figure offers him meat to build his strength. Ironically, while the story is ex-
aggerated, it may reveal something about the actual nature of monastic liv-
ing during Buddhism’s early years in China, including loose adherence to
the vegetarian dietary codes prescribed for Buddhists. Another much later
legend (oral and of unknown origin) claims Tang emperor Taizong issued
a decree exempting Shaolin monks from the strict Buddhist vegetarian diet
because of their assistance in capturing one of the emperor’s opponents (a
mix of fact and fiction).
There is only one narrative directly associated with an identifiable
Shaolin martial art; this is the story (related on a stone tablet dated ca. 1517)
of a kitchen worker who, the tale relates, is said to have transformed him-
self into a fierce guardian spirit called King Jinnaluo. According to this text,
the worker in spirit form scared off a band of marauding Red Turban rebels
with his fire-stoking staff and saved the monastery during the turbulence at
the end of the Yuan dynasty (ca. 1368). Actually, the monastery is known
to have been largely destroyed and to have been abandoned by the monks
around this time. Therefore, the story seems to have served a dual purpose:
to warn later generations of monks to take their security duties seriously and
(possibly) to reinforce the martial image of the place in order to ward off
would-be transgressors. In any case, in the mid-sixteenth century, a form of
staff fighting was named for the monastery.
The next Shaolin narrative, which appears in Epitaph for Wang
Zhengnan,written by the Ming patriot and historian Huang Zongxi in
1669, is wrapped up in the politics of foreign Manchu rule over China. Ac-
cording to this story, the boxing practiced in Shaolin Monastery became
known as the External School, in contrast to the Internal School, after the
Daoist Zhang Sanfeng (ca. 1125) invented the latter. Here, Internal School
opposition to the External School appears to symbolize Chinese resistance
to Manchu rule. In the twentieth century, proponents of Yang-style taiji-
quan(tai chi ch’uan) adopted Zhang Sanfeng as their patriarch, giving this
legend new life.
Migratory Legends
According to at least one of the origin legends circulating in the taijiquan
repertoire, one day Zhang Sanfeng witnessed a battle between a crane and
a snake, and from the experience he created taiji. It is probably not coinci-
dental that this origin narrative is associated with more than one martial
art. For example, Wu Mei (Ng Mui), reputed in legends of the Triad soci-
ety (originally an anti-Qing, pro-Ming secret society, discussed below) to be
one of the Five Elders who escaped following the burning of the Shaolin
Monastery by the Qing, was said to have created yongchun(wing chun)
boxing after witnessing a battle between a snake and a crane, or in some
Folklore in the Martial Arts 127