Deciphering Martial Arts Poems

理是功能之本，法是功能之基

Theory is the essence of capability, method its foundation

皆由渡水不知津，登山不識徑*

All because they cross waters without knowing the ford, climb a mountain without the knowledge of the path

As it was already mentioned in Method, old practices favourite method of teaching was through enigmas to be solved by the students, the best ones having more than one level of understanding. Since most of the teaching were done through oral transmission at the beginning, it may be interesting to first have a brief introduction of the oral ones. Still, with the emergence of the boxing manuals, 拳譜, roughly starting at the end of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) and the decline of old martial arts practices, the main work nowadays remains in deciphering those texts.

Real Knowledge Is Discovery

As mentioned in Method, old practices considered that the learning process shall not be one of memorising techniques and principles but of discovering them and what was lying underneath. Oral teaching was allowing a lot of flexibility, the teacher able to change the sayings and their meaning according to the students and his/her own improved understanding of the art. Of course, being able to test it, i.e. fighting with the weapons of those times, it was practical knowledge, not theoretical, a thing that modern weaponry and/or legislation doesn't allow anymore.

Oral practices used different methods to challenge the students, homophony, finishing a sentence and contradictory statements amongst them as examples.

What You Hear and What Comes to Mind

Quite a few characters having the same prononciation in Chinese, oral teaching used such homophony to either convey an esoteric message amongst people of a same school or challenge the not yet real disciples to decipher it. Below two examples:

• 手,守 and 首, all pronounced shǒu and respectively meaning hands, to protect and head. Adding the character 法 after them 手法 would be (hand) technique, 守法, method of protection** and 首法 head (the body part) method. It was then up to the student smarts to decide which one was actually meant and make the difference between just a sort of application of a move for combat, looking for a posture protecting one's body and how to use one's eyes. For this, learning against a sword thrust how to block and counteract is a technique, 手法, how to position oneself is protection, 守法, and keeping the eyes open a head method 首法***.
• 步, 部 and 佈 all pronounced bù and respectively meaning step, section and deploy. Again, adding the character 法 after, it would then mean stepping method, sections method (hence posture) and deploying method. So, this was a question of the difference between just stepping, just adopting a certain posture or stepping with a certain posture. Against a sword thrust, it would be how to step, how to change one's body angles or how to do both at the same time. The teacher could then say such a related statement "bùfǎ, bùfǎ, quán píng (it all relies on)  bùfǎ" and it would be up to the student to guess the meaning of each bùfǎ.

Knowing that, the student had to furthermore make the links between such first and second homophonies. 

Able to Finish One's Master Sentences

In the old days, one would live at his master in order to grasp as much as possible as fast as possible. At a certain stage, they would become totally intimate and finishing the master sentences would then be automatic. More generally, the system was more or less using the Yin and the Yang method, one aspect given, the student having to find out the other side of the coin.

Sometimes it was external against internal, the master would say the external trains the fascias, the bones and the skin, "外練筋骨皮", and the student would have to find the internal version.

It could be motion and motionless, what would be the answer to simply moving externally, "外動"?

It could be continuing a statement like "The ones with clarity don't hit, they just move forwards", "明人不出手，只是往前,".

And so on...

The Apparent Oxymoron Method

On different occasions, a master would make two statements that seem irreconcilable. Very disturbing in the beginning since it is always the easiest path to do as you are told and not challenge what is said, once the method understood, it would become one of the cornerstones of the study. Indeed, it would ultimately be up to the student to find by himself oxymorons in order to progress. A known oxymoron for internalists is, of course, "with no force is the better force" or how to be able generate force without using force. Another one also close to nowadays misunderstandings is the opposite requirements of breathing naturally, not being breathless and controlling heartbeats though proper breathing.

Oral transmission is not without flaws and seems to be unadapted to times when martial arts practice is leisurely and there are no more people who really possess in their body the transmitted knowledge. The issue concerning homophony deserves to be pointed out. There are a lot of dialects, very different and some even not tonal, in China. This can make the homophony method a bit tricky when one studies an art still deeply implanted in a specific location, it implies an extra effort to understand the local dialect. Indeed, as examples, some known styles may have changed their names when becoming mandarinised because of the ending consonant being "n" in mandarin while it is "ng" in the local dialect, or ending vowel being "ei" against originally "i" for two of the most discussed ones. 

Finally, the present Mandarin or "Common Language" is a rather more simple Chinese compared to Middle Chinese****, which may have had a simplification effect, especially with less literate martial artist.

