Banshay (Burmese Weapon Fighting)
Burmese weapons art forming the armed branch of thaing. Sword dha, staff and spear; forms practiced with the blade sheathed, opened by a war dance with one or two swords.
Quick Facts
MyanmarCharacter & Origin
Training
Who It Suits
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
About Banshay (Burmese Weapon Fighting)
Banshay is a Myanmar martial art of weapons that forms the armed part of the Burmese system called thaing; its unarmed counterparts are bando and lethwei. It works chiefly with a sword called dha, with a staff and with a spear, and in some schools also with a knife. Distinctive features are working with two swords at once and the fact that forms are practiced with the blade in its sheath; according to the literature, masters fastened the sheath to the sword so that injuries would not occur during training. A demonstration traditionally opens with a war dance, in which the swordsman spins one or two swords close to the body. English-language sources list a set of thirty-seven sword forms, but for this and other figures the same literature itself notes that documentation is lacking; the catalogue therefore takes them over only as a claim from the literature, not as a verified fact. The origin is placed in the training of the armies of Burmese kings, where the art served the defense of the country, and Indian and Chinese systems are named as sources of influence; kinship is also cited with Thai krabi krabong, Cambodian kbach kun boran and Malay silat. In more recent times it was passed down within families and in monastery schools. Today Banshay appears mainly at national festivals, functioning more as a living stage art than as a competitive discipline, and international organizations for traditional sports list it among endangered intangible heritage.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.