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CALICUT, INDIA, September 7, 2001: Kalarippayat is said to be the world’s original martial art. More than 2,000 years old, it was developed by warriors of the Cheras kingdom in Kerala. Training followed strict rituals and guidelines. From unarmed kicks and punches, kalarippayat warriors would graduate to sticks, swords, spears and daggers and study the marmas — the 107 vital spots on the human body where a blow can kill. Training was conducted in secret, the lethal warriors unleashed as a surprise weapon against the enemies of Cheras. Still, Chinese traders learned some of the mysterious body movements and took them home to provide the basis of their own martial arts. Now, the box-office success of Chinese kung-fu movies has in turn revived kalarippayat. Indian filmmakers, hoping to mimic the high-kicking fights and gravity-defying leaps in Jet Li’s Romeo Must Die and Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, are hiring kalarippayat fighters and teachers like Kumar as stuntmen. They’re even making sure Bollywood stars have basic training. “Even five years ago, Kerala martial arts had nearly died out,” says Kumar, who with his two brothers runs C.V.N. Kalari Sangham in Calicut, among the best known schools in the country. “Now suddenly it is popular again and it’s all because of these films.”

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