back to at least the seventh century. Strictly speaking, the available docu-
mentary evidence does not even allow us to conclude that martial arts was
practiced at Shaolin in the seventh century. It is only in the sixteenth
century that we have direct mention of martial arts at Shaolin. The partic-
ipation of Shaolin monks in a localfight in 621 demonstrated that the
temple either had a force offighters available or raised one after the temple
was burned by bandits several years earlier, and after some of the temple
lands were seized. In the threatening environment of north China at that
time, the monks fortunately ended up on the winning side of the imperial
contest. The direct result of their military activity was an imperial letter
that protected the temple from undue government impositions during the
Tang Dynasty.
Despite Shaolin’s proximity to the Tang capital and many visits to the
temple by literati who wrote commemorations of those visits, martial arts
was not mentioned. Even during the Song Dynasty, when a stellar group of
scholars lived at Luoyang in the mid-eleventh century, visited local sites,
and wrote on every matter imaginable, no one mentioned martial arts at
Shaolin. Indeed, the only arguments to support the idea that martial arts
was practiced at Shaolin during these centuries are general ones. First,
north China as a whole was generally militarized under the authority of
landlords. As a large institution with lands and at least one mill, the temple
would have also maintained a commensurate force of tenants or laborers.
Like other landlords, the temple authorities would have organized these
workers or a separate security force into at least a self-defense militia.
Second, temples provided some of the only open space not in agricultural
use. Whereas the government might have created training grounds for the
army, ordinary people would have turned to temples for martial arts
practice space. Third, wandering monks who mixed with merchants and
itinerant martial artists often stayed at temples because these places had
accommodations for travelers, and because temples were often the site of
periodic markets. Fourth andfinally, though this is pure speculation, high-
ranking elites, including military men, may have“retired”to temples.
Retired officials were often given temple guardianships as sinecures to
provide them with a salary while out of office. If these general observations
were true, then Shaolin would have maintained some practice of martial
arts as a part of the larger society.
As a temple in north China, Shaolin would have been part of the general
martial arts practice that existed all around it. It might have even had a
greater measure of martial arts practice because it was a Buddhist temple
where many violent men who claimed to be monks and dressed as monks
Shaolin Temple 173