188 Fist Fighting and Self-Cultivation
decision to eliminate the Shaolin monks was due to tactical considerations no
less than to their famed support of the Ming. Li had established his base atop
the Shaoshi Peak’s “Imperial Fort,” which towered over the temple. As Wang Jie
noted, the bandit leader could not afford a “potential thorn” in such proximity
to his side.
If it was Li Jiyu who dealt the Shaolin monks the final blow in the early
1640s, their ranks had by then already been decimated. All through the 1630s,
Shaolin monks had been drafted for the largely unsuccessful government cam-
paigns against the roving bandits. In 1635 they had been enlisted to train a local
militia in Shanzhou County, western Henan. They were able to score at least one
victory before being defeated by the vastly larger armies of the “Muslim Fellow”
(Lao Huihui), Ma Shouying, who was one of Li Zicheng’s closest allies.^20 At ap-
proximately the same time, the Shaolin staff expert Hong ji—who had been
Cheng Zongyou’s instructor—was killed in battle. We are told that he “led his
troops to a decisive victory over the bandits. Then, chasing them far away, he ran
into fresh outlaw contingents. His support troops did not arrive, but to the end
he was not willing to retreat. As the bandits swelled in numbers, he struggled
with them to his death. Thus, he did not betray his [Shaolin] heritage.”^21
Shaolin’s contribution to the late Ming banditry campaigns is attested by a
stele erected some three decades later. Dating from 1677, the inscription
evinces the monks’ lingering sentiments of loyalty toward the Ming, for it was
dedicated to the monastery’s early Ming abbot, Ningran Liaogai (1335–1421).^22
On it were inscribed the names of some seventy martial monks (wu seng) who
had fought under the command of the Ming minister of war, Yang Sichang
(1588–1641). Most came from the Shaolin Monastery, but some came from its
adjacent subsidiary, the Yongtai shrine. Yang had assumed personal field com-
mand of the banditry campaign in 1639, only to be routed by the rebel armies
of Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng in 1641, whereupon he committed sui-
cide.^23 The monks must have fought for him around 1640.
The Shaolin inscription is moving. Unlike the grand stone monuments that
had been built during the Tang and the Ming and had recorded the monks’
support of those dynasties, this one could not have earned them imperial recog-
nition. If anything, the Qing authorities would have been angered by a memo-
rial to their predecessors’ steadfast warriors. The humble epitaph was motivated,
therefore, by a sincere wish to record the names of fallen comrades. Its author,
himself likely a fighting monk, was not highly educated, as is evinced by an or-
thographic error in the minister’s name, si ᗱ instead of si ஷ (fig ure 38).
Even though the Shaolin Monastery had been destroyed prior to the
1644 invasion, it is not impossible that the advance of the Manchu army had
caused it some further damage. A possible hint—it is no more than that—is
provided by an inscription dating from 1653 that commemorates the recon-
struction of the monastery’s Universal Chan Courtyard (Shifang Chan
Yuan). Situated outside the monastery proper, across from its main gate, the
Chan Courtyard had served as a hostel for pilgrims. During the Ming pe-