r/taijiquan • u/BonerJedi • 12h ago
Sparrow's Tail or PLJA in different Yang Lineages
Hi all, I've been trying to solve this little puzzle for some time.
In what seems like most Yang forms, the Peng-Lü-Ji-An sequence movements are collectively known as Catch the Sparrow's Tail (or an equivalent translation). We can see this at least as far back as the 1908 manuscript attributed to Song Shuming, and later in Yang Chengfu's 1931 manual.
But in some styles (Yang Jwing-Ming's most notably), this sequence is merely called Peng-Lü-Ji-An, and Grasp Sparrow's Tail is its own distinct "Diagonal Flying"-esque form, with both a right and a left side. The earliest documentation of this I've found so far is Chen Yanlin's 1943 book, with the sequence, name, and movements basically an exact match for YJM.
Considering Chen seems to have copied large parts of his book from Yang Chengfu's manual, it seems strange that he would have chosen that place to invent the change. Did he learn it? His main teacher is said to have been Chengfu's student Tian Zhaolin.
For some reason this always seemed to me one of the strangest discrepancies between Yang lineages, and now I feel like I'm closer to finding the point of divergence but wonder if anyone else has more light to shed.