The Development of Pencak-silat

Although pencak-silat is practiced today by all classes of Indonesian society, the people of the kampung ("village") take to it most readily. It may be seen in the remotest jungle or mountain village and on the most inaccessible island; hardly a schoolboy (or girl, for that matter) is without some ability to demonstrate the particular style practiced in the region they live in.

There are no national standards by which the great diversity of styles may be regulated, not any nationwide organization to further the development of pencak-silat, although efforts are being made on a minor scale-largely by exponents of unorthodox systems-to produce and popularize it as a national “sport”. It seems unlikely that these efforts will succeed: the changeover from genuine self-defense to a sport entails too severe a loss of combative reality and a negation of the actual purpose and function of this art.