Question on Xingyi's Indian origins

[Hashakgik888]

I'm studying in Bangalore, India for this fall semester, and while I'm here I'd like to do some research on the distant connections between Xinyi/Xingyi and Indian arts and concepts. The thing is, other than that the connection is there, I don't really know anything else about it, so I have no idea where to start looking. Could some of you give me some tips on things to research and questions to ask? I've got a Kalaripayattu master for Q&A, too, so I plan on dredging his knowledge, as well, so any pointers you guys could offer me would be greatly appreciated.

[GrahamB]

I've never heard of a connection from XinYi/XingYi to Indian martial arts.... where did you get this info?

Historically there is a connection with Shaolin (I guess....) since Bodidharma came from India to China (if you believe that story) to teach the Chan monks martial arts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhidharma

There are also a few famous paintings that show darker skinned (Indian?) and lighter skinned monks practicing Shaolin arts together:



There is a supposed connection between Ji Long Feng (first documented XinYi practitioner) and the Shaolin Temple via the martial art of Xin Yi Ba, but again, I haven't heard of that connection going to India.

The monk Shi Dejian is the most 'famous' current practitioner of XinYiBa:

[Dai Zhi Qiang]

You are best to change your area of research slightly and look at the exchange between Indian Yoga and Taoism, like in the similarities between their internal cultivation. As far as for martial arts, I have seen quite a few people have tried to link Bodhidharma with martial arts, such as the conclusion that since he was a Braham that he was trained in martial arts. Now people are trying to link, Vajramushti with Kung Fu, but from what I have seen on a article, John Will wrote for grappling magazine, it was more like a wrestling art, with iron knuckle dusters attached to the hands.

There is a book called "Bodhisattva Warriors" which talks about all this stuff, but I think in a nuttshell it is full of crock and does not stand up to it's claims. I did think it brought up some interesting points though and is worth a read I guess if you are bored and it is not going to cost you anything.

I would like to see someone find the matching Yoga from India to the Yi Jin Jing as claimed created or taught by Bodhidharm, but so far have not seen anything.

JB

[chrislomas]

WIthin Taoism as I understand it (within a sect I train with) the Yi/Intent mind is almost identical to the Indian conception of the Atman. This sect also acknowledges its Indian 'conception'/debt. All 'martial' training, an imporatant aspect within the sect, is aimed not at technique or specific form but at unleashing the Yi mind (as opposed to the heart-mind or closest western term ego) in order to react perfectly to the situation which presents itself. May be nothing in a historical sense but it is interesting in its possible links to Xing-yi training and a slight different interpretation of its meaning.

[Wuyizidi]

Okay, I think I can see why people think there is a connection there: There's a very popular saying in China "all of kungfu came out of Shaolin" (Tian Xia Wu Gong Chu Shaolin). From there we have the legend that Bodidharma taught Shaolin monks martial art. Ergo, all of Chinese martial art came from India. Then again, there are many popular traditional sayings in China that people believed for thousands of years that are totally wrong. It takes but a second to tear this one up.

Bodidharma came to China and founded Shaolin only 1,500 years ago right? So Chinese people did not know how to fight in the 3,500 years before that, did not develop sophisticated martial art? When the government did a national survey of martial art in the 1980's, they found hundreds of distinct styles. Shaolin is but one. Even today, can Shaolin people claim all other arts came from them, influenced by them? In fact, Shaolin's own written records show the opposite: that the first and second generation of their martial art monks, like Liu Yu Feng, traveled widely throughout China to learn martial art and brought it back to the temple.

It's true we had external martial art for a very long time before internal martial art, and many of the movements are similar between the two. But internal martial art's operating principles (why it works, how it works, the essential abilities necessary for those skills to work) are a dramatic departure from external martial art.

So even if we can prove Bodidharma taught martial art, found out exactly what he taught, and prove that what he taught were the only things the founders of Xing Yi Quan practiced, we still run into a wall there. Because founders of Xing Yi Quan are Chinese, they created Xing Yi Quan not from any Indian ideas, but Chinese Daoist ideas. In the case of internal martial art, we can clearly see how yin yang, wu xing, and ba gua ideas can be applied to make fighting more effective, efficient on a very technical level. That was the breakthrough in late Ming Dynasty: for thousands of years, people believed those Daoist ideas accurately described how everything worked in nature, but they didn't know how to apply them in martial art. At that time that critical threshold of knowledge was crossed.

What are the fundamental ideas of Buddhism? There is much talk about zen and the art of swordsmanship, archery, etc. But that's more mental than physical. Yes, it does help you achieve a clearer, more stable state of mind that perversely allows you to be more focused on the task of killing people. But how do those Buddhist ideas translate into actual technical concepts, skills, techniques you use to kill people?

