Silambam Asia where silambam greatly influenced many fighting systems. The Indian community of the Malay Peninsula is known to have practiced silambam as far back as the period of Melaka's founding in the 15th century, and likely much earlier. The soldiers of Kings Puli Thevar, Dheeran Chinnamalai had Silambam army named "thadii pattalam", Veerapandiya Kattabomman and Maruthu Pandiyar (1760–1799) relied mainly on their Silambam prowess in their warfare against the British Army. Indian martial arts suffered a decline after the British colonists banned Silambam along with various other systems. They also introduced modern western military training which favoured fire-arms over traditional
Silambam has a variety of locks called "poottu". A fighter must always be careful while wielding the stick or they will be grappled and lose the fight. Locks can be used to disable the enemy or simply capture their weapon. Techniques called "thirappu" are used to counter the locks but these must be executed before being caught in a lock. Silambam also has many different types of avoiding an attack like blocking, parrying, enduring, rotary parrying, hammering, "kolluvuthal" (attacking and blocking simultaneously) and evasive moves such as sitting or kneeling, moving out, jumping high, etc. Against multiple attackers, silambam exponents do