Serving the Emperor 43
portrayed fighting monks as meat gobblers (and usually wine guzzlers as well).
From the Tang period all through the twentieth century, fictional martial
monks have delighted in nothing better than alcohol and animal flesh. The
significance of meat in the fighting monk’s ethos has been such that we will
briefly stray from our chronological frame to discuss it synchronically—in
sources ranging from medieval times to the present.
Vegetarianism, we should hasten to note, is not universally observed by
Buddhist monks. Early Buddhist scriptures are not unanimous on the monas-
tic diet: Whereas some Mahâyâna sutras do advocate abstention from animal
flesh, compilations of monastic law for the most part do not prohibit meat per
se. They only instruct monks to refrain from eating animals that have been
slaughtered expressly for them. (As long as the animal has been butchered for
others it is permitted for the clerics as well.) The inconsistency of the literature
has been reflected in the divergence of practice. In most Theravâda countries,
monks do eat meat. By contrast, Chinese Buddhism has been closely linked to
vegetarianism. Beginning in medieval times, the abstention from meat has
formed an important aspect of the identity of Chinese Buddhists, being ob-
served not only by monks but often by lay believers.^72 Tang readers of Zhang
Zhuo’s story would have been startled therefore by the Buddhist god’s insis-
tence that his devotee transgress a defining tenet of their religion.
Why then were Chinese fighting monks imagined to relish animal flesh?
One reason has been the assumption that meat is indispensable for physical
strength. To this day there are those who, believing that athletic achieve-
ments require a meat-based diet, surmise that Shaolin monks consume it.
However, the literary motif of the carnivorous fighting monk also mirrors
another supposition, that those who violate one monastic prohibition (of
war) are likely to transgress another (of meat). Occasionally, the two vices
are metaphorically combined, as the savage monk is imagined feasting on
the flesh of his fallen enemies. Before he heads for battle, the monkish pro-
tagonist of Dong Jieyuan’s (fl. 1200) medley-play, Story of the Western Wing, ex-
claims, “Today I’ll have meat to eat.... I’ll mow down the thieves with my
sword. Let them be pastry fillings for our meal!”^73 In the popular imagina-
tion, the cruelty of fighting has become indistinguishable from the brutality
of a carnivorous diet.
One of the most memorable fighting monks in Chinese literature is Lu
Zhishen, protagonist of the early Ming novel Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan) (ca.
1400). Also known as the “Tattooed Monk” (Hua Heshang), Lu is ordained at
a Shanxi province monastery, where historical fighting monks practiced the
martial arts. This is the Mt. Wutai monastic complex, the bravery of whose
fighting monks—as we will see below—had been celebrated from the north-
ern Song (960–1127). The novel has Lu Zhishen consume meat and wine in-
side the temple. When he goes so far as to force animal flesh into the mouths of
his scandalized fellow monks, he is thrown out of the monastery and assumes
the career of an itinerant martial artist. The fighting monk’s adventures lead