solely concerned with self-cultivation and self-defense makes a Buddhist
origin for the martial arts logical–but erroneous.
Fortunately, a significantfirst step in sorting out this history in the West
has recently been taken with the publication of Meir Shahar’sThe Shaolin
Monastery.^9 Chinese martial arts historians, for their part, have been rea-
sonably clear about the place of Shaolin, with the possible exception of those
closely associated with the temple itself. Shahar’s historical work presents a
fairly straightforward narrative of the construction of the late Ming Dynasty
understanding of martial arts at Shaolin. His analysis, however, is marked by
a strong Shaolin bias in placing the monks and the temple in the context of
Chinese martial arts history. From Shaolin looking out, particularly with a
modern bias, Shaolin is much more central than from the larger history of
Chinese martial arts looking in at Shaolin. Kai Filipiak, in his recent book,
Die Chinesische Kampfkunst, takes a more balanced approach.^10
A good example of the Shaolin-centered bias is in the consideration of
the role of Shaolin monks in the suppression of thewokoupirates. A small
group of Shaolin monks played a role in several skirmishes with the pirates.
Of four known battles they participated in, one was a defeat (blamed on
the general’s incompetence) and three were victories, the most notable one
taking place between 21 and 31 July 1553 at Wengjiagang. One hundred
twenty monks from a number of monasteries took part in this running, ten-
dayfight that ultimately left a hundred pirates and only four monks dead.
This was the greatest victory of this force offighting monks in the cam-
paign, and it was extremely small scale.
While the force itself was composed of monks from a number of
monasteries, its leader was from Shaolin, and he earned that place by
single-handedly defeating eight monks from a Hangzhou Buddhist temple.
This Shaolin monk, Tianyuan,first defeated his opponents with unarmed
fighting techniques, following which
the eight monks ran around to the hall’s back entrance. Then, armed with swords,
they charged through the hall’s back entrance to the terrace in front. They slashed
their weapons at Tianyuan who, hurriedly grabbing the long bar that fastened the
hall’s gate, struck horizontally. Try as they did, they could not get into the terrace.
They were, on the contrary, overcome by Tianyuan.^11
This story is used to prove the superiority of Shaolin martial arts over the
practice of other monasteries, but it raises some interesting problems that
are compounded by the brutality some of the monks displayed while
defeating the pirates. One monk, it was reported, killed the wife of an
escaping pirate with his iron staff. Tianyuan was clearly an outstanding
Shaolin Temple 171