A popular claim repeated by many martial artists on the internet is that the "esoteric" nature of many East Asian systems is because they're essentially the end result of a game of telephone. That is; the styles were originally more grounded systems of combat, changed over time to emphasize theory/aesthetics over application, and the practitioners have largely forgotten the "old ways" of doing things. In particular, there are claims that many of these styles originally engaged in hard sparring, or even engaged in public competitions/duels with rival schools.
Ignoring the elephants in the room that are the surviving grappling traditions from these regions, as well as the various kickboxing traditions of Southeast Asia (which are more intuitive for people unfamiliar with these cultures to follow,) I'm not familiar with any period sources from these regions that actually say or imply this. Trying to research this just leads me to claims from martial artists themselves, who tend to share few (if any) reliable sources to back up these claims. Obviously, stories abound of masters challenging each other to fights to prove the superiority of their styles; but any further claims tend to be harder to find, at least in sources available in English.
Intuitively, this theory makes sense. But I'm also well-aware that a claim about the past making intuitive sense doesn't necessarily mean it's true. So I figure it's worth asking people more thoroughly educated in the histories of these styles. Is there any truth to the claims of these styles engaging in more "grounded" training methods? If so, how much?
According to The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts by Meir Shahar who has a PhD in Asian languages and civilizations at Harvard University,
“Ming period unarmed techniques, which are recorded in sixteenth century literature, served as the foundation for new bare-handed styles that emerged in the ensuing century. Some of the most important martial systems with which we are familiar today—Taiji Quan, Xingyi Quan, and Shaolin Quan—originated in the seventeenth-century Ming-Qing transition period.”
If you research various Chinese martial art styles that is commonly known today, you will find that most of them were founded 17th century or later. There are of course exceptions such as Louhanquan (Arhat Fist).
Qi Jiguang was a Chinese military general from the 16th century, and as the Meir’s book states regarding Qi’s manual (called Jixiao Xinshu),
“Hand combat, Qi Jiguang argued, could be used for troops’ training. The experienced general was well aware that bare-handed methods were useless in the battlefield.”
In the Shaolin Staff Method (ca.1610) written by Cheng Zongyou, it was asked:
“As to the staff, the Shaolin [method] is admired. Today there are many Shaolin monks who practice hand combat (quan), and do not practice staff. Why is that?”
The answer is the following:
“By contrast, hand combat is not yet popular in the land (quan you wei shengxing hainei). Those [Shaolin monks] who specialize in it, do so in order to transform it, like the staff, [into a vehicle] for reaching the other shore [of enlightenment].”
The Shaolin was not famous for bare-handed martial arts in that time period; according to historical records (including Qi Jiguang’s manual), they were famous for their staff method.
In summary, bare-handed martial arts were not popular in China, and they were deemed mostly useless on the battlefield because weapons existed.
Back then, the notion of being grounded in systems of combat meant knowing how to use a weapon. Even in modern times, barehanded martial arts mean very little against firearms. The same was true long ago with swords, knives, spears, arrow, etc…
The “old way” of doing things on the battlefield was weapons.
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Traditional Chinese martial arts followed the convention of passing the art down from either father to son or a teacher to disciple (Shifu to Tudi).
Historians can never truly know how these martial artists trained because much of that was done privately. Whether there was hard sparring involved or not back then, there’s no way to prove that outside of anecdotal stories.
The aforementioned assumption of these martial arts later “emphasize theory/aesthetics over application” is potentially dubious – depending on what the premises are. The International Wushu Federation (IWUF) was founded in 1990, and according to their rules, here are some of them:
I suspect the assumption was derived from a performance art – not a martial art. Music is literally mandatory for these form competitions (by the IWUF), and there are rules that incentives aesthetically-pleasing acrobatic movements. But it is inaccurate to label such performances as traditional Chinese martial arts – rather they’re performance arts that took inspiration from Chinese martial arts as proven by the fact that there are movements that do not exist in the martial art they correspond to.
What’s the evidence that these styles were changed to emphasize aesthetics over application? Often, a lot of the evidence that are presented online are not traditional martial arts. Just because you call it something doesn’t mean it’s that thing. There is a labeling problem.
The Korean martial art that I learned (Kuk Sool Won) traces its heritage to three different martial arts traditions:
Family martial arts, passed down from teacher to disciple (typically parent to child).
Buddhist martial arts, typically staff & empty-hand techniques, taught & practiced within monasteries.
Royal Court martial arts, typically weapons training. Sword, spear, archery, mounted combat. Women traditionally learned knife and fan techniques, including knife-throwing.
The largely-oral tradition says that Kuk Sa Nim (the founder of the Kuk Sool Won tradition, which goes back about 60 years) combined the three traditions & developed a systematic path to learn them.
The more esoteric philosophy underlying the tradition includes Buddhist and Taoist (usually via Son Buddhism, which is called Zen in Japan) teachings, and the Korean equivalent of Traditional Chinese Medicine with meridians & pressure points.