《劍經》
Jian Jing
Sword Treatise
The Book Of Advanced Weapons Combat Principles
English Translation
Special Traditional Stitch-binding
USD 29.90 + USD 19 Postage
(Registered postage to anywhere in the world,
with tracking number)
This is THE book for all martial artists who wants to practice fighting techniques with weapons. Even though the title of the book is "Sword Treatise", it is actually based on fighting with a wooden Staff.
The author of "Sword Treatise" is 俞大猷 (Yu Da-You) is a famous Ming-Dynasty General in the 1600s who defend China against the Japanese pirates invasion. Legend has it that General Yu visited Shaolin Temple, and improved on the monks' Staff techniques with his own teachings. He later wrote and compiled 正氣堂集 (Zheng Qi Tang Ji), "Compilation of Vital Energy". In his book, is a section called 劍經 (Jian Jing), "Sword Treatise".
In Chinese martial arts, the Staff is considered the Chief of all weapons. This is because all weapons' techniques trace their roots to the Staff. Therefore, Staff training serves as a foundation towards learning the fighting techniques of other weapons.
Sword Treatise is a compilation of General Yu's martial arts knowledge, and contains very deep and in-depth concepts on weaponry combat. If you are able to understand the principles in this book, you will be able to apply them in using the Sword, Spear or any other weapon.
This book is recommended for the intermediate to advanced martial arts practitioners. If you have some previous history with any weapons training, you'll find it easier to understand this manual.
Sword Treatise is, by far, the toughest book that I'd worked on. A lot of cross-references, asking veteran martial artists, and researching had to be done over a period of 7 to 8 brain-wrecking months, before I was able to release the English translation.
Many times I felt like giving up and working on something easier, but I felt a strong calling that this book was too important to pass over. And I was right. I still refer back to this book frequently.
If there is only 1 book that you'd ever get on ChineseLongsword.com, get this Sword Treatise. This is currently the most advanced book on this website, and it will help you to become proficient with ANY weapon.
If you don't understand the book when you read it, just go out and practice more with a good teacher. Then when you pick up the book again, you'll be like "Oh...now I get it."
Sword Treatise is also the 1st book that I specially paid extra money to publish it using traditional Chinese stitch-binding, which is to tie the pages together like how they did in ancient China.
I hope when you flip open this book, you'll get inspired by the wisdom of General Yu Dayou and past warriors, and pass on their martial arts legacy.
Contents (320 pages, A5-size):
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Foreword
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Song of the Art
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Trident Practice
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Song of the Art (Core Concepts)
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Movement Practice
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Techniques List
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Techniques Applications (1 to 180)
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14 Staff Stances
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9 Trident Stances
Features to help you learn & understand:
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Hanyu Pinyin pronunciation for all Chinese text
To help you pronounce the stances' names accurately. -
Chinese text side-by-side with the English translation
For your reference to the meaning of every word.
Thank you,
Jack Chen
Testimonials
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Cyrill
"I am a GongFu practitioner from Germany who practiced for 7-years now. In that time I had the opportunity to study different kinds of Southern Martial Arts. Now I am able to study the Northern Martial Arts. Due my research I have found out that many important things on martial arts are still only available in Chinese. For example from a Chinese Teacher or Chinese Ancient Manuals. As I don't speak Chinese and I don't have the time to learn it, your work has given me a great opportunity to get more into the world of Traditional Martial Arts. This is very important for me as I believe that Martial Arts without the tradition are incomplete. Tradition is for me the true teaching and the Value of Virtue, or Wude. I like very much that you have put the Chinese text and the English text face to face, so you can compare both if you speak Chinese and the big pictures are very detailed. Through your translation I can understand this great culture a step deeper. I really appreciate it. Thank you for that."
Principles Of Weapons Combat
The main portion of the book "Sword Treatise" is its 180 fighting techniques. These are described and taught in a more generic way, so that the reader can easily adapt the principles to any weapon.
Names of stances are given in the manual, but no pictures were given. However, the names of the stances are similar to those found in other manuals of the same period.
When researching this manual, I cross-referenced a lot with the Shaolin Staff manual, whenever I came across stances which I needed help in visualizing how they actually looked like.
The original "Sword Treatise" book has zero pictures, and only some simple line diagrams. When another Ming Dynasty General, Qi Ji-Guang, wrote his own book 紀效新書 (Ji Xiao Xin Shu), he included "Sword Treatise" inside, and (thankfully) included some drawings which were very helpful.
The unique thing is: not only did General Qi's drawings show the stances themselves, but they also show the stances that they are effective against. In other manuals, they tend to draw stances individually.
Even though this manual is 95% text, I've found that this is the one I read the most. Everytime I read it after martial arts practice, I learnt something new and deepened my understanding of weapon combat.
Except for some line diagrams, the manual was 95% text.
These drawings were included by General Qi Ji-Guang
Bringing The Ancient Manual Back To Life
The fighting principles in "Sword Treatise" can be adapted to any weapon, so in these videos, we attempted to apply some of the principles to the Long Saber.
Application of Sword Treatise Technique #39
"When the enemy raises his weapon high"
Application of Sword Treatise Technique #78
"7 ways to defeat a straight attack"
"Chicken Pecks Grains" is one of the techniques found in this manual. It involves making multiple quick and small strikes, resembling a chicken pecking at grains on the floor when eating.
Here is a short 2 minutes video tutorial to introduce this technique and give some pointers on how to perform it efficiently.
"Two Dragons Vying Pearl" is a technique that simply asks you to use both ends of the weapon. This short video demonstrate it with a Staff, but you can definitely use it with any other suitable weapon.
Also important to note, is the usage of the hips to generate the movement, and not just simply bashing with your hands or arms only.
In weapons or sword sparring, we commonly see "double-kill" outcomes, where both fighters hit each other at the same time. This issue has already been addressed 400 years ago in this "Sword Treatise" book.
This is a quick 5 mins video to explain my interpretation of what was written by General Yu Dayou.