14 Origins of a Military Tradition
find it anywhere,” at which point it was only necessary for Bodhidharma to con-
clude with: “I have now completely pacified your mind for you.”^24
Bodhidharma’s association with Shaolin, which is traceable in canonical
scriptures, is equally attested to by archaeological evidence at the temple it-
self. Shaolin steles reveal the gradual process by which the Indian saint had
been linked to the Chinese temple. A stele inscription dated 728 is the earli-
est to have Bodhidharma residing on Mt. Song, and another, dated 798, al-
ready has Huike performing the dramatic gesture of severing his arm.^25
Then a plethora of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century steles feature the
complete myth as it appears in such Song-period hagiographies as the Jingde
Period Record of the Transmission of the Lamp. The latter is cited, for example, in
the following Shaolin stele:
After nine years had passed, Bodhidharma wished to return to the west,
to India, so he commanded his disciples saying, “The time is near; each
of you should say what you have attained.” At the time the disciple Daofu
replied, “As I see it, the function of the Dao consists in not attaching to
scriptures and not being apart from scriptures.” The master said, “You
have gotten my skin.” The nun Zongchi said, “My understanding now is
that it is like the joy of seeing the Buddha-land of Akºobhya: it is felt at
the first glance, but not the second glance.” The master said, “You have
gotten my flesh.” Daoyu said, “The four elements are at root empty, and
the five skandhas have no existence; from my point of view, there is not a
single dharma that could be attained.” The master said, “You have
gotten my bones.” Finally Huike, after making a prostration, just stood
at his place. The master said, “You have gotten my marrow.”^26In this Song-period text, Bodhidharma’s ranking of his students is ex-
pressed metaphorically: Huike’s silent answer earns him the saint’s “marrow”
(sui), namely, the essence of Bodhidharma’s teachings. Centuries later the
saint’s words were given a radically different interpretation. With the growth
of the Shaolin martial tradition, the “marrow” was taken literally as the name
of a secret manual—the Marrow-Cleansing Classic (Xisui jing)—which Bodhi-
dharma supposedly had handed to his chosen disciple. Treasuring the saint’s
arcane gymnastics, this treatise had remained hidden for more than a mil-
lennium. Then during the seventeenth century it miraculously emerged to
influence the late imperial martial arts.
Charting the development of the Bodhidharma myth, Shaolin steles also
unravel the evolution of his visual representations. An engraving dated 1209
depicts the barefoot saint holding a shoe in reference to the legend of his res-
urrection (figure 1).^27 After Bodhidharma’s death, the legend goes, a Chi-
nese emissary to central Asia met the saint, who was walking barefoot and
carrying a single shoe. Bodhidharma explained to the startled diplomat that
he was heading back to his native India. When the emissary returned to