Silat Pulut
The demonstrative form of Malay silat for weddings and festivals: free-flowing paired movement in light contact, with locks.
Quick Facts
MalaysiaCharacter & Origin
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 Silat Pulut
Silat pulut is the demonstrative form of Malay silat and one of the two branches into which silat melayu is divided. The other is silat buah, meaning combat application and tactics; silat pulut, by contrast, stands as a form meant for display. The name literally means sticky rice, a dish that cannot be missing from Malay celebrations, and it is precisely there that this form of silat has its place. A pair performs free movement in light contact; it is not an exchange of strikes but work with locks and grips, in which one reacts to the other and the movement flows without a predetermined sequence. It is accompanied by music called gendang silat, played on the barrel-shaped gendang drums and the reed instrument serunai; styles from the north of the Malay Peninsula are considered the basis of gendang silat. Silat pulut thus does not take place in a gymnasium but at weddings and social occasions, and it fulfills a role the combat branch cannot — it keeps the art in view of the whole community, not only of practitioners. Malay silat as a whole underwent major development in the fifteenth century under the Melaka Sultanate, when Islamic philosophy and Sufi elements entered it. Seni Silat Malaysia was recognized as national heritage on 28 March 2002, and in 2019 UNESCO inscribed Malay silat on the list of intangible cultural heritage.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.