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
Tiger from Tjampa Djajakusuma won Best Scenario for this film at the first Indonesian Film Festival held in 1955. Set in the 1930s, and narrated like an old ballad, "The Tiger from Tjampa" tells the story of a young man, Lukman (Bambang Hermanto) who seeks to avenge his father's murder by learning pencak silat, Indonesia's traditional form of self-defence, based on the movements of animals. The pencak silat shown in the film is regionally specific to West Sumatra. Lukman pleads Datuk Langit (Raden Ismail) to teach him, the man having asked him for three buffalos as payment which is beyond his means. Lukman