Staff Legends 89
heroic defense of the monastery was staged there as part of the three-day sai
ritual operas. In the village drama version, the monastery’s guardian spirit ap-
pears in the abbot’s dream warning him of the approaching bandits’ attack
and urging him to seek help with his lowly kitchen menial. The latter was en-
acted by a youth masked with four heads, six arms, and protruding tusks. One
difference between the play and its Shaolin source concerned the god’s
weapon. Kiœnara was armed with a battleaxe instead of a staff.^27
Vajrapâÿi/Kiœnara was not the only Buddhist deity whom Shaolin monks
armed with their own weapon. The Shaolin monastery’s “Thousand Buddhas
Hall” (Qianfo dian) contains an enormous wall painting of the “Five Hundred
Arhats” (Wubai luohan), dozens of whom are equipped with staffs. In this mag-
nificent painting, which dates from the early seventeenth century,^28 staffs ap-
pear in numerous shapes and fulfill diverse functions. Some are adorned with
metal rings, identifying them as the Buddhist ring staff, the xizhang (Sanskrit:
Fig. 13. Vajrapâÿi’s
(Kiœnara) Qing Shaolin
statue; woodblock illustra-
tion from the 1748 Shaolin
si zhi (History of the
Shaolin Monastery).