naturally even more available than spears and could be carried without
necessarily imputing a martial purpose. One record of staff styles listed
thirty-one, including Shaolin Staff and Zhao Taizu Moving Snake Staff.^16
Unlike spearfighting, stafffighting was not usually a weapon of the formal
military, nor was it a weapon for community self-defense. Its great value
was for personal self-defense and, as some authorities on the martial arts
argued, as the basis for all martial arts training.
As General Yu Dayou put it:“Using the staff is like reading the Four Books
[the basic works of Confucianism].”^17 He argued that the physical aspects of
staff practice underlay all of the other martial arts. The staff was thus a
fundamental weapon of martial arts practice of much greater importance
than its utility infighting. For Yu Dayou, staff was more basic than boxing,
andinfactboxingrelieduponstafffighting for some of its techniques.
While many different styles of stafffighting were practiced across
China, Shaolin placed special emphasis on its relationship to stafffighting.
There was certainly a long-standing Buddhist association with the staff, as
evidenced by Sagacious Lu inThe Water Marginusing one. Sagacious Lu
actually used an iron staff rather than a wooden one. The staff was
associated with Buddhist authorityfigures, and in one very famous story
the Buddha himself lent his staff to Mulian so that he couldfight his way
into hell and rescue his mother from her suffering there. Given how wide-
spread and varied stafffighting was in China, it is unlikely that any Shaolin
claim to primacy is valid. Although Shaolin emphasized stafffighting in the
Ming, the temple’s style was one among a crowdedfield.
Conclusion
Martial arts changed during the Ming Dynasty, but the largest shift was
intellectual rather than in practice. People began to write about the martial
arts in ways they had not before, and that writing led to even more writing
in response. Authors became much more specific in describing the martial
arts, not only surveying the available styles in many categories but also
providing illustrated accounts of specific techniques. Martial arts and
martial artists played important roles infiction as well, linking perform-
ance, theater, novels, and practice in society and on the written page. The
flourishing book industry textualized the martial arts in new and prom-
inent ways during the Ming. This initial literary momentfixed a number of
concepts and myths about the martial arts, like the importance of Shaolin,
in Chinese culture, and shaped our subsequent understanding of the mar-
tial arts.
182 The Ming Dynasty