Kushti is an ancient form of wrestling popular in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Peter Adams/Getty Images
We humans find a lot of ways to express our competitive tendencies and compare our relative skills. There's throwing an orange sphere through a ring horizontal to the ground. There's sliding a weird weighted hunk across the ice. There's even galloping about on fantasy sticks. And if you want to add rolling around in the mud to the list, look no further than the South Asian sport of kushti, a form of wrestling also known as pehlwani. The freestyle matches last about half an hour, and a wrestler typically wins by simultaneously pinning an opponent's shoulders and hips to the ground. Learn more about this ancient sport in the images below.
The monkey god Lord Hanuman represents strength and bravery and is the kushti patron god. Many kushti training centers have a shrine to the deity.
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The traditional gyms and training centers for kushti are known as akhara. A typical akhara training regimen focuses on strength, weight and flexibility.
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Most akhara these days use modern gym mats, but those with mud and dirt floor still exist, particularly in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
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Kushti wrestlers are known as pehlwans, and the sport is known as pehlwani in Pakistan. The sport evolved during the Mughal Empire, roughly around the 17th century C.E. It combines native Indian malla-yuddha wrestling (a sport dating back 2,600 years) with influences from Persian varzesh-e bastanil wrestling.
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Pehlwans often live, cook and eat together in their akhara, and form small communities. The akhara are one of the few places in India where men of different caste backgrounds are supposedly treated equally.
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The special clay used in kushti pits is primarily dirt, but can also contain oil, buttermilk, yogurt, ghee (clarified butter), ochre or ground turmeric.
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While boxers may bump gloves to start a match, opposing kushti wrestlers will throw small amounts of dirt on themselves and each other as a blessing.
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Pehlwans can live ascetic lives, often cutting out smoking, alcohol and sex from their daily lives.
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In the same way that yoga practice carries meaning beyond the physical, kushti wrestling also has spiritual, moral and ethical dimensions.
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Wrestlers seek to simultaneously pin their opponent's shoulders and hips to the ground, though there are other ways of winning, including knockouts.
Kushti wrestlers had great success in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and since then Indian authorities have sought to modernize the practice by shutting some traditional gyms.
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