The Temple had twelve upper and lower courts and was ringed almost completely by mountains, festooned with bamboo, cassia and cedar trees, and laced with waterfalls. The western terrace was where Bodhiruchi did his translations and where Tamo meditated. At the end of the Ta Yeh period (A.D. 605-617) thieves attempted to burn the pagoda containing Tamo's remains. When it would not burn, everyone regarded it with awe.

Tamo (P'u-t'-ta-mo or, as he is generally called, Bodhidharma) is a great, if mysterious, figure in both boxing and in Ch'an (Zen). Beyond the fact that he actually lived and came to China, little is known about him. Even the traditional histories are not consistent regarding details of his life. He traveled to China in about A.D. 500. After a visit with the Emperor at Nanking he proceeded north to the Shaolin Temple in Honan. It is said that for nine years he sat facing a wall, listening "to the ants scream". He is represented in art as a man of almost demonic power. Once when meditating he fell asleep. Legend has it that this so angered him that he cut off his eyelids and threw them to the ground, whence sprouted tea shrubs, the leaves of which thereafter were used by the monks to deter sleep. He died at a ripe old age.

Tamo's boxing role is even more ambiguous than his Ch'an role. It is said that the blue eyed monk became disturbed by the inability of the other monks to stay awake during meditation. To counter this tendency and to improve their health, he purportedly introduced exercise, which were the forerunner of Shaolin boxing. Now it is known that boxing existed in China before Tamo's coming, but how systematized it was in moot. He is said to have left two manuscripts, only one of which has come down to us, the Muscle Change Classic (I-chin Ching). No verification of Tamo's authorship exists for this and the available versions are of a much later time. W. Hu states that the earliest mention of it in literature goes back only to 1835.

Of much more pertinence than the dating and authenticating of the various versions of the Muscle Change Classic is its relevance for boxing. The exercise detailed in this work are static tensing postures, calisthenic in nature and function. If it is assumed that Tamo created them - and this is impossible to prove they remain distant from boxing tactics. Therefore, it must be concluded that Tamo probably did not introduce boxing.

Some authorities state that there was a second Shaolin Temple located in Fukien Province. Said to have been built by a priest named Ta Tsun-shen over one thousand years ago, much of the data on this temple cannot be verified. D. Bloodworth is merely one of a long line of tale - spinners when he relates the story that the monks at the Shaolin Temple in fukien chopped the wood for their stoves with their bare hands, because monks in Buddhist monasteries were forbidden by their faith to use knifes or axes. Indeed, the chief monk was reputed to have said: "We may not have knifes, so make every finger a dagger; without spears, every arm must be a spear, and every open hand a sword".

Tradition has it that during the reign of Emperor K'ang (1662 - 1723 ) imperial troops sent against marauding bands in the western border areas were defeated. When the Emperor asked for volunteers, 128 of the Fukien Shaolin monks responded and routed the enemy without themselves suffering a single casualty. Subsequently the Emperor was persuaded by Manchu officials to send a force against the Fukien temple on a purported charge of sedition. The temple was burned and only five monks survived the battle. Out of this grew the anti-Manchu Triad Society or Hung League, with the battle cry "overthrow the Ch'ing and restore the Ming".

Both temples reportedly were burned down by the third Manchu Emperor, Yung Cheng, but rebuilt by Ch'ien-lung (1736 - 1795). Temple burning is not unusual in Chinese history, and the Shaolin Temple may have been burned and rebuilt earlier also. For example, in the great persecution of the Buddhists in A.D. 845-6 some 4,600 large temples and 40,000 minor ones were destroyed. Despite the burning, the Shaolin Temple was the hub of boxing activity for more than a thousand years. Shaolin boxing originally contained eighteen forms. Emperor T'ai Tsu (r 960-76) reportedly evolved thirty-two forms of Long Boxing and Six Steps Boxing off the basic core. A century later Monk Chueh Yuan modified the system further to embrace seventy-two forms. The Shaolin Temple was not only a repository of boxing knowledge and a rigorous training academy but, as important, a stimulus for other boxing styles. Graduates of the Shaolin Temple spread boxing to every part of China.

Wan Lai-sheng, an excellent boxer but an uneven historian, has outlined Shaolin as follows: THE FIVE SCHOOLS. All used five basic forms: Dragon, Snake, Crane, Tiger and Leopard. The five schools, O-mei han, Wa-tang, Fukien, Kwantung and Honan. Subsequently, Wan says, Shaolin split into northern and southern types and boxing of the south was embraced in five schools: 1. Ta-hung Men, 2. Liu-chia Ch'uan, 3. Ts'ai-chia Ch'uan, 4.Lchia Ch'uan, and 5. Mo-chia Ch'uan.This break-down is disputed by historians and is given here only because it parallels traditional belief, particularly in the south.

Source: Robert Smith - expert on Chinese fighting forms and techniques.