Shaolin Kung Fu — the Staff Is Documented, the Empty Hand Is Not

Shaolin is the best-known name in the martial arts world and the worst documented. Almost every Chinese school traces its descent there somehow, and almost every account opens with the same image: an Indian monk, weakened monks, a few physical exercises out of which kung fu grew.

Ask instead what can be evidenced and you get a different, more interesting answer. The oldest authenticated Shaolin martial text dates from about 1610, it was written by a military professional, and it is not about the empty hand but about the staff.

And in that same text stands the sentence that reverses the whole sequence: from the 1580s, monks had begun to perfect boxing — as they had done with the pole.

The thesis of this article is therefore: Shaolin’s documented martial art is a weapons art. Boxing is the younger discipline, and it was built on the model of the older one.

History: the place

The monastery was built in 495 on Songshan in Henan province, and for one particular person: the Indian monk Batuo (also Fotuo or Buddhabhadra), a meditation teacher for whom Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei endowed the site. That information comes from the monk-scholar Daoxuan (596–667), a source relatively close to the event.

Batuo is thus the occasion for the monastery’s founding — not Bodhidharma, and not a martial art.

The military role begins in the Tang period. A stele inscription records the monastery’s support for Li Shimin, later founder of the Tang dynasty. That is the historical core of the much-embellished story of the monks who saved an emperor; the famous number thirteen is accretion, the involvement itself is attested.

In the Ming period the record thickens. For his study of the monastery, the sinologist Meir Shahar examined at least forty sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources showing Shaolin monks as martial practitioners. From here on the matter is not legend but documentation: monks fought, they were called upon to do so, and outside professionals came to them to learn.

What is documented: the staff

The most important witness is Cheng Zongyou, a military expert who studied at the monastery for roughly a decade and around 1610 compiled an extensive work: the Exposition of the Original Shaolin Staff Method.

That is the oldest historically authenticated text on Shaolin martial arts — and it is a staff manual. Not a boxing manual with a weapons chapter, but a treatise on the long pole.

For the sequence, one remark of Cheng’s is decisive: already in the 1580s some monks had begun to devote themselves to boxing, with the aim of perfecting the unarmed arts — just as they had previously done with the pole.

So the testimony itself says what is usually claimed the other way round:

The weapon came first and was the subject for which Shaolin became famous.
Boxing came later and was understood as an extension of the same approach.

That is unsurprising if one thinks about the purpose. A monastery with landholdings in unsettled times needs guards, and guards carry staffs — a weapon that need not be lethal and gives no offence when a monk carries it.

The Bodhidharma attribution

The story that Bodhidharma brought martial arts to the Shaolin monks appears in almost every popular account. It has a traceable origin, and it is younger than the staff.

It comes from the Yijin Jing, a 17th-century exercise manual whose preface establishes the link to Bodhidharma. The authenticity of that preface has been rejected by Chinese and Japanese martial arts scholarship — notably by Tang Hao, Xu Zhen and Matsuda Ryūchi.

This does not mean Bodhidharma is invented; he is well attested as the first patriarch of Chan (see Bodhidharma). It means his role as a martial founder is a 17th-century attribution — arising at a time when Shaolin was already famous for its martial arts and a venerable origin was being sought for them.

The order is thus the reverse of how it is told. Bodhidharma did not establish the monastery’s reputation; the monastery’s reputation brought Bodhidharma into the story afterwards.

Technical basis

What is taught today as Shaolin kung fu is not a single style but a body of forms, weapons and conditioning exercises grown over centuries and reorganised in the 20th.

Area	Content
Weapons	long staff (gun) first, then spear, broadsword, straight sword, chain weapons
Forms	long sequences, sweeping movements, high jumps
Stances	deep, with pronounced transitions
Conditioning	the 72 arts, hardening, strength and flexibility work
Qi work	breath and standing practice, embedded in monastic life
Movement design	northern Chinese — long reach, large arcs

The movement design places Shaolin firmly in the north, and from that follows the connection to competitive wushu: the changquan of the People’s Republic draws on the same northern Chinese stock.

Core techniques

Staff work — the documented core discipline: two-handed control, changes of grip width, striking and thrusting out of the same movement
Wide hand paths — the arm works over its full length rather than from close range
Jumping and turning techniques — hence the later suitability for demonstration and competition
Animal forms — tiger, crane, leopard, snake, dragon; as a system, younger than the individual techniques
Hardening and strength work — treated in its own article: Shaolin conditioning

1928: why the record is thin

There is a date for the poor state of the evidence.

In 1928, during the warlord period, troops under Shi Yousan set the monastery on fire. The fire is reported to have burned for over forty days and destroyed roughly ninety per cent of the buildings — including a large part of the library.

That is why so little written material survives about one of the most famous institutions in martial arts history: it burned. And it also explains why legend has so much room. Where records are missing, narrative fills the gap — and the narrative that moved in was the one about the Indian monk.

Criticising the state of the sources today is therefore not criticising negligent monks but the consequences of a fire.

1982 and after: the reinvention

After the Cultural Revolution the monastery was practically insignificant. What brought it back was a film.

In 1982 a young wushu champion named Li Lianjie — internationally Jet Li — took the lead in Shaolin Temple, in a story loosely based on the Tang tradition of the monks and Li Shimin. The film was an enormous success and set off a stream of visitors that has not let up.

What followed is a remarkable inversion: the monastery today lives substantially on a reputation that a feature film about a legend renewed. In 2010 the site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list as part of the historic monuments of Dengfeng. Performance troupes tour worldwide, martial arts schools in the surrounding area teach thousands of students, and the Shaolin brand is defended in law.

That is no reproach — merely a statement of what one is looking at: an unbroken religious institution with a broken and rebuilt martial practice. The same position as Wudang, against which Shaolin is traditionally contrasted — and where the famous opposition “hard like Shaolin, soft like Wudang” can be traced to an epitaph of 1669.

Connections to other martial arts

Bodhidharma — the attribution, its origin in the Yijin Jing, and what remains of the figure
Kung Fu / Wushu — the umbrella term and where Shaolin sits within it
Changquan — the northern Chinese stock both draw on
Wudang — the claimed counterpart; the opposition is datable and political
Bōjutsu — the Japanese staff art; the comparison shows how different cultures solve the same weapon
Zen in Budo — the spiritual line that genuinely does run from Shaolin: Chan

Today

Shaolin is monastery, World Heritage site, training centre and tourist destination at once. On the mountain and around it numerous schools teach, many with programmes of several months for foreign students; quality varies considerably, and the connection to the monastery itself differs from school to school.

For practitioners the most useful distinction is the same as with changquan: is a transmitted form being taught here, a performance discipline, or a competition style? All three are legitimate, but they are not the same thing.

And the historically honest account of one’s own origin is not “our art is 1,500 years old”. It is: the monastery is 1,500 years old, the martial evidence reaches back to the 16th century, the oldest manual is about the staff — and that is enough.

Bodhidharma
Kung Fu / Wushu
Shaolin Conditioning
Changquan
Wudang
Zen in Budo
Qigong — the Yi Jin Jing is today one of four official health sets
Pangai-noon — the counter-check: the Okinawan lines lead to Fujian, not to Songshan
Zui Quan — drunken boxing, one of the styles tracing itself back to Shaolin
Wu De — this is where wu de is most explicitly part of the programme
Shorinji Kempo — the Japanese art that carries the temple in its name — and what is left of the claim