Persaudaraan Setia Hati Terate (PSHT)
The largest Indonesian pencak silat organisation, founded in 1922 in Madiun. It reports around seven million members.
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IndonesiaCharacter & Origin
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Organisation & Competition
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About Persaudaraan Setia Hati Terate (PSHT)
Persaudaraan Setia Hati Terate, PSHT for short, is the largest Indonesian pencak silat organisation. It was founded in 1922 in Madiun in East Java by Ki Hadjar Hardjo Oetomo; it took its present name only at its first congress, also in Madiun, in 1948. Its lineage runs back to Setia Hati, laid down in 1903 by Ki Ageng Soerodiwirjo. When Hardjo Oetomo wished to open his own school based on that method, Soerodiwirjo consented on condition that the new organisation carry a distinct identity — hence the epithet Terate, the lotus. The word persaudaraan in the name matters: it means brotherhood. PSHT does not understand itself as a club where technique is practised but as a fellowship of which technique forms a part. Admission is a rite and membership is for life; this aspect explains the organisation's scale better than any competitive record. Technically it is a full-contact form of pencak silat with an emphasis on striking with hands and feet. The syllabus is graded, and alongside the fighting part it carries a spiritual and ethical component that the founder held to be of equal weight. Its scale is unusual for a martial art. The organisation reports around seven million members and branches in 236 regencies and cities of Indonesia, together with ten overseas commissariats — in Malaysia, the Netherlands, Russia, East Timor, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Belgium and France. That places PSHT among the numerically largest martial organisations in the world, though it is little known outside Indonesia.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.