Silat Pattani
The Malay silat of the Patani sultanate area in southern Thailand; it distinguishes the dance form bunga from the application buah.
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About Silat Pattani
Silat Pattani is a collective name for the Malay silat practised in the area of the historical sultanate of Patani, that is in the present-day southern Thai provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat and in neighbouring Kelantan in Malaysia. It is not a single school with a documented founder but a family of local lines handed on in Malay Muslim villages from the teacher, the guru, to the pupil; the page therefore gives no year of origin. Until 1785 the region was an independent Malay sultanate, and after its annexation by Siam it kept its own language and culture, so the fighting tradition developed apart from its Thai surroundings. Teaching distinguishes two levels: bunga, literally flower, is a flowing sequence resembling a dance in which stances, footwork and balance are trained, while buah, fruit, is the combative application of the same movement, that is a parry, a lock, a takedown or a strike. The repertoire covers low stances, circular evasions, catching the opponent's arm and the throws that follow, and among weapons the wavy dagger kris and the cutting knife golok. In Patani silat has a ceremonial as well as a fighting role: at weddings it is performed to the gendang drums and the serunai pipe as a display, not as a contest. It is precisely this musical and social dimension that sets Malay silat apart from the Indonesian styles with which it shares a technical base.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.