Timelines/Chronologies for the development of CMA's and JMA's?

Has anyone here ever seen a timeline or chronology for Chinese martial arts or Japanese martial arts?

Ideally it'd be best if it ranged from myth and prehistory through to early recorded history and on through to the modern day.

If it included the development of weapons and armour as well that'd be a big plus. I know, I know... this is asking alot!

Perhaps it'd have the names and the faces of all the players who have contribued in major ways to the given martial art.

Has anyone ever seen anything... either in text form (article, document, thesis etc.) or in graphic form... a visual time line of CMA's or JMA's?

Would anyone interested in attempting to compile one?
Obviously not in one day... lol... but rather as a long term project.

Obviously there would be large areas where it'd be down to myth and much of it would be vague or unknown at best... but it sure would be interesting to see something like that attempted - using as much credible data as possible. And short of that filling in the blanks noting that where there isn't citable or credible data that what's been put in as essentially a place holder is either myth or the generally accepted truth/probability.

Your thoughts?

 

What?!?!?!?

Surely with all the knowledgable KF people here someone would have some input....



anyone?!

How about you break it down just for the CMA or JMA you do in particular.

 

The problem is that martial arts history is very poorly recorded, and tracing a martial art to a date or person is sketchy. So much of it is folktale legend that accurate history is impossible. Like the stories about Damo, or Yue Fei creating Qinna and Xingyi, or the abbess who created Wing Chun. There's probably some truth to each story, but good luck finding it.

The problem is when people take these legends as truth and start believing them as full truth, which leads to incredible stretches of the imagination like the relationship between Wing Chun and Muay Thai as put forth by a certain very prominent Wing Chun master.

A better place to start would be with weapons. Weapons can be traced by solid archaeological evidence and are often described in detail in historical documents that are at least somewhat contemporaneous to when the weapon was made. For this, you can probably find a book on Chinese warfare throughout the ages that will have photographs and depictions of these weapons. Unfortunately, since formalised martial arts have only been a very small part of warfare, you're not going to see a lot of help with those.

 

Yes I understand that there is a lot of rather sketchy material with much of the very early chronology... but some of it firms up as we closer to the present era.

The point is that for building these timelines I need to start somewhere so that's why I've posted this...

Yes I understand that I can use other reference material such as texts and archaeological evidence I am interested to get feedback from people here at MAP.

 

It's an intersting project slip, but you would definetly be going down a slippery slope with this one (pardon the pun). Creating a credible timeline that's backed by solid scholarly evidence and research would be a good project for a masters thesis on the history of chinese culture; anything produced by the armchair historians running around here would be of specious quality at best.

Especially with CMA there are quite a number of complicating factors. First, many of the recorded histories (as few and unreliable as they were) were destroyed durring the cultural revoloution. Second, the chinese long have had a penchant for fanciful stories and "colorful" histories that have really no shred of fact in them but are so popular they're the only "history" of a style still remaining. Third, chinese martial arts didn't develop in a vacuum, and are heavily influenced by each other. Sometimes this is well known and obvious as is the case with Hung Gar absorbing substantial amounts of the Lee Gar system, and sometimes is far less obvious, such as similarites of some tactics of hung gar and Choi Li Fut (before anyone gets their nose out of joint and pounces on that, yes I am well aware of how many diffrences there are and am not suggesting either one "plagerized" the other, only that if you go back far enough I bet you would find common roots in the lineages). Fourth, depending on the style, there are different linneages with sometimes very different histories because they diverged from one another relatively early on. These would essentially require two entirely seperately researched timelines.

Finally, really obfuscating matters, when the CMA teachers moved out of the villages and into the cities and began making full time livings teaching MA(around the mid to late 1800s), they frequently intentionaly distorted or "spiced up" the history of their arts to attract students. This is also about the period many of them began to close the shroud of secrecy around their styles and lineage gained importance. You have to admit it's much more appealing to tell someone "I learned this secret art from a monk directly from the great shao lin temple and am the only surviving person who knows the style" rather than "I spent ten years in this one art, five in another, and found out some of each worked and a lot didn't and am now teaching what I found works". The second was frequently the truth, but seldom admited (Choi Li Fut and 7 star praying mantis, and hung-mok being some notable exceptions).

Don't get me wrong, it would be a worthy project to undertake, but be aware of the monumental task you're undertaking if you do. Have you considered doing one for Muay Thai? Not using the accepted version but actually researching it and doing both the footwork and library work? Would be interesting to see.

Cheers.