What is left of the oral transmission is of course almost impossible to determine, only writings may give us a clue.

Reading Riddles

With the decadence of old martial arts and their vulgarisation as a hobby for civilians came the necessity to put in writing what had become hard to transmit, as well as to promote one's previously meant for a happy few art among the masses. Hence, boxing manuals started to appear. Still, in order to keep the spirit of the old methods, the first ones were not a compilation of techniques, description of routines and different exercices, but a summary of the pillar principles upon which the school described revolved. Therefore, such texts were meant as enigmas with different levels of understanding. Some methods were close to the oral ones like finding the follow up of a sentence and using homophony while others, like decomposing a character or reading in a different order a text, using the new tools writing could give.

Maintaining Oral Methods

If completing a sentence is more a less the same method whether oral or written, homophony will be slightly different in the sense that one character will be obviously written while the others to be guessed. Indeed, this post quote can also be written 理是功能之本，法是功能之雞 replacing 基, foundation, by 雞, chicken, as a short for a two character word. 

Even the Daode Jing can be hacked by some practices which replace 道, the Way, by 盜, to steal, and 名, name, by 明, clarity, in its famous first phrase "道可道非常道，名可名非常名".

Adding Written Ones

The first already explained method is to use the different components of a character to convey a meaning like in 術. Such method is often used by people explaining the meaning of the Way, 道. It has also been used in a previous post to explain one of the characters used to describe Qi, 炁. Furthermore, it is also interesting to notice that 氣 in its complex usual form also points to the changes as theorised by the eight trigrams theory, the radical for grain, rice, 米, representing the 8 directions. In this sense, 氣 can be viewed as understanding the changes, 米, in vitality and its manifestation, vapours, 气.

The second method is the one of a code within the text, another text inside the more common one. This is helped by the fact that Chinese, if originally read from top to bottom and right to left, can actually be read in any way*****, though from bottom to top might not be very usual. Hence, apart from the general text, there are always other ways to read a text. For the purpose of finding an example, let's take a passage from the Sword of Chaos Classic° talking about one's gaze:

急著，目光閃急，如線穿空，劍貫重甲，清利而直銳也。

One of the translations of original the original text roughly could be "He who are fast (the eyes), a fast shiny gaze, as a line piercing the sky, a sword piercing a heavy armour, sharply, thoroughly and incisive."

Now, one of the deciphering methods would be to take the first character of the four characters statements to make four new ones, which would be:

急著，目如劍，清利而直銳也。"He who are fast (the eyes), eyes like a sword, sharply, thoroughly and incisive."

急著，光線貫，清利而直銳也。"He who are fast (the eyes), a piercing ray of light, sharply, thoroughly and incisive."

急著，閃穿重，清利而直銳也。"He who are fast (the eyes), a flash penetrating strong (things), sharply, thoroughly and incisive."

急著，急空甲，清利而直銳也。"He who are fast (the eyes), a rapid empty armour, sharply, thoroughly and incisive."

Of course, without the proper keys, old texts hidden meanings are hard to decipher. Furthermore, boxing methods have over the time become more and more explicit, the understanding becoming easier but the different levels being lost. In recent times, they even became more manuals describing a set of techniques and routines than anything else, definitively losing the underlining theory of changes which use to be their backbone.

Deciphering old poems seems to be a thing of old times, a sort of fairy tale with old wise masters speaking in riddles. Still, taking the folklore away, one may realise that this change from riddle to more to the point simple instructions has actually emptied old methods of their essence, changing deeply the approach of teaching and creating whole new practices mainly focusing on leisure and the civilian life.

*Achievement Is Precious, To Be Passed On And Taken Cared Of, 功貴得傳而自珍.

**Its more common "to abide by the law" meaning can also be used as another enigma.

***As in opposition is the advice to first hit the opponent head, "為先打人，先打臉".

****Some authors believe that modern Mandarin was tailored for the Manchus during the Qing Dynasty and simplified because their non-tonal language was very different from Chinese. Indeed, the southern dialects like Cantonese consider themselves to be closer to old Chinese, often boasting, for example, that the Tang Dynasty poems shall be read and understood through their dialect and not the present Mandarin.

*****Restaurant and shop signs are still nowadays freely written from top to bottom, left to right or right to left. 

°Training the Eyes, Sword of Chaos Classic, Bikun, 練眼，渾元劍經，畢坤.