On my May visit to the states I had the chance to spend a couple of days training with my old shrfu Art D. I would like to talk about the inspiration I got from comparing of notes on those aspects of Mantis Boxing that fascinate us.
I understand Art's philosophy to be,"By investigating the similarites are we able to create links."
THE HISTORICAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MANTIS AND CHEN TAIJI
Art has trained in MA since before I was born(I'm 35) and has spent the last 15-20 years investigating the links between the body movement of several styles of Mantis and Chen Taiji. His conclusions have played a big part in the evolution of his understanding and application of Manttis.
My own brief research points to a likely historical relationship between Mantis and Taiji. I make this connection, in part, by relating both Mantis and Chen Taiji to Longfist of the Song dynasty's first emperor Song Taidzu.
The link to Mantis is in the "Eighteen Family Method." Purportedly written by Wanglang himself or one of his students, it starts,
"Taidzu's Longfist is first."
General Qi Jiguang(1528-1587) published a book late in the Ming dynasty entitled "New Book on Effective Training Methods" which includes the chapter "The Canons of Boxing." This chapter goes into some detail on the "Thirty-Two Postures of Taidzu's Longfist."
Twenty-nine of those thirty-two postures are included in the various sets of Taiji created by Chen Wangting. We can conclude that the link between Chen Taiji and the Longfist as detailed in General Qi's book is quite strong. Sadly, lack of verifiable historical records in Mantis make for a weaker link.
ABOUT CHEN WANGTING
For the last three years of the Ming dynasty, from 1641 to 1644, Chen Wangting was the chief of civil troops defending Wen county. It seems that the knowledge he gained from war at the end of the Ming led to his refinement of boxing in the Ching. Not long before his death he wrote,
"...Life consists in creating actions of boxing when feeling depressed, doing field work when the season comes, and spending leisure time teaching disciples and children so that they can be worthy members of society."