22 Origins of a Military Tradition
assisted Emperor Li Shimin (600–649) in the campaigns leading to the
founding of the Tang dynasty (618–907). Their heroic assistance to the dy-
nasty earned Shaolin monks property rights that the steles were erected to
safeguard.
The significance of Shaolin’s military service to the Tang should be eval-
uated in the context of the dynasty’s Buddhist policies. Unlike rulers of the
preceding Northern Wei and Sui dynasties, “Tang emperors for the most
part did not exhibit much enthusiasm for Buddhism.”^10 Devout Buddhist
monarchs such as Empress Wu notwithstanding, Tang history was marked by
attempts to curb the economic and political clout of the Buddhist church.
These attempts culminated, under Emperor Wuzong (reigned 841–846), in
a major purge of the Buddhist faith; hundreds of monasteries were destroyed
and thousands of monks forcibly returned to lay life. Following this religious
persecution, Chinese Buddhism never recovered the institutional strength it
had enjoyed in medieval times.
If it were not for Shaolin’s military contribution to the dynasty’s found-
ing, the monastery might have fared like countless others that at best re-
ceived no government support and at worst were demolished. By contrast,
the Shaolin stele inscriptions attest that the monks’ assistance to Li Shimin
earned them the patronage of his successors, many of whom were far from
sympathetic to the faith. Evidently, the monks’ disregard of the Buddhist
prohibition of violence secured their monastery’s fortunes under the Tang.
The Shaolin monks’ heroic assistance to Li Shimin was not recorded by
Buddhist historians, who were doubtless disconcerted by it. Indeed, it was en-
graved in stone at the monastery not to influence the behavior of future Bud-
dhists, but to remind Tang officials of their indebtedness to the monastery.
As such, the Shaolin inscriptions exemplify the significance of epigraphy as
a source for Buddhist historiography. Gregory Schopen has observed that in
the Indian case, “inscriptional materials tells us not what some literate, edu-
cated Indian Buddhist wrote, but what a fairly large number of practicing
Buddhists actually did.”^11 His insight is applicable to China: Shaolin steles re-
veal a story untold in Chinese Buddhist historiography, one of Buddhist
monks who served an emperor on the battlefield.
The “Shaolin Monastery Stele” of 728
More than a hundred engraved steles embellish the Shaolin Monastery,
monuments that span the entire history of the monastery. Whereas the old-
est ones date from the sixth and seventh centuries, new ones are continu-
ously being carved. In 2001, a Shaolin inscription was dedicated by the
best-selling novelist Jin Yong (1924–), whose martial arts fiction extolled the
monastery’s heroic lore. Within the bewildering array of Shaolin stone docu-
ments, the so-called “Shaolin Monastery Stele” (“Shaolin si bei”) of 728