170 Fist Fighting and Self-Cultivation
brick wall on Mt. Song [where the Shaolin Monastery is located],
allowing a person destined to reach the Way to find it himself. That
person will use it to open wide the Dharma Gate of Entering the Way.
Thus, hopefully, I will be spared the guilt of random transmission, and I
will be able to face the junior guardian in heaven.
The twelfth year of the Song Shaoxing reign (1142).
Preface compiled by the resolute general, Niu Gao Hejiu of Tangyin,
serving under the command of the subduing grand field marshal, the
junior guardian Yue [Fei].^99Niu Gao’s preface is plagued with the same anachronisms that made schol-
ars ridicule Li Jing’s. The general could not have been familiar with the post-
humous temple name Qinzong, which was bestowed upon Emperor Zhao
Huan in 1161, some twenty years after it was supposedly written.^100 Some errors
are due to the author’s reliance on popular lore. His portrayal of Niu Gao as il-
literate—an impossibility in the case of a Chinese general (certainly one who
writes prefaces!)—derives from popular novels in which Yue Fei embodies cul-
ture whereas his uneducated lieutenant stands for the untrammeled powers of
nature. This image reflected the influence of the early Ming Water Margin on
the late Ming Yue Fei story cycle. The friendship between the civilized Song
Jiang and the savage Li Kui inspired the relationship of Yue Fei and Niu Gao as
portrayed in the popular narratives that had served as a source for the Sinews
Transformation Classic.
The motif of Prince Kang’s clay horse was likewise borrowed from popular
literature. According to a legend frequently quoted in Ming fiction, the future
Southern Song emperor happened to be sleeping in a Kaifeng temple when the
Jurchen army invaded. The local god appeared in the prince’s dream and urged
him to escape: “A horse is waiting for you outside,” he said. Prince Kang woke up,
strode outside, and found the promised stallion. He rode seven hundred miles in
one day and crossed the river to the south, whereupon the animal galloped no
further. When he dismounted, the prince discovered it had been made of clay.^101
Li Jing’s preface similarly drew on contemporary fiction: His legendary
Six-Flowers Formation (Liuhua zhen) was celebrated in martial novels such
as Water Margin, and he himself figured in a large body of historical romances
on the Sui-Tang transition, as well as in the widely influential mythological
novel Investiture of the Gods (Fengshen yanyi).^102 Xu Hongke was described in
Ming-Qing lore as a Daoist priest of miraculous fighting skills, and even the
Indian patriarch was eulogized in contemporary literature. Bodhidharma’s
sanctity was the subject of at least two late Ming novels: The Wanli period
(1573 –1619) Bodhidharma’s Origins and Transmission of the Lamp (Damo chushen
chuandeng zhuan) and The Conversion of the East (Dongdu ji) (1635).^103
The Sinews Transformation Classic betrays therefore an intimate connection
between martial arts mythology and popular lore. Its invulnerability techniques