197
Conclusion
History, Religion, and the
Chinese Martial Arts
The history of the Shaolin Temple is not identical to the evolution of the
Chinese martial arts. The monastery made important contributions to the
development of late imperial fighting, armed and unarmed alike, and its
military history mirrored trends that have transformed the martial arts in
general. Nevertheless, the history of the martial arts is larger than the tem-
ple’s. The fighting techniques with which we are familiar today—such as
Taiji Quan, Xingyi Quan, and Shaolin Quan—emerged during the sixteenth
and the seventeenth centuries by a combination of economic, religious, and
political factors that far exceeded the monastery’s reach. At the same time,
these bare-handed styles drew on an ancient gymnastic tradition that had
matured centuries before the monastery’s founding. Hand combat is in some
respects the remote descendant of daoyin calisthenics that had flourished
prior to the arrival of Buddhism in China.
From another angle, the history of the Shaolin Monastery involves ques-
tions that, despite their interest for the Buddhologist, are not necessarily
pertinent to the martial arts historian: How could Buddhist monks ignore a
primary tenet of their faith that forbade violence? Did some aspects of the
Buddhist religion of compassion lend themselves to a military interpreta-
tion? These questions are irrelevant to fighting techniques such as Taiji
Quan, Xingyi Quan, and Bagua Zhang that evolved in a non-Buddhist envi-
ronment. Even though these martial styles are intimately related to religion,
their spiritual vocabulary largely derives from native traditions. Contempo-
rary hand combat is couched in the rich terminologies of the Daoist religion
and of Chinese philosophy. Bare-handed styles integrate the culture’s con-
ceptions of immortality with its cosmology of the Supreme Ultimate, the yin
and the yang, and the eight trigrams.
It might be useful, therefore, to sort out our principal findings, those re-