I think there are some misconceptions of where and how chinese martial arts started in China. First off i would like to address, that the history of chinese martial arts is not a legend there are in fact many historical documents that explain the history granted there are gaps here and there. To begin, martial arts in China started much earlier then the arrival of the Bohddidarma (Da mo). During the many eras of war many forms of combat were created, but they were not recorded down since paper was not invented yet and there were no systematic methods of training. In evaluating chinese martial arts we must ditinguish between the martial arts that were existent in China and those that were introduced later into China by Da Mo. The chinese martial arts indigenous to China were of a Taoist philosophies and circled around the philosophies of Lao Tzu the great taoist priest. The use of mimicking animals as a way to improve health was first created during the Three Kingdoms era by the famous doctor Hua Tuo who combined the movements of the five animals with the breathing exercies of taoist qi kung to form Wu Qin qi kung (five animal breathing exercises). The flourishing of the martial arts did not occur much later in chinese history during the tang dynasty, which is when Da Mo travelled from india to China and stopped at the Shaolin temple. Here he observed that the monks were too phyiscally out of shape to do aynthing. As such they could nto defend against bandits or even conduct normal day affairs in the temple. Upon seeing this he devised two methods of qi exercises combined with movements to help the monks at the shaolin temple increase their vitality. The two exercies he created were the yi jin jing (sutra of trasnforming and moving muscle and tendons) and Shi sui jing (the strua of purifiyng water). The latter exercies was lost when the shaolin temple was burned during the qing dynasty but the former or yi jin jing is still practiced today by shaolin monks and other people who study the shaolin martial arts system. One must note however that Da mo did not create the combat systems of the shaolin that we see today and much of the shaolin martial arts were created by chinese monks who applied it in conjunction with the qi exercies created by Da mo. Shaolin 5 animal fists was not introduced to the Shaolin temple until the mid 18th century. This is the same with the 7-star preying mantis, which was also introduced sometime in the early 18th century. These martial arts were created by either military generals who later became monks at the shaolin temple or by monks who travelled off and trained in different arts and brought it back to the temple. Many of the great chinese shaolin martial arts were infact created during the 18th century or the qing dynasty of the ones that are still prevalent today are the following: Wing Chun or other romanization Ving Tsun Hung Quan Choy Li Fut Seven Star Preying Mantis Bai He Quan (white crane) the list goes on and on. On the other spectrum of martial arts are those of the taoist nature and are generally classified as the internal school of martial arts. The mosr prevelant is Taiji Quan or common romanization of Tai Chi Chuan. Taiji is divided into many styles, the orinigal being the Chen, followed by the Yang, Wu, Sun, etc. Other notable taoist martial arts include: Baji Quan Xingyi quan Bagua Zhang Drunken Fist etc... The tasoist martial arts habve no influence from the shaolin martil arts as it does not share in the same breathing exercises that were introduced into China by Da Mo, instead they use taoist breathing exercies to generate what we call qi or chi. The earliest recorded internal martial art is i believe , correct me if i am wrong Xinyi Quan which originated during Song Dynasty China and was popularized by the famous military general Yueh Fei. Taiji follows next with legends about the creator Zhang San Feng, there is not enough historical evidence to prove his existence nor deny it so he is in a grey area , the most concrete evidence that can be found of taiji's roots is during the 18th century in Chen Village Henan. The founder of Chen style taiji Chan Wanting. Anyway this post is getting way too long , but it does show that the history of chinese martial arts is not legend, it is real and things did happen to evolve the chinese martial arts. Hopes this gives a little better overview on the history and development of chinese martil arts.
