Cirsus of Shaolin or not ?

[RenDaHai]

QiJiGuang mentions Shaolin Gun in 1560. He mentions it along side all the other boxing styles in the boxing section. Then in the SAME section he says that no weapons are practiced without first learning Quan as it is the basics for all weapons.

Evidence of Shaolin Gun is also much earlier than this.

And for those of you who know Gun methods, you will realise there is a lot of kicking and striking with the hands and feet hile holding the staff. There is no way they did not consider these separately. There is also no way that they practiced staff without considering what happened when disarmed... Staffs break. In Fact all real weapons break during the course of battle.

Second to this the weapons techniques follow the same principles as the fist, and many weapon techniques have an equivilant fist technique. So if the Shaolin did indeed practice staff, then they had already considered boxing. If any of you have trained KungFu you will realise this for certain. Many longfist techniques are specifically 'Kong shou po qiang' empty hand vs spear. This is some of the oldest of technique and would have been considered since the first man sharpened a stick. You can practice some staff techniques directly while empty handed. And People do, some techniques are just this, the same move without the staff.


What you mean to say is the popular culture of Kung Fu Quan Taolu exploded in the 16th-17th century. As such a huge amount of the extended Shaolin boxing material is from interactions at this time.

It is not about hanging on to some ancient lineage. It is about stupidity. There is no evidence to say Shaolin DIDN'T pracitice boxing. There is simply a lack of evidence that they did. Or rather there IS evidence of Staff practice (and so martial art which would always have included unarmed techniques). There is a lack of evidence of Quan practice, Taolu. But that is looking at just a small number of sources. More will certainly come to light. This is not considering hand written sources. And before the 16th century, for niche stuff like one temples kung fu, that would be hand written.