The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts

Abstract

This book charts the history of the Shaolin Temple and the evolution of its world-renowned martial arts. It considers the economic, political, and religious factors that led Shaolin monks to disregard the Buddhist prohibition against violence and instead create fighting techniques that by the twenty-first century have spread throughout the world. The book examines the monks' relations with successive Chinese regimes, beginning with the assistance they lent to the seventh-century Emperor Li Shimin and culminating more than a millennium later with their complex relations with Qing rulers, who suspected them of rebellion. It reveals the intimate connection between monastic violence and the veneration of the violent divinities of Buddhism and analyzes the Shaolin association of martial discipline and the search for spiritual enlightenment. The exploration of the evolution of Shaolin fighting techniques serves as a prism through which to consider martial-art history in general. The book correlates the emergence of the famous bare-handed techniques of Taiji Quan, Xingyi Quan, and Shaolin Quan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the social, political, and religious trends of that age. It then goes on to argue that these techniques were created not only for fighting, but also for religious and therapeutic purposes.