
Yoga is the first thing that comes to everyone’s mind when thinking of Indian physical culture. Originally, yoga postures were developed by ancient sages (rishis) who imitated the movements of animals in order to acquire their superhuman physical and mental abilities. The philosophy is also shared with Kalaripayattu and Mallakhamb.
It has been written before that the Kushti dojo in North India is called Vyayam Shala. ‘Vyayam’ means the movement of bending and stretching in all directions, and ‘Shala’ means a hall. In simple terms, it is the ‘house of bodily bend and stretch’. And this concept is a common concept that runs through all Indian physical cultures, especially in body-developing basic exercises.
This is most clearly demonstrated in mallakhamb and meipayattu. When you look at 10-year Kalari or Mallakhamb players, their bodies are almost the same as the average person’s. They will never become gorilla macho, no matter how advanced and high burden the exercises they perform.
What is needed is a flexible, resourceful and versatile body with the supple and flexible springs of a wild animal. Such a body can never be acquired by the universal machine. There, on the contrary, it will only result in the mass production of stupid muscles without sense.
By meeting Mallakhamb, I became more and more aware of the excellence of Indian martial arts and the depth of its physical philosophy. It is bound to be an important alternative to meet various problems and demands that could not be solved by Western sports science.
Currently, the Indian Mallakhamb Association says it is making various efforts to have Mallakhamb recognised as an official Olympic Game. Considering that the origins of the ancient Olympic Games can be traced back to the peaceful competition of skills of warriors, there is no other sport more suitable for the Olympics than mallakhamb.
I am confident that the uniqueness and perfection of the sport are more than worth the challenge of talented young people from all over the world.
After the research has finished, I left Viluppuram thinking that I would like to support their ambitions as possible as I can.
At that time, I had already begun to vaguely resolve to introduce those wonderful Indian martial arts as a whole, with its unknown potential, to Japan and the world. At first, I would disseminate information mainly through a website, and eventually teach it myself. But there was one thing absolutely essential for this. Videos. That time I brought only a small digital camera (there was no smart phone at all in 2006!) and I don’t know how many times I felt frustrated.
The amazing virtuosity of Indian martial arts, such as Mallakhamb and so on, can only be realised by actually seeing their actions. Therefore photographs are not enough to convey this. If a website was to be created, the video was a must-have item to record and transmit the movements as they happen.
On the other hand, it would be more realistic and convincing if I myself could become an expert in one of the Indian martial arts and show and teach the example myself. Then what would that be? There was no choice other than the stick-rotating art for me.
Kushti is almost overlapped with Western Wrestling, and other than its exercises, there seems not to be much value to introduce it to Japan anew. Kalaripayattu would be meaningful only when practised as a complete system within the cultural ambience of Kerala. It cannot be imported into Japan in its entirety, and if it takes ten years to learn it all, it was more than too much for someone of my age. As one who is familiar with aikido and the Japanese stick fighting tradition, I could not see a keen interest in Silambam except for its rotating techniques. And when it came to Mallakhamb, I had to give up learning it from the very beginning due to its difficulty and uniqueness.
It must have been inevitable that I chose the stick rotating art for that, like being guided by my intuition and shock when I first saw it on TV that day.
(More detailed info about Mallakhamb, visit Here)
INDIA~The Land of Holy Chakra 