About 630:
Narasimhavarman I Mamallan, the Tamil king of southern India’s Pallava Dynasty, commissions dozens of granite sculptures showing unarmed fighters disarming armed opponents. These sculptures might have been state propaganda. After all, Narasimhavarman and his sons were constantly fighting with their neighbors. Or they may have had religious symbolism, as the modern Indians have some violent dances honoring the goddess Kali that use similar movements. Or they might have shown an early form of varma adi, a southern Indian wrestling art since subsumed by kalarippayattu, that allowed kicking, kneeing, and punching to the head and chest, but prohibited blows below the waist. (The Agni Purana of the eighth or ninth century describes such an art, and Mamallan means "Great Wrestler.") Or they could have been all of the above or none: The Indians used their sculptures to tell stories, and it is presently impossible to tell whether those stories were true or fanciful.
Second century:
Indian Buddhists are encouraged to "avoid all contact with evil or cruel persons who brutally practice... the arts of boxing, wrestling, and nata." Nata is, literally, "dancing." However, in some of the more violent dances, the dancers go through choreographed battles against invisible demons. Shifu Nagaboshi (Terence Dukes) has suggested that nata, known as tandava, inspired the exercises that the Indian monk Bodhidharma taught the Chinese Shaolin monks. But the exercises Bodhidharma taught are conjectural, nata are associated with the Lord Vishnu rather than the Lord Buddha, and the Romans and Greeks shadow-boxed, too. ("So fight I," said Saint Paul in I Corinthians 9:26, "not as one that beateth the air." Unarmed versions of these Hellenistic shadow-boxing exercises were known as skiamachiae, or "private contests," while armed versions were known as hoplomachiae, or "armed contests.") So, while coincidence has been established, causality has not.