What is Merpati Putih (MP) ?
Learn more about the royal Indonesian martial art from Yogyakarta here:
The perguruan Merpati Putih was officially founded in Yogyakarta in 1963 and is one of the Javanese Pencak Silat styles. MP – the common abbreviation for Merpati Putih – includes all four categories of Pencak Silat: beladiri (self-defense), olahraga (sport/ competition), seni (art) and mental-spiritual (the spiritual aspect). MP is known as a tenaga dalam school because of the style-typical breathing exercises that are taught to control our human “Inner Power”.
The MP logo shows a white dove (Merpati = dove, Putih = white) in front of an open hand. In addition to the white dove as a symbol of peace, the hand stands for the abilities that a student can acquire in MP, i.e. the different ways of using their Inner Power – which can then be expressed in very different ways via the palm of the hand.
PPS BeTaKo is the short form of Perguruan Pencak Silat Beladiri Tangan Kosong, which means “Pencak Silat School of Empty-Handed Self-Defense”. Merpati Putih literally means White Dove and is also an acronym of the Javanese phrase “MERSUDI PATITISING TINDAK PUSAKANE TITISING HENING” which can be translated as “Searching in silence for truth and truthfulness”. The founders of MP are Poerwoto Hadi Purnomo (Mas Poeng) and Budi Santoso Hadi Purnomo (Mas Budi), who trace their knowledge, power, origin and ancestry back over 11 generations (genealogy).
According to their genealogy, the roots of MP go back to Majapahit and the subsequent Mataram Empire, more precisely to the war-like conditions of the 1550s. Sultan Agung, who ruled Mataram between 1613 and 1646, was a feared “warrior-king” who put pressure on both the Dutch colonial army and the local rulers of neighboring kingdoms throughout Java. Agung’s son Amangkurat and his successors are said to have promoted and eventually institutionalized the secrets of the martial art -MP- within the keraton (palace) of Mataram (later Yogyakarta).
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