Chinese martial arts before Shaolin Chinese historical records, like
Spring and Autumn Annals of Wu and Yue, the
Bibliographies in the Book of the Han Dynasty, the
Records of the Grand Historian, and other sources document the existence of martial arts in China for thousands of years. For example, the Chinese martial art of wrestling,
Shuai Jiao, predates the establishment of Shaolin temple by several centuries. In Japan, he is known as Daruma. The idea that Bodhidharma founded martial arts at the Shaolin Temple was spread in the 20th century. However, this idea came from a debunked apocryphal 17th century legend that claimed Bodhidharma taught the monks philosophies of
Chan Buddhism, which the monks were then able to use to create their own combat techniques that developed into Shaolin kung fu. The idea of Bodhidharma influencing Shaolin boxing is based on a
Qigong manual written during the 17th century. This is when a Taoist with the
pen name 'Purple Coagulation Man of the Way' wrote the
Sinews Changing Classic in 1624, but claimed to have discovered it. The first of two prefaces of the manual traces this succession from Bodhidharma to the Chinese general
Li Jing via "a chain of Buddhist saints and martial heroes."
Sui and Tang dynasties (581–907 AD): Shaolin soldier monks During the short period of the
Sui dynasty (581–618), the building blocks of Shaolin kung fu took an official form, and Shaolin monks began to create fighting systems of their own. The
18 methods of Luohan with a strong Buddhist flavour were practiced by Shaolin monks since this time, which was later used to create more advanced Shaolin martial arts. Shaolin monks had developed very powerful martial skills, and this showed itself towards the end of the Sui dynasty. Like most dynastic changes, the end of the Sui dynasty was a time of upheaval and contention for the throne. The oldest evidence of Shaolin participation in combat is a
stele from 728 that attests to two occasions: a defense of the monastery from bandits around 610 and their role in the defeat of
Wang Shichong at the
Battle of Hulao in 621. Wang Shichong declared himself Emperor. He controlled the territory of
Zheng and the ancient capital of
Luoyang. Overlooking Luoyang on Mount Huanyuan was the Cypress Valley Estate, which had served as the site of a fort during the
Jin and a commandery during the
Southern Qi.
Emperor Wen of Sui had bestowed the estate on a nearby monastery called Shaolin for its monks to farm, but Wang Shichong, realizing its strategic value, seized the estate and there placed troops and a signal tower, as well as establishing a prefecture called Yuanzhou. Furthermore, he had assembled an army at Luoyang to march on the Shaolin Temple itself. The monks of Shaolin allied with Wang's enemy, Li Shimin, and took back the Cypress Valley Estate, defeating Wang's troops and capturing his nephew Renze. Without the fort at Cypress Valley, there was nothing to keep Li Shimin from marching on Luoyang after his defeat of Wang's ally Dou Jiande at the
Battle of Hulao, forcing Wang Shichong to surrender. Li Shimin's father was the
first Tang Emperor and Shimin himself became its
second. Thereafter Shaolin enjoyed the royal patronage of the Tang. Though the Shaolin Monastery Stele of 728 attests to these incidents in 610 and 621 when the monks engaged in combat, it does not allude to martial training in the monastery, or to any fighting technique in which its monks specialized. Nor do any other sources from the Tang, Song and Yuan periods allude to military training at the temple. According to
Meir Shahar, this is explained by a confluence of the late Ming fashion for military encyclopedias and, more importantly, the conscription of civilian irregulars, including monks, as a result of Ming military decline in the 16th century.
Stele and documentary evidence shows the monks historically worshiped the
Bodhisattva Vajrapani's "
Kinnara King" form as the progenitor of their staff and bare hand fighting styles.
Ming dynasty (1368–1644) From the 8th to the 15th centuries, no extant source documents Shaolin participation in combat; then the 16th and 17th centuries see at least forty extant sources attest that, not only did monks of Shaolin practice martial arts, but martial practice had become such an integral element of Shaolin monastic life that the monks felt the need to justify it by creating new Buddhist lore. References to Shaolin martial arts appear in various literary genres of the late Ming: the epitaphs of Shaolin warrior monks, martial-arts manuals, military encyclopedias, historical writings, travelogues, fiction, and even poetry. These sources, in contrast to those from the
Tang dynasty period, refer to Shaolin methods of combat unarmed, with the
spear, and with the weapon that was the forte of the Shaolin monks and for which they had become famous, the
staff. By the mid-16th century military experts from all over
Ming China were travelling to Shaolin to study its fighting techniques. Around 1560
Yu Dayou travelled to Shaolin Monastery to see for himself its monks' fighting techniques, but found them disappointing. Yú returned to the south with two monks, Zongqing and Pucong, whom he taught the use of the staff over the next three years, after which Zongqing and Pucong returned to Shaolin Monastery and taught their brother monks what they had learned. Martial arts historian Tang Hao traced the Shaolin staff style Five Tigers Interception to Yú's teachings. The earliest extant manual on Shaolin kung fu, the
Exposition of the Original Shaolin Staff Method was written in around 1610 and published in 1621 from what its author Chéng Zōngyóu learned during a more than ten-year stay at the monastery. Conditions of lawlessness in
Henan—where the Shaolin Monastery is located—and surrounding provinces during the late
Ming dynasty and all of the
Qing dynasty contributed to the development of martial arts. Meir Shahar lists the martial arts
tai chi, Chang Family Boxing,
Baguaquan,
Xingyi quan and
bajiquan as originating from this region and this time period.
Pirates From the 1540s to the 1560s,
pirates known as
wokou raided
China's eastern and southeastern coasts on an unprecedented scale. The geographer Zheng Ruoceng provides the most detailed of the 16th-century sources which confirm that, in 1553, Wan Biao, Vice Commissioner in Chief of the Nanjing Chief Military Commission, initiated the conscription of monks—including some from Shaolin—against the pirates. Warrior monks participated in at least four battles: at the
Hangzhou Bay in spring 1553 and in the
Huangpu River delta at Wengjiagang in July 1553, Majiabang in spring 1554, and Taozhai in autumn 1555. The monks suffered their greatest defeat at Taozhai, where four of them fell in battle; their remains were buried under the Stūpa of the Four Heroic Monks (
Si yi seng ta) at Mount She near
Shanghai. The monks won their greatest victory at Wengjiagang. On 21 July 1553, 120 warrior monks led by the Shaolin monk Tianyuan defeated a group of pirates and chased the survivors over ten days and twenty miles. The pirates suffered over one hundred casualties and the monks only four. Not all of the monks who fought at Wengjiagang were from Shaolin, and rivalries developed among them. Zheng chronicles Tianyuan's defeat of eight rival monks from Hangzhou who challenged his command. Zheng ranked Shaolin first of the top three Buddhist centers of martial arts. Zheng ranked
Funiu in
Henan second and
Mount Wutai in
Shanxi third. The Funiu monks practiced staff techniques which they had learned at the Shaolin Monastery. The Wutai monks practiced Yang Family Spear (楊家槍;
pinyin: Yángjiā qiāng). ==Contents==