The Shaolin Temple

The Shaolin Temple is a Mahayana Chan Buddhist monastery located in Henan Province in Northern China.

In the Beginning...

In 138 BC The Han Emperor Wudi sent an expedition led by Zhang Quian to form an alliance with the Yuezhi against their common enemy, the Xiongnu, a tribe of peoples who eventually became know as the Hun.

After much hardship, capture by the enemy and subsequent escape, after 10 years the expedition eventually made contact with the Yuezhi. Although the Han court had lost interest in forming an alliance by the time Zhang Quian returned in 125 BC, they were intensely interested in the information he had gathered during his travels. Of particular interest was a new, larger breed of horse that could be used to equip the Han Cavalry. (These horses have been immortalized in the bronze sculpture atop the Leitai Han tomb in Wuwei. See: sculpture.) These horses played a crucial role later when Emperor Wudi sent General Huo Qubing (140-117B.C.) To seize the Hexi corridor from the Huns (originally the Xiongnu tribe.)

Such were the beginnings of the Silk Road, which resulted in many changes in the history of the Chinese nation, not the least of which was the introduction of Buddhism, and thereby, the Shaolin Temple.

The Silk Road ...

The area that separates China from Western Asia and Europe, is some of the most rugged and inhospitable landscape on the planet. The Talimakan Desert with very little rainfall, numerous sandstorms, and little to no vegetation, has claimed the lives of countless early travelers. To the Northeast is the Gobi Desert, as harsh and unforgiving as the Talamakan.

South are the Himalayan, Karakorum, and Kunlun Mountain ranges, a nearly impassable barrier to early travelers.

Because of these barriers and the fact that western civilations developed earlier under such peoples as the Medes and Persians, the Greeks and Alexander the Great, and later the Roman Empire, Eastern and Western civilisations had little known contact prior to 100 BC.

The factors that caused that to change were (predictably) religion and trade.

Much of the change began in the 1st century A.D. when merchants returning from India by way of the Silk Road began to introduce Buddhism into China. Over the next several centuries’ devout Chinese pilgrims traveled to India to visit sacred places from the Buddha’s life. One such pilgrim was Hsuan-tsang (596-664), a famous Tripitaka Master, who sojourned for several years in India. Such pilgrims usually returned home to China with translations of important Buddhist texts, and an affinity for the Buddhist way of monastic life. Buddhists monks usually favored mountains and deep forests for their meditative practices because of their solitude and freedom from worldly distractions.

Shaolin Temple

Originally constructed by Emperor Hsiao-Wen in AD 477 for the Chan Buddhist monk Batuo, Shaolin takes it's name from two words, "Shao" meaning young, and "Lin", meaning forest.

The Deng Feng County Recording (Deng Feng Xian Zhi), shows that the monk Batuo came to China from India in 464 CE and preached Nikaya Buddhism for thirty years, before Emperor Hsiao had the temple built for him, according to ancient biographies dating to A.D. 645 written by Tao-hsuan.

Batuo had two disciples, Sengchou and Huiguang who, by some accounts, were expert in the martial way by the time they began their studies of religion with Batuo. They are believed by some to have been the originators of what would become Shaolin kungfu however, in the most widely accepted version, Shaolin Martial arts, or Wushu, is credited to Bodhidharma.

Bodhidharma (Da-Mo)

Bodhidharma was by most accounts, a Chan Buddhist monk from southern India who journeyed to China. Tao-hsuan records that he was a Southern Indian Brahman monk arriving in China around the time the Song Dynasty fell to the Southern Qi Dynasty.

Though Tao-hsuan wrote that Bodhidharma was: "...of South Indian Brahman stock..." Broughton (1999:2) notes that Bodhidharma's royal pedigree implies that he was of the Kshatriya warrior caste.

Mahajan (1972:705–707) argued that the Pallava dynasty was Brahmin by origin but Kshatriya by profession, and Zvelebil (1987) proposed that Bodhidharma was born a prince of the Pallava dynasty in their capital of Kanchipuram.

Yang Xuanzhi's eyewitness account identifies Bodhidharma as a Persian from Central Asia, and Broughton (1999:54) notes that the idea of an Iranian Buddhist monk making his way to North China via the Silk Road, is reinforced by the language Yang uses in his description of Bodhidharma. Xuanzhi uses language commonly associated with Central Asia and particularly to peoples of Iranian extraction, and that of an Iranian speaker who hailed from somewhere in Central Asia.

Conclusion

Whatever the true origins of the Shaolin fighting arts, today the monastery is most commonly recognized as the origin of Kung Fu, as it is known in the west, or Wushu, it's Chinese name.

The People's Republic of China has officially recognized the value of the Shaolin Temple as a cultural site, and today the site is open to tourists from all over the world.