Wutai. For some reason, perhaps as a result of the 1356 destruction,
Shaolin Temple was reconstituted in the early part of the Ming Dynasty
with a much more militarized character. Certainly the process offixing
military men in their profession at the beginning of the dynasty must have
left an enormous number of former soldiers at loose ends, as some soldiers
and their descendants were permanently registered with the army, and
others were demobilized and prevented from rejoining the military. It may
well be that the ranks of the rebuilt temple werefilled with some of the vast
multitude of men of violence left once the dynasty was settled. Some
monastic authorities were concerned that nearby subsidiary temples
housed rowdy, violent men who, though nominally monks, did not follow
monastic regulations. These bandit-monks would have been easy enough
to recruit and send out as warrior-monks tofight against bandits. Whether
they succeeded or failed, the monastery won the appreciation of the
government and imperial house.
Shaolin’s reputation arose just asThe Water MarginandThe Romance
of the Three Kingdomswere produced in written form. As an imperially
sponsored and tax-exempt institution, Shaolin’s fortunes rose with those of
the Ming Dynasty. Its good fortune in producing some outstandingfighters
in the middle of the sixteenth century established the temple’s reputation in
print from then on. Even when the temple’s armed forces were wiped out at
the end of the Ming Dynasty, Shaolin’s reputation continued.
Boxing
Any number of boxing styles had existed in China before the Ming
Dynasty without attracting particular notice. There were many martial
artists skilled at striking or wrestling and sometimes both, without specific
names or places attached to their arts. Military manuals before the Ming
did not go into detail on the martial arts and usually were more concerned
with listing the kinds of weapons available to the army. This changed in the
Ming as new manuals, like Qi Jiguang’s, and a more general shift in writing
topics to include the martial arts began for thefirst time to list and name
unarmedfighting styles.The Water Marginin that respect shows its Song
Dynasty origins by not namingfighting styles. Its protagonists have specific
martial arts skills, like fencing, wrestling, or boxing, but not styles. Style
names were either created or at least were recorded for thefirst time during
the Ming Dynasty.
Qi Jiguang lists sixteen styles of boxing in his manual; he does this unself-
consciously, indicating that he was merely describing what was available.
Boxing 175