Suspect Rebels 189
riod, it had been renovated by the staff expert general Yu Dayou.^24 Then, in
the 1640s, it was burned down “by the army” (bing), as the inscription puts it.
The choice of the term over the common derogatory appellations for rebels
(zei or kou, both meaning bandits) might indicate that the troops in question
were Manchus, which the author discreetly refrained from naming. If so, the
Qing dynasty had some hand in the monastery’s devastation.^25
We may note, in conclusion, that the dismal fate of the Shaolin Temple
was shared also by other Henan temples that had allied themselves with the
Ming dynasty and were therefore targeted by its adversaries. The monastic
complex atop Mt. Funiu in the province’s southwest was destroyed by the rov-
ing bandit armies.^26 We have seen in chapter 3 that its monks had been famed
for their fighting skills. Having been trained at the Shaolin Temple, they
were ranked second only to it by Ming military experts.
Qing Suspicion
Qing authorities encountered difficulties in their attempts to appoint an abbot
to the Shaolin Monastery. Their first choice had been monk Haikuan (1596–
Fig. 38. Detail of a Shaolin stele dated
1677 commemorating the monks who had
fought under Yang Sichang; note the
orthographic error in the minister’s name.