List of Teachers and their students

[ngokfei]

does there exist such a list.

I know most monks had multiple teachers primarily Dharma/Chan and then martial.

[David Jamieson]

Lineage charts are quite common in traditional systems.

Is there a unified chart covering schools? I don't think there is.

Lineage is generally within the school it comes from.

It would be a neat resource to find the areas of crossover though.

[RenDaHai]

It would be very hard to construct one for Shaolin.

Because in Song Shan there are hundreds of mountain villages and many many temples. All of which have their respective Kung Fu Masters. All of which Kung Fu can be attributed to the Shaolin Temple, but in many sub sects.

Those serious about training would have probably learned the speciality of several other masters as well as the complete system of their own master. This complicates things. There are so many influences.

Things are taught in family like way. So you would have a ShiYe a Shifu and a ShiXiong all teaching you. All of whom know the same stuff but also had their own influence with other teachers too.


I know a lot of the big names, but I too would love to see a big lineage chart. It would make finding certain skills easier.

[ngokfei]

I'm specifically talking about the main temple on Song Shan. I'd expect they would be pretty organized on that.

example:

Shi Guo Lin (aka Shi Yan Si) while he gives Yong Xin as his teacher, but that was one of his Dharma/Chan teachers and not his main Martial Teacher at the temple.

I know they have Chief Instructors who more or less act as a Manager but did not really do the day to day instruction of the students.

[GeneChing]

The most confounding issue would be the fact that most all the monks do a lot of seminars and a lot of those students probably claim some lineage. Even a disciple list would be challenging because many monks are fairly secretive about who their disciples are.

I've trained under a few monks, but only discipled under one. Just my lineage alone would be messy to chart.

[ngokfei]

stumbled across this site (he's done some good work)

http://www.poundthemortar.com/shaolinlineage.htm

[Lucas]

that picture of the abbot and the regiment of monk soldiers supporting rifles is pretty interesting

[RenDaHai]

I'm specifically talking about the main temple on Song Shan. I'd expect they would be pretty organized on that.


Unfortunately not really. The Kung Fu inside Shaolin Temple is inseparable from the mountain villages at this point. They have become even more mixed since the 80's. Folk masters have as much claim to Shaolin Temple Kung Fu as anyone inside the temple these days.

And when teaching a disciple a master won't give the history of every form or technique set that he teaches. So although he may be a lineage disciple of 'X' he may teach some forms he learned from 'Y' and QinNa he learned from 'Z' and TongZiGong he learned from 'A' etc. etc. So it is difficult to put it all together.....

As Gene said there is a big difference between a disciple and a student. Master and disciple is a different relationship from student and coach. But many such students will claim a lineage. This also makes things confusing.

[ngokfei]

ah, makes it too easy to just learn off videos and then claim a connection. If they are that unorganized then they shouldn't complain when charlatans say their are Shaolin Temple trained,e tc.

[LFJ]

does there exist such a list.

I know most monks had multiple teachers primarily Dharma/Chan and then martial.

So which chart are you looking for?

If a martial lineage, I wouldn't think it would be possible to trace given reasons previously mentioned- that folks learn various things from various masters. The lineage chart would be such a mess you couldn't even read it.

If Dharma lineage, that's easy to chart because it's single master to disciple through the generations. But I don't think many of them have such a chart anymore.

Actually, I spent years searching through various materials in an attempt to compile a complete lineage chart for my master, which he wasn't even sure about. I was able to trace back 31 generations to Abbot Fuyu who started the generational naming, with quite a lot of information on many of the masters (sometimes including what martial skills they taught/created).

Then other sources contain lineage for Fuyu back 21 generations to the 6th Chan patriarch Huineng. Then there is Huineng back 6 generations to the 1st Chan patriarch Bodhidharma. And Bodhidharma as the 28th patriarch in the Dhyana lineage from India goes back to Mahakasyapa as Sakyamuni Buddha's first Dhyana inheritor.

Again, it took me years to compile the Shaolin lineage chart of only 31 generations of single master to disciple in one line. If you want to compile a martial lineage tree, good luck!