Historical archive

Bodhidharma and Shaolin

Did an Indian monk teach kung fu to the monks of Shaolin? The most famous origin story in the martial arts, and what the sources say.

Bodhidharma standing on a reed as he crosses the Yangzi, Chinese hanging scroll (detail) — Bodhidharma Crossing the Yangzi on a Reed — unknown painter, inscription by a Chan monk, c. 1300s. Cleveland Museum of Art, CC0 (public domain).

The legend

Legend

Around the year 500, a monk from the West, Bodhidharma, crosses the mountains and reaches China.

At the Shaolin temple on Mount Song he sits facing a cave wall and meditates for nine years.

He finds the monks too weak to meditate for long, so he teaches them exercises to strengthen body and breath.

From those exercises, the story says, Shaolin kung fu was born — and from Shaolin, all the arts of the East.

What history shows

Evidence

Bodhidharma probably existed: a monk of that name appears in Yang Xuanzhi’s Record of the Buddhist Monasteries of Luoyang (547) and in Daoxuan’s Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks (645). Neither mentions any fighting art.
The first link between Bodhidharma and martial exercise is the Yijin Jing (“Muscle-Tendon Change Classic”), a text dated to 1624, over a thousand years later. Historians such as Tang Hao and Matsuda Ryūchi reject the attribution.
Shaolin monks really did fight: a stele at the monastery, dated 728, records how monks helped the future Tang emperor Li Shimin against Wang Shichong in 621. The documented Shaolin fighting styles (staff first, then empty hand) grow mainly in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644).
The nine years facing the wall and the idea that “all Asian martial arts come from Shaolin” are later legends; arts such as Japanese jujutsu or Indian kalaripayattu have their own, separate histories.

In short: Bodhidharma is a real Zen patriarch; Bodhidharma as the inventor of kung fu is a 17th-century legend. Shaolin’s fighting monks are real, but their art grew centuries after him.

Images: public-domain or CC0 works credited under each picture, or original WABUKAN ink illustrations. Panels: the story told in numbered comic boxes.

Sources

Bodhidharma — Wikipedia — en.wikipedia.org
Yijin Jing — Wikipedia — en.wikipedia.org
Shaolin Monastery — Wikipedia — en.wikipedia.org
Shaolin kung fu — Wikipedia (Meir Shahar, The Shaolin Monastery, 2008) — en.wikipedia.org
Bodhidharma Crossing the Yangzi on a Reed — Cleveland Museum of Art — clevelandart.org

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