許氏四人所臨摹的原本《渾元劍經》的原稿件，又是從何而來的呢？這對我們都是一個難解之迷。
Where did the original of The Sword of Chaos Classic copied by the four from the Xu family come from? This is a difficult puzzle for all of us1.
In the realm of self-discovery, writings, because they set in stone, are not the favourite tool used in martial arts. As it has already been mentioned many times in this blog, solving oral enigmas used to be the way to pass on knowledge. Hence, when the first boxing manuals appeared, they were not too comprehensive. It seems a bit odd, for the least, when faced with a detailed internal Taoist martial arts manual dated before most of the others2.
Furthermore, such manual seems to deal with every aspects of Taoist popular culture, including Taoist symbols.
The text, according to its commentator, Ma Guoxing, is coming from Bi Kun, a swordsman from the end of the Yuan and beginning of the Ming dynasties, but the actual one he is working on is a copy written by the Xu family during the Qing Dynasty. For some, this text is just an invention, and it might just be one. If Ma Guoxing considers that it is genuine for many reasons3 including being “realistic”4, the usual modern justification for any practice related to old martial arts, the fact that the text mentions that Bi Kun had to study the art of the sword outside of a daily job makes one wonder when he would have had the time to study literature, especially at a time where Classical Chinese still ruled, most of the martial artists being illiterate5. There, we seem to be faced with the typical hero construction our societies always like to create.
Furthermore, such manual seems to deal with every aspects of Taoist popular culture, including Taoist symbols.
Symbols From The Sword of Chaos
The text, according to its commentator, Ma Guoxing, is coming from Bi Kun, a swordsman from the end of the Yuan and beginning of the Ming dynasties, but the actual one he is working on is a copy written by the Xu family during the Qing Dynasty. For some, this text is just an invention, and it might just be one. If Ma Guoxing considers that it is genuine for many reasons3 including being “realistic”4, the usual modern justification for any practice related to old martial arts, the fact that the text mentions that Bi Kun had to study the art of the sword outside of a daily job makes one wonder when he would have had the time to study literature, especially at a time where Classical Chinese still ruled, most of the martial artists being illiterate5. There, we seem to be faced with the typical hero construction our societies always like to create.
Studying a text which may not be genuine, but just a nice bedtime story for martial arts puppies, may seem not really appropriate. It is still opportune for two reasons, identical to the ones used to comment the Lady of Yue, which happen to be just a historical novel. Indeed, such text, as does the Lady of Yue, follows a lot of known principles and theories developed in the internal arts and is quite well written. It may be, then, a source of inspiration, especially if one uses the hijacking method which has been described over and over in this blog. The second reason is, of course, that such boxing manual may be an illustration of a martial arts method which consists in describing the same principle(s) in as many ways as possible to give the student a fair chance to understand what is often very hard to when it comes to internal practices. This can be regarded as the opposite of what was used when commenting the Lady of Yue, where self-discovery implied to expand and search for as many avenues of research as possible. Here, another aspect of self-discovery will be illustrated, trying to find as many angles as possible to the same question in order to unlock it.
Finally, since this blog is going to explain the Bamboo, Iron and Coton method, the author plans to randomly select paragraphs and quotes from the Sword of Chaos which would help to illustrate the new training realm such method represents.
3 One of them being that it follows most of the themes of martial arts.
4 One can wonder how to judge of the realism of a sword technique in a world they have become obsolete or legally forbidden. In short, nobody fighting with swords, the argument seems a bit specious. So-called realistic empty hand and knife self-defence orientated martial arts can, at least, test their training.
5 See the paragraph Challenges in Voiding The Lady, Martial Arts Writings
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