arnisador
05-01-2010, 01:10 AM
The challenge of historical documentation on arnis (http://www.manilatimes.net/index.php/component/content/article/42-rokstories/15652-the-challenge-of-historical-documentation-on-arnis)
Besides the Department of Education (DepEd) and the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC), another government agency that will be actively involved in the implementation of the Arnis Law is the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA).
Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri said that the NCCA’s role is primarily to oversee long overdue documentation of the history of the different styles of arnis.
While there are available works on the subject written by foreigners, the senator bemoaned that many of these writings are half-baked. “Some of them just made a two-month tour of the Philippines then produced a book,” he said. With the NCCA commissioned to do the job, Zubiri added that he was hoping to come up with a book or a general almanac of Filipino Martial Arts (FMA).
[...]
Unlike other Asian martial arts whose historical records are preserved through written and pictorial documents, arnis and the FMA’s history in general are hard to validate because of lack of proper documentation. For instance and despite debates on the claim of some FMA historians that kali is the ancestral art of arnis and escrima, the dispute has remained unresolved. The row could be attributed to
lack of valid historical references.
Most articles and books on FMA history circulated up to the 1980s were based on Mga Karunungan sa Larong Arnis (A Body of Knowledge in the Sport of Arnis) by Mirafuente. Written in archaic Tagalog and published by the University of the Philippines Press in 1957, it was the first definitive book on arnis. While the two authors produced an excellent presentation of the technical aspects of arnis, they failed to include a comprehensive bibliography of their sources, which later historians could use to validate the historical contents of their book. Among the authors’ claims was that kali is the original Filipino martial art. With the commissioning of the NCCA, with its pool of experts to conduct documentation on the history of arnis, the bibliography issue, for one, could be resolved.
[...]
Ned Nepangue, researcher, author and practitioner of the FMA, told The Manila Times that a good strategy to the historical documentation of arnis is to examine it through three perspectives: sports, aesthetics and combat. Nepangue with another FMA researcher and practitioner, Celestino Macachor, wrote the book Cebuano Eskrima: Beyond the Myth.
Felipe Jocano Jr., a professor of Anthropology at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, and an arnis master, encourages not only professional historians but also the average arnisadors to do research on the history of the FMA.
Besides the Department of Education (DepEd) and the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC), another government agency that will be actively involved in the implementation of the Arnis Law is the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA).
Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri said that the NCCA’s role is primarily to oversee long overdue documentation of the history of the different styles of arnis.
While there are available works on the subject written by foreigners, the senator bemoaned that many of these writings are half-baked. “Some of them just made a two-month tour of the Philippines then produced a book,” he said. With the NCCA commissioned to do the job, Zubiri added that he was hoping to come up with a book or a general almanac of Filipino Martial Arts (FMA).
[...]
Unlike other Asian martial arts whose historical records are preserved through written and pictorial documents, arnis and the FMA’s history in general are hard to validate because of lack of proper documentation. For instance and despite debates on the claim of some FMA historians that kali is the ancestral art of arnis and escrima, the dispute has remained unresolved. The row could be attributed to
lack of valid historical references.
Most articles and books on FMA history circulated up to the 1980s were based on Mga Karunungan sa Larong Arnis (A Body of Knowledge in the Sport of Arnis) by Mirafuente. Written in archaic Tagalog and published by the University of the Philippines Press in 1957, it was the first definitive book on arnis. While the two authors produced an excellent presentation of the technical aspects of arnis, they failed to include a comprehensive bibliography of their sources, which later historians could use to validate the historical contents of their book. Among the authors’ claims was that kali is the original Filipino martial art. With the commissioning of the NCCA, with its pool of experts to conduct documentation on the history of arnis, the bibliography issue, for one, could be resolved.
[...]
Ned Nepangue, researcher, author and practitioner of the FMA, told The Manila Times that a good strategy to the historical documentation of arnis is to examine it through three perspectives: sports, aesthetics and combat. Nepangue with another FMA researcher and practitioner, Celestino Macachor, wrote the book Cebuano Eskrima: Beyond the Myth.
Felipe Jocano Jr., a professor of Anthropology at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, and an arnis master, encourages not only professional historians but also the average arnisadors to do research on the history of the FMA.