Chinese Shaolin Kung Fu refers to a collection of Chinese martial arts that claim affiliation with the Shaolin Monastery.
According to the Jingde of the Lamp,after Bodhidharma,a Buddhist monk from Kerala in South India,left the court of the Liang emperor Wu in 527,he eventually found himself at the Shaolin Monastery, where he“faced a wall for nine years,not speaking for the entire time”.
Records of the discovery of arms caches in the monasteries of Chang'an during government raids in AD 446 suggests that Chinese monks practiced martial arts prior to the establishment of the Shaolin Monastery in 497.Monks came from the ranks of the population among whom the martial arts were widely practiced prior to the introduction of Buddhism.There are indications that Huiguang,Sengchou and even Huike, Bodhidarma's immediate successor as Patriarch of Chán Buddhism,may have been military men before retiring to the monastic life.Moreover,Chinese monasteries,not unlike those of Europe,in many ways were effectively large landed estates,that is, sources of considerable regular income which required protection.
In addition to that, the Spring and Autumn Annals of Wu and Yue,the Bibliographies in the Book of the Han Dynasty and the Records of the Grand Historian all document the existence of martial arts in China before Bodhidharma.The martial arts Shuāi Jiāo and Sun Bin Quan,to name two,predate the establishment of the Shaolin Monastery by centuries.
Shaolin, in popular culture,has taken on a second life.Since the 1970s,it has been featured in many films,TV shows, video games,cartoons,and other media.While some of these are clear commercial exploitation of the Shaolin Temple and its legends,they have helped make Shaolin a household name around the world,and kept the temple alive in the minds of many young generations.To date,no other temple in the world has achieved such wide spread recognition.
