Karra Samu and Kathi Samu (Telugu Stick and Sword Fighting)
Telugu stick fighting from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. According to the press, kathi samu sword fencing is taught within the same tradition as part of it.
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Training
Who It Suits
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
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About Karra Samu and Kathi Samu (Telugu Stick and Sword Fighting)
Karra samu is a Telugu stick-fighting tradition from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. C. P. Brown's Telugu dictionary of 1903 explains karra as wood or a stick and samu as bodily exercise and fencing, so the name literally means exercise with a stick. Kathi samu, katti in Brown's dictionary, is sword fencing within the same tradition. In 2016 The Hindu wrote about a trainer from Visakhapatnam who teaches karra samu, kathi samu and mela patu, fencing with multiple swords, and Times of India describes karra samu as an art with stylised sticks and swords. We have not found kathi samu in any reliable source as a separate school with its own history. According to The Hindu, karra samu goes back several centuries and arose as village defence against theft and robbery. The claim that it is three thousand years old is repeated by The New Indian Express and Times of India without evidence. The technique combines strikes and blocks with one stick or a stick in each hand, sweeping kicks, punches, footwork and grappling. Today karra samu is returning to competitions and local events. According to The Hindu (2024), the Andhra Pradesh government does not recognise it in the sports quota, whereas neighbouring Tamil Nadu recognised silambam in 2021.
History
The Hindu (2024) writes that karra samu goes back several centuries in Andhra Pradesh and arose as village defence against theft and robbery, passed down from generation to generation. The New Indian Express (2022) reports that young people once learned stick fighting to protect themselves and their villages, and that it gradually became mere entertainment and faded into oblivion. The same paper, in an article from Kadapa, says the rural sport is allegedly about three thousand years old, and Times of India repeats this, but neither of them substantiates the claim. English Wikipedia, citing a 2010 article in The Hindu, states that masters in Andhra Pradesh trace their lineage to the Vijayanagara Empire. The Wikipedia article on Karra Samu also links it to the Battle of Palnadu in the twelfth century and to teaching in the garidi under the Kakatiyas, but gives no source for this, and we have not been able to verify it. Brown's Telugu dictionary from 1903 defines garidi as fencing and a fencing school.
How it differs
The Hindu (2024) distinguishes karra samu from Andhra Pradesh from Punjabi gatka and Tamil silambam, which the same trainer teaches separately. The Hans India, by contrast, equates them with silambam at the competition. The Hindu (2016) distinguishes within the tradition karra samu with a staff, kathi samu with a sword and mela patu with several swords. Some state-exam preparation materials list kathi samu as a separate ancient art of Andhra Pradesh, but without a source or any mention of karra samu. Another website places it in Kerala and reads it as sword and shield in Sanskrit, contradicting the Telugu dictionary and the press.
Technique
According to The Hindu (2024), karra samu combines stick strikes and blocks with sweeping kicks, fast punches, footwork and holds. The Hindu (2016) describes that a female practitioner needs only one stick in one hand or a stick in each hand to defend herself and attack at once. Wikipedia gives the Telugu terms adugulu for footwork patterns and vidulu for strikes with one or two sticks, and sticks of bamboo or neem four to five feet long. Kathi samu is, according to The Hindu, sword fencing, and mela patu is fencing with several swords. Wikipedia, citing a 2010 article in The Hindu, writes that the Andhra talimkhana system from the Konaseema area includes forms with the knife baku samu, the sword katti samu and the stick karra samu. We have not found a description of sword fencing technique in reliable sources.
Training
Apart from a stick, The New Indian Express (2022) says no equipment is needed for training, which makes it cheap and appealing to middle-class families. In the village of Mangampeta, the village elder Bapureddy trained forty young people in forty days. According to The Hindu (2024), students of Baldev's Indian Traditional Martial Arts, aged 5 to 60, train daily from six in the morning in a park in Visakhapatnam, with a running warm-up, kicks, blocks and grips. Swarna Arts Academy in Hyderabad runs free basic courses in forty-five-day cycles and an eight-month advanced course, according to Telangana Today (2024), and has trained more than 2000 students. We have not found ranks or titles in the sources, and the press mentions only trainers and the designation guru.
Competition
Times of India wrote about the Karra Samu Championship 2024 in Etukuru near Guntur, organized by Vasavya Mahila Mandali with Usha International, which one hundred people attended. Categories for boys and girls up to eighteen competed. According to the sponsor's press release, the event called Usha Karra and Kathi Samu took place in January 2024 in Adilabad in Telangana. The Hans India (2024) wrote about a South Indian competition of the Indian Silambam Federation in Guntur, with about 300 athletes from Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, where karra samu was placed under silambam. The Hindu (2024) reports that P. Sudha is a national silver medallist in karra samu, but does not name the organizer of the national competition.
Today
According to The Hindu (2024), the Andhra Pradesh government neither recognises karra samu in the sports quota nor supports it with infrastructure, whereas Tamil Nadu recognised silambam in 2021. According to The New Indian Express (2022), the covid pandemic revived interest, and trainer Kiran Kumar speaks of students growing from ten to fifteen to over fifty in two years. According to The Hindu (2016), some students of Balaga Ananta Lakshman Dev won places in the police and army through training. The Swarna Arts Academy is supported, according to Telangana Today, by Mamidi Harikrishna, director of the Telangana culture department.
Did you know
Brown's dictionary states that katti in Telugu is also a unit of land area, the sword of the land, that is the holding assigned to a family that supplied one warrior to a feudal lord, counted in government accounts as 40 acres and 14 guntas. Under samu it cites a proverb that whoever loses ground beneath his feet while fencing loses strength. Trainer Lakshman Dev, an employee of the Visakhapatnam port, boxed himself and, according to The Hindu, won silver at the all-India championship in Dungarpur from 1988 to 1989. The Hindu links the revival of karra samu in coastal Andhra with the Jai Bheem Foundation and the Self-Respect Movement, and the competition took place during Social Justice Week.
Frequently asked questions
Is kathi samu a separate martial art?
In the press it appears as sword fencing taught together with karra samu, stick fighting. We have not found it in a reliable source as a separate school with its own history.
What does karra samu mean?
C. P. Brown's Telugu dictionary of 1903 explains karra as wood or a stick and samu as bodily exercise and fencing. The name therefore means exercise with a stick.
Is karra samu recognised as a sport?
According to The Hindu (2024), the Andhra Pradesh government does not recognise it in the sports quota. Competitions are organised by, for example, the regional Vasavya Mahila Mandali and the national Indian Silambam Federation, which classed it under silambam.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.