was just reading the old encyclopedia on the xiao and da
meihuaquan sets.
the history on the
xiaomeihuaquan set tells a story of abbot fuju's disciple jueda (觉大) in the song dynasty practicing
luohan shibashou in front of a winter blossom tree before the abbot's chamber. then fuju explained to him allegorically how a gongfu practitioner should be like the blossom.
after listening jueda stood contemplating for a while until he was fired up with inspiration and began training extra hard but not following any of the previous boxing sets he had studied with his shifu. instead he just let it flow.
another monk saw him training and asked what it was called. jueda thought for a moment then said it should be called "meihuaquan" (plum blossom boxing). and so jueda's boxing set was then named shaolin
meihuaquan, or
jueda meihuaquan.
originally it had 96 postures, but in the yuan dynasty it was simplified into 29 postures by jinnaluowang, and then called "
xiaomeihuaquan".
the set was written down following the demonstration of shi yongyang.
here's the only video i've seen of it:
http://www.56.com/u71/v_MTQ3MTkwMjg.html
dameihuaquan,
for this set, the encyclopedia reads:
"大梅花拳是清末民初的少林寺僧会司恒林大和尚,在原小梅花拳的基础上,结合攻防的须要增编而创,共54势 ,比小梅花拳多了二十五势"
it says abbot henglin in the early 1900's combined attack and defense skills based on the
xiaomeihuaquan set to expand it into a larger set of 54 postures, 24 more than the
xiaomeihuaquan set. this new set was named
dameihuaquan.
so according to the encyclopedia,
dameihuaquan is abbot henglin's creation, and not actually an older set.
its interesting then why liu zhenhai's 7 road
luohanquan has this
dameihuaquan as the 7th set, grouped with and called
luohanquan. that is if the encyclopedia is to be trusted about henglin's hand in the set's creation.