Silat the country's best costume dramas before the genre began to decline in Malaysia after the early 2000s. Aside from period dramas, authentic silat is often featured in other genres, such as the Indonesian series "Mawar Merah" and the made-for-TV children's movie "Borobudur". In Malaysia, various styles of silat are regularly showcased in martial arts-themed documentary serials like "Mahaguru", "Gelanggang" and "Gerak Tangkas". Other instances of silat on television include the following. Silat in the literary tradition can be traced back to the old hikayat or epics which became popular as literacy spread among Southeast Asian commoners, specifically commoners from the
Silat Melayu Silat Melayu Silat Melayu (Jawi: ), literally meaning "Malay silat", is a blanket term for silat styles of the Malay people. The term was originally used in reference to the native silat of Riau in Indonesia, but today it is more commonly used for the systems created in the Indochinese peninsula, particularly Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Brunei and Vietnam. In modern usage, the term is most often used to differentiate the Malaysian styles from Indonesian pencak silat. English-language writings sometimes mistakenly refer to silat Melayu as "bersilat" but this is actually a verb form of the noun silat, literally meaning "to