Flail

Here would be included both chains (rante) and whips (the chemeti and the penjut). Chains in use show a great diversity of linkage patterns and overall length, both of which are, of course, determined by the user; the ends of the chain are usually weighted. As a weapon, the chain is chiefly used to beat the enemy, but it may also serve to entangle him and whatever weapon he happens to be wielding. The chemeti is the longer of the two types of whips.

Stick and Staff

The chief weapons of this type are the tongkat and the gada, which are short sticks, and the gala and the toya, which can vary in length from five to about seven feet. The wood out of which the sticks and staffs are most commonly fashioned is that of the rattan palm (called rotan in Indonesian), although hard woods are also utilized.

Pencak-Silat Is Accepted As a Way Of Indonesians Life

In fact, an exponent of pencak-silat is trained to be ready to ward off an attack at any time; his body must be flexible enough to make an instantaneous response. Crouching stances and smooth movements into and out of low postures require the exponent to be both extremely strong and flexible in his legs and hips-qualities that can be developed to their fullest only when pencak-silat is accepted as a way of life. Indonesians make daily use of the full squat posture, a posture that, as anyone knows who has tried it, requires well-developed and flexible leg muscles. Some of the stances and postures of pencak-silat make greater physical demands than those of Japanese karate-do: they will thus be found to offer an interesting and useful challenge to advocates of karate-do.

The notion that pencak-silat was evolved solely for use by slight, small-boned people is a mistaken one. While it is indeed ideally suited to the needs of short, slender fighters, many of its most remarkable exponents, like the mountain dwellers of Sumatra, Java, and Bali, are large bodied. Some one hundred and fifty different pencak-silat styles an be identified in the three thousand islands that comprise Indonesia and stretch across as many miles from the Indian Ocean in the west to Australian New Guinea in the east. The world's largest archipelago, Indonesia, extends between the Southeast Asian mainland and the Philippines to the north and Australia in the south, and, throughout this vast expanse, pencak-silat is to be found in both its pure orthodox form and in various combinations and with various modifications.

Blade

The blade, being the favorite type of weapon used by Indonesians, is also, naturally enough, the favorite in pencak-silat. Weapons of this type are numerous. A few of the most common are the pedang, a long, swordlike weapon, single-edged and somewhat akin to a cutlass or saber; the
parang, a shorter, single-edged weapon not unlike the machete; the keris, a unique blade indigenous to Indonesia; and the tombak, a spear used throughout Indonesia.