moveThe fifteen mother techniques

แม่ไม้มวยไทย · mae mai muay thai

Not one of them is named after what it does.

KengCH · CC BY-SA 3.0

What it is

The first fifteen named techniques, taught as a set. Mae is mother, mai is a move; the fifteen that come after are called luk mai, child moves.

The long version

Thai Wikipedia lists them with a sentence of description each, sourcing the Thai Encyclopedia for Youth. This project took the list off the page at revision 13177866 rather than retyping it, glossed each name, and then counted what the names point at.

Fourteen of the fifteen name a picture and one names a movement. Salap fan pla is the zigzag of a fish's jaw. Chorakhe fat hang is a crocodile's tail. Hak kho erawan breaks the neck of the three-headed elephant that Indra rides. Wirunhok klap turns Virūḷhaka, guardian of the south, upside down.

Inference — this is why translating the names does not help a beginner and never has. The name is a mnemonic for a shape, held by people who had the shapes in front of them already: at Wat Bang Kung in Samut Songkhram the techniques stand in the courtyard as statues. The word was never carrying the instruction. The word was carrying the picture.

Some sources put the count at 385 techniques rather than thirty, with the hardest named as Narai ban sian — Narayana beheads. This project prints the fifteen and the fifteen because those are the two lists with a source attached.

Connected to

• The fifteen that come after The second fifteen.
• The epic in the technique list Where half the names come from.
• The fifteen, standing in a courtyard The fifteen, standing up, in a courtyard.
• Breaking Erawan's neck Number fifteen.
• The crocodile lashes its tail Number nine, and the one every gym still says.

Named here by

• The foot strokes the face And the exception to the whole set.
• The crocodile lashes its tail The list it is ninth on.
• Breaking Erawan's neck The list it closes.
• The fifteen that come after The first fifteen.
• Muay Korat Which its list disagrees with.
• The Tiger King What he is credited with.
• Ong-Bak What the song is named after.
• The epic in the technique list The first list.
• The fifteen, standing in a courtyard What is standing there.

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