Omoajayi

@omoajayi_ · 05 Aug 2022

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History of kungfu

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History of Kung Fu


Many people are under the impression that Kung Fu originated with the Shaolin Temple. It did not. Read on to get the details.
Although many people believe that the Chinese martial arts originated at the Shaolin Temple there is some evidence to suggest that the Chinese martial arts were well developed before the Shaolin Temple was built. The temple was built in the third century A.D. but there are references to such individuals as the physician Hwa Tuo who was using exercises based on animal movements to improve the physical health of his patients well before that date. Hwa Tuo lived at the time of the Three Kingdom, around A.D. 220-65. Hwa Tuo is said to have created a set of exercises based upon five animals: the tiger, bear, monkey, stork and dear. The reason this is significant is that there is even today a strong relationship between animal movement and the Chinese martial arts.




In fact the Shaolin temple did become a centre of development for the martial arts and remained so for more than a thousand years before it was dissolved by the Ching Dynasty in the Eighteenth Century. As a side note the Shaolin Temple is situated at the foot of the 'Songshan' mountain in Dengfeng County, Honan Province. It should also be said that there have been many Shaolin Temples built all around China. Whether these were set up as competitors to the temple at Songshan or represented an extension of the original Shaolin Temple is not known.

Da Mo (Bodhidharma)
In the year 527 AD, a monk known as Da Mo (Bodhidharma) arrived at the Shaolin Temple. Dat Mo is belived to have been an Indian monk who was probably born in Kanchipuram near Madras. Da Mo travelled to the city of Kuang, now known as Canton, where he was granted an audience with the Emperor at the time, Wu Ti of the Liang Dynasty. The Emperor had instructed local Buddhist monks to translate Buddhist texts from Sanskrit to Chinese with the intention that the general populace would then have the ability to practice the Buddhist religion. After his audience with the Emperor, Dat Mo travelled to a monastery in the Kingdom of Wei before finally arriving at the Shaolin temple. When Da Mo initially arrived at Shaolin, he was refused admittance, perhaps because he was considered a foreigner. Rejected by the monks, Da Mo went to a nearby cave and meditated by staring at the cave wall for nine years until the monks recognized his religious prowess and admitted him. Legend has it that he bored a hole through one side of the cave with his constant gaze. Unfortunately, the real reason that Da Mo earned his recognition from the Shaolin monks is lost to history. There is also a story that a local monk was so moved by Dat Mo's piety that he cut off one of his hands in symaphy. Once admitted to the temple it is believed that Dat Mo found his Chinese disciples too weak, both physically and mentally, to practice the intensive meditation required by his path to enlightenment. Dat Mo is regarded as the founder of Chan Buddhism which is probably better known by its Japanese derivative, Zen Buddhism.