Silat Silat Silat is a collective word for a class of indigenous martial arts from the geo-cultural area of Southeast Asia, more precisely in the Indonesian Archipelago, a region known locally as "Nusantara". It is traditionally practised in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, portions of the Philippines, southern part of Thailand and central part of Vietnam. There are hundreds of different styles ("aliran") and schools ("perguruan") but they tend to focus either on strikes, joint manipulation, weaponry, or some combination thereof. Silat is one of the sports included in the Southeast Asian Games and other region-wide competitions. Silat first made its debut
Pencak Silat leader and allied himself with the arriving Mongol army. With their help Raden Wijaya was able to defeat the Kediri forces. With his silat-trained warriors, Raden Wijaya then turned on the Mongols so that they fled back to China. The village he founded became the Majapahit empire. This was the first empire to unite all of Indonesia's major islands, and pencak silat reached its technical zenith during this period. In Majapahit, pencak silat became the specialised property of the nobility and its advanced secrets were hidden from commoners. The lucrative spice trade eventually brought colonists from Europe, first the Portuguese