Wu Bei Zhi
Wu Bei Zhi
by Mao Yan Yi
Perhaps the oldest known book on martial arts is the Wu Bei Zhi which was written in sometime between 1608 and 1621 the Ming Dynasty.
The author of this monumental work was Mao Yan Yi who grew
up loving the military life and the government of China. He became a military
leader and decided that he would take on the monumental task of creating this
work which is over 10,000 pages in length. It contains over 240 volumes and
includes everything on warfare from training of soldiers, strategy of warfare,
training of horses, and of course hand to hand combat including various weapons
including there usage. Weapons included guns bow & arrow, bo staff, sword,
and an array of weird weapons we have never seen.
The entire book was drawn by hand including 1000’s of
drawings as it was created before the printing press even. There are 5 known copies of the book which is
housed in a cabinet it is so large. The pages are large sheets of card type
paper that are folder over and over kind of like how an accordion looks like. There
is only one copy in private hands and that is owned by the Hawley Libraries in
Los Angeles California, the other 4 are at Cambridge University in England.
This book or treatise was created before even the printing
press and is still studied today by West Point and several other military
institutes around the world.
These volumes take martial arts back before modern day martial arts and the Chinese as most scholars know were the real creators of martial arts as we know it today.
We have tried to have it translated but it is impossible to
do so as it is so old of a dialect that no one is capable of reading this book
even. In saying that we have found a Chinese monk who says he can read it but
even if he translated one page a day it would take him 27 years to do the
entire book. Again its a monumental task.
Here are several photos of the inside of this book.
Anyone who buys one of our Holiday box sets can ask for a copy of the
entire 10,224 pages and we will be happy to share this with you.