For nearly 900 years following the deeds of the thirteen monks, there
is not a single reference to martial arts practice in Shaolin Monastery. Not
that martial arts were not practiced there, just that, if they were, they were
likely nothing out of the ordinary—at most a security force from the
monastic ranks. During the same period, there are sparsely scattered refer-
ences to individual monks, not necessarily from Shaolin Monastery, who
were involved in military activities. Two of these appear during the Song pe-
riod when China was invaded by Jurched tribes, who founded the Jin dy-
nasty (1122–1234). One, Zhen Bao, on orders from Emperor Qin Zong
(1126), formed an army and fought to the death defending the monasteries
on Mount Wutai in Shanxi. Another, Wan An, is recorded as having said,
“In time of peril I perform as a general, when peace is restored I become a
monk again.” In both these cases, one can see that the leadership role, as
with the incident involving the thirteen monks of Shaolin Monastery, was
of primary importance. Monks might provide disciplined leadership when
needed in perilous times. In addition, the larger monasteries such as Shaolin
and those on Mount Wutai were, more often than not, the objects of impe-
rial patronage, and one of their roles would have been to pray for national
peace and prosperity, and to support political authority.
The high tide of Shaolin Monastery’s martial arts fame came in the
mid-sixteenth century at a time of serious disruption in China’s coastal
provinces as a result of large-scale Japanese pirate operations. Two hun-
dred years earlier, in 1368, the monastery had suffered a major catastrophe
when over half of its buildings were burnt to the ground and its residents
were temporarily scattered to neighboring provinces in the wake of the Red
Turban uprising against Mongol rule. This traumatic experience apparently
inspired the returning monks to take their security duties and martial arts
practice more seriously from then on. In 1517, well after the monastery
was restored, a stone tablet was erected that ignored the story of the
monastery’s destruction. It claimed that the monastery had actually been
spared because a monk with kitchen duties had miraculously transformed
himself into a fearful giant with a fire poker for his staff, who ran out and
scared off the Red Turbans. Regardless of the mythical aspects of this story,
which may have been designed to remind the monks of their responsibili-
ties as well as warn away transgressors, the monks actually had become
known for their staff-fighting prowess, and a form of staff fighting was
named after the monastery.
Observations by visitors to the monastery during the sixteenth century
reveal that popular forms of boxing, such as Monkey Boxing, were also
practiced by some of the monks, but none of these forms were named after
the monastery. Cheng Zongyou, who claimed to have spent a decade study-
ing staff fighting there, tells us that some of the residents were concentrat-
Religion and Spiritual Development: China 459