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shoot a heavy arrow from a strong bow, or those who were accurate. At one time or another in the Song Period, the pendulum swung either way, sometimes with complex factors applied to marry the two criteria. (Song Shi: Xuanju 3. Selby: 10R.)
Later, a fashion grew up of including a further element in the examination system: apart from archery on foot and on horseback, candidates were required to pull a heavy bow from which no arrow was shot. This test seems to have started in the Ming Dynasty and became established in the Qing military examinations.
Examination archery was not battlefield archery
There is further evidence of a discrepancy growing between the demands of the military examination system and the demands of the battlefield. In training armies to deal with the Japanese coastal incursions in the 16th century, Yu Dayou and Qi Jiguang, like Zeng Gongliang in the Song Dynasty, disdained the 'flowery' skills of the examination candidates, and developed alternative battle skills for archery on foot (see Selby. p. 277). We can speculate that Chinese military archery pre-supposed that the main action would be on horseback; but new tactical considerations with the anti-Japanese Wo Kou campaigns required archery in coastal areas and onboard ship, where horseback archery technique was of no use.
For a military examination system, you would have thought that skill in practical, battlefield techniques would have been what was required. But apart from horseback archery, that was not the case.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, two works were published that concentrated on military technique, one by Li Chengfen and the other by Gao Ying. But neither became popular. The demand among candidates for the examinations was for books illustrating what is clearly a continuation of the elegance of the Confucian, ritual style.
—
The inutility of such a style - and indeed the inutility of archery as a whole in the face of modern, Western battlefield technology ultimately consigned the antiquated archery syllabus in the military examination system to the scrap-heap in 1901. (Liu Jincao: "Xu Wenxian Tongkao: xuanju 5". Selby: 13G.)
253
shoot a heavy arrow from a strong bow, or those who were accurate. At one time or another in the Song Period, the pendulum swung either way, sometimes with complex factors applied to marry the two criteria. (Song Shi: Xuanju 3. Selby: 10R.)
Later, a fashion grew up of including a further element in the examination system: apart from archery on foot and on horseback, candidates were required to pull a heavy bow from which no arrow was shot. This test seems to have started in the Ming Dynasty and became established in the Qing military examinations.
Examination archery was not battlefield archery
There is further evidence of a discrepancy growing between the demands of the military examination system and the demands of the battlefield. In training armies to deal with the Japanese coastal incursions in the 16th century, Yu Dayou and Qi Jiguang, like Zeng Gongliang in the Song Dynasty, disdained the 'flowery' skills of the examination. candidates, and developed alternative battle skills for archery on foot (see Selby. p. 277). We can speculate that Chinese military archery pre-supposed that the main action would be on horseback; but new tactical considerations with the anti-Japanese Wo Kou campaigns required archery in coastal areas and onboard ship, where horseback archery technique was of no use.
For a military examination system, you would have thought that skill in practical, battlefield techniques would have been what was required. But apart from horseback archery, that was not the case.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, two works were published that concentrated on military technique, one by Li Chengfen and the other by Gao Ying. But neither became popular. The demand among candidates for the examinations was for books illustrating what is clearly a continuation of the elegance of the Confucian, ritual style.
—
The inutility of such a style - and indeed the inutility of archery as a whole in the face of modern, Western battlefield technology ultimately consigned the antiquated archery syllabus in the military examination system to the scrap-heap in 1901. (Liu Jincao: "Xu Wenxian Tongkao: xuanju 5". Selby: 13G.)
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