Silat

Silat is the collective term for a class of martial arts from the Malay and surrounding geocultural areas of Southeast Asia. It is traditionally practised in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, southern Thailand, southern Philippines and southern Vietnam. There are hundreds of different styles (aliran) and schools (perguruan) which tend to focus either on strikes, joint manipulation, weaponry, or some combination thereof. The word silat is used by Malay speakers throughout Southeast Asia, but it is officially called pencak silat in Indonesia. The term pencak silat has been adopted globally in reference to professional competitive silat for sport, similar to the Chinese word wushu. Regional dialect names include penca (West Java), dika or padik (Thailand), silek (the Minangkabau pronunciation of silat), main-po or maen po (in the lower speech of Sundanese), and gayong or gayung (used in parts of Malaysia and Sumatra). Pencak silat is one of the sports included in the Southeast Asian Games and other region-wide competitions. Pencak silat first made its debut at the 1987 Southeast Asian Games and the 2018 Asian Games, both of which were held in Indonesia. Training halls are overseen by separate national organisations in each of the main countries the art is practised. These organisations are Ikatan Pencak Silat Indonesia (IPSI) in Indonesia, Persekutuan Silat Kebangsaan Malaysia (PESAKA) in Malaysia, Persekutuan Silat Brunei Darussalam (PERSIB) in Brunei, and Persekutuan Silat Singapura (PERSISI) in Singapore. Its practitioners are called pesilat. Both pencak silat and silat were recognized as intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO in December 2019.