Leaf Wrote >> According to legend Bodhidharma was born in India during the early 6th centary to a warior class known as Kshatriaya. He travelled from india accross the himalayas to the Songshan mountains in the Honan province of china, where he founded the Shoa Lin (Shoalin) Temple. The monks in this temple were very strong mentally but lacked the ablilty to defend themselves, so the were often robbed or hurt. So Bodhidharma created 18 postures, 2 sutra and zazen (breathing/mediatation). He based these early forms on the movements of 5 animals The tiger, monkey, leopard, crane and snake. And so the kung fu and the martial arts began.....<< Correction Bodhidharma or Dop Moe (in Chinese) did travel to China. But he didn't create Shoalin Temple. He simply started teaching martial arts to the monks. In fact he only taught them a certain number of forms. Chinese Martial arts history is way older then that, I don't think it will be easy to track down the history of Chinese Martial Arts it been around for a lot longer than Shalin Temple.
