Pencak Silat word "pancha" meaning five, or from the Chinese term "pencha" or "pungcha" which implies parrying or deflecting, and striking or pressing. Other terms may be used in particular dialects such as "silek", "penca", "mancak", "maen po" or "main-po". Dutch East Indian newspapers of the colonial era recorded the terms for martial arts under Dutch spellings. These include "silat", "pencak" (spelled in Dutch as "pentjak"), "penca" ("pentjah"), "mancak" ("mentjak"), "manca" ("mentjah"), and "pukulan" ("poekoelan"). In 1881 a magazine calls mancak a Batak fencing game "with long swords, daggers or wood ("mentjah")" These papers described mancak as Malayan ("Maleidsche") suggesting that the
Pencak Silat despised by the Dutch authorities as criminals and thieves but were highly respected by the native pribumi and local Chinese. Conflict with the European rulers provided an impetus for the proliferation of new styles of pencak silat, now founded on the platform of nationalism and the desire for freedom from colonisation. The Indonesian Pencak Silat Association (IPSI) was founded in 1948 to bring all of Indonesia's pencak silat under a single administration. The world's oldest nationwide silat organisation, its basis is that all pencak silat is built on a common source, and that less functional styles must give way to