Southern Shaolin Monastery

The Southern Shaolin Monastery or Nan-Shaolin (南少林) is the name of a Buddhist monastery whose existence and location are both disputed although associated ruins have been identified. By tradition it is considered the source of all southern Chinese martial arts.

The following account is based on legend or folklore, with little, if any, documentary evidence to support it. During the Tang dynasty in the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang, warrior monks from Henan Shaolin were deployed from the Shaolin temple to combat piracy. With the pirates suppressed the monks remained in support of the local garrison and established the Southern Shaolin Monastery. During the Tang dynasty Shaolin warriors were used in support of the regular army and at its peak there were nine subsidiary Shaolin monasteries. With the demise of the Shaolin warrior units the subsidiary Shaolin monasteries disappeared, so that by the end of the Qing dynasty only the temple at Henan remained.

Another popular account is that since it was founded in 495 A.D., emperors of every succeeding Chinese dynasty have consecrated the Shaolin Temple as their Imperial Temple. This was where emperors prayed on behalf of their people. It was also the birthplace of Zen Buddhism. The Southern Shaolin Temple had a reputation for being a revolutionary center and the Abbott refused to become a part of the emperors army or take orders from him. In an effort to crush the growing rebellion, the Qing army attacked and burned the Southern Shaolin Monastery during middle of the 19th century. Only the most skilled Shaolin Monks escaped the attack.

Professor Barend J. ter Haar has suggested "that stories on the burning of a real or mythological Shaolin monastery were circulating in southern China towards the end of the eighteenth century, which were then taken up in different ways by martial arts specialists and by the Triads."

The book Martial Arts of the World: Regions and individual arts gives these stories of a Southern temple as an example of the unverifiable claims often made for the establishment of Chinese martial art styles. It says "One example involves a Shaolin monastery in Fujian Province. During the nineteenth century, Heaven and Earth Society documents referred to a southern Shaolin monastery in Fujian Province from whence so-called southern Shaolin martial arts styles such as Hong Quan reportedly originated. Although this assertion has been repeated many times, and claimants from three locations (Quanzhou, Putian, and Fuxing) have each made a case for their location, none of the claimants has been able to provide much evidence to support their claims."

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Wikipedia