Imagine a wooded mountain in China called Mount Song, in the year 495. A new monastery, a home for Buddhist monks, is being built there for a monk from India called Batuo. 1,4 Its name is , and one day it will be the most famous name in Chinese martial arts.
What does kung fu mean?
The words first meant any skill built up through long, hard work, even making tea well! Only later did they come to mean fighting arts. 2 The Chinese word for martial arts is . 3,40
Monks who could fight
A stone tablet carved in the year 728 says that Shaolin monks fought in about 610 and again in 621. 1,4 Centuries later, at least 40 old writings show that the monks trained in martial arts, above all with the , the staff. The oldest Shaolin training book that still exists is about the staff, and it dates from about 1610 to 1621. 1,4
The general's book
In the 1500s a Chinese army general called Qi Jiguang wrote a book for the army. In it he described the Shaolin staff, and he wrote 32 verses about fighting with empty hands. His book went on to shape martial arts all across East Asia. 1,18
Emperors honoured the temple too. In 1704 the Kangxi Emperor wrote the words Shaolin Temple for an inscription there. 4 A wall painting from the Qing dynasty, at the monastery, shows monks training in pairs. 1
The story of Bodhidharma
Is it true? Historians say no. The story first appears in a book of exercises written in 1624, more than a thousand years later, which was falsely said to be by Bodhidharma. Then a novel printed between 1904 and 1907 made the story famous. 2,4
Many kung fu styles still say they began at Shaolin. Some of the most famous stories come from the south of China, and they begin with smoke on a hillside.