We are searching not for just any link, but meaningful link right? What does that mean "meaningful link"? That means on some essential level, two things are related right?

So before we can link Xingyi to Indian martial art we have to understand the essence of Xing Yi Quan: what are you trying to achieve, what ideas are used to achieve those goals, what type of skills are necessary to implement those ideas, what type of abilities are required to make those skills work, what training methods are needed to develop those abilities... Then you compare that to what Indian martial art was like in Bodidharma's time. So here we have at least two big huddles: 1) the basic philosophical idea (five element, their patterns of interactions...) has to exist in Indian culture at that time, 2) 1,500 years ago, they already knew, or had the beginning of the idea of, how to apply those ideas in martial art. Only after all of that we can have a meaningful relationship/link.

Implicit in this line of reasoning then is Xing Yi Quan principles existed 1500 years ago. This is part of another thousands-year-old Eastern idea that oldest is the best, an idea that is false, or incomplete at best, when used to describe human knowledge. Any body of human knowledge, when conditions for its development are favorable - this type of skill is needed (ex. China before 1900's), it grows and thrives. Even then it takes times. Knowledge is accumulated one small bit of time, with occasional dramatic improvement when some critical mass is reached, becoming more systematic and complete only over time. When the condition is not favorable - this type of skill no longer needed (ex. China after being defeated by foreign powers with modern firearms), it declines. In the case of Xingyi Quan then, we can safely say the general level of practice in year 2000 is no where near as good as it was in 1900, but Xingyi in 1900 is definitely better than Xingyi in 1800. Here old and new (time) are completely meaningless mental categories. What really matters is the type of world exist at those times we are talking about.

Wuyizidi

[Hashakgik888]

Yeah, I was thinking of shifting my research to the area of sexual alchemy and all that stuff, since I don't believe that Bodidharma was the inspiration for Shaolin (Kang Gewu gives evidence of older martial arts, too, from way before Shaolin), and the nei jia didn't come from Shaolin, anyway. I really just want to get my head around any way in which I can use yoga to deepen my Xingyi/general nei jia studies. I've got a few books I need to read, including Hatha Yoga Pradipika and Anatomy of Hatha Yoga. Unfortunately, since my credits are full of other stuff, I don't have that much time to dedicate to this research, but I will do what I can so that I will have more background info for use when I go back to Hangzhou in the spring.

[edededed]

If you look deeper, though, there is evidence that goes the other way, too (i.e., everything comes from Shaolin).

Keep researching, anyway

[Hashakgik888]

I suppose. I'm still a noob - only been studying Xingyi for about two years - still in the beginning of the hidden power phase - and am still sorting out the myths from the real history. I can't wait to finish college so I'll have time to go back to Beijing for a while to train more with Zhang Shengli

[edededed]

What, you've started hidden power already?

[C-Hopkins]

Look into Kalari Payit-

It's an Indian MA which I've allways wanted to study. There are other ones, but can't say what

Here's a vid- Looks alot like Beijing Shuai Jiao actaully.For about 10 seconds that is.

[bigphatwong]

You could ask him about the relation of San Ti to the ancient Buddhist hand mudra that was supposed to repel fear, or the concept of "Triple Battle" (I think it's called Triptaka) that symbolizes struggle on the levels of thought, speech and action.

That'd be dope.

[I-mon]

i remember reading - I think it was in Jan Diepersloot's book - that what Bodhidharma taught to the monks at Shaolin temple were the "tendon changing" and "brain and marrow washing" exercises. He went on to talk about sets of exercises called something like "pratik" (maybe i'm way off there) which the buddha himself learned while he was a prince, and that were also practiced in some of the later schools of indian buddhism and then brought into china by guys like bodhidharma.

i have no idea where he got his information.

Hashakgik888 if you have time you could try to do a short course at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram in Chennai. No direct or obvious links to chinese martial arts, yet many of the same fundamental principles of mind and movement and internal development are there.

[Bob]

I might also suggest a direction to look at which I suspect is controversial in academic circles:

The Original Tao: Inward Training [Nei-yeh] and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism, by Harold R. Roth, Columbia University Press, 1999, pp. 137-138.

"Mair asserts that Indian yoga is the principle formative influence on Chinese Taoism.

Those who take the trouble to read attentively the early Indian texts just cited, particularly the classical Upanisads, will realize that they foreshadow the entire phiolophica, religious, and physiological foundations of Taois, but not its social and political components, which are distinctively Chinese.

Mair's arguments from textual parallels and commercial contact are not persuasive evidence that the meditative practice of Inward Training and other early Taoist sources derived from Indian yoga. Rather, these arguments suggest parallel developments in different cultures at different times, which occurred because of the application of similar method of pyscho-physical cultivation by human beings, who, despite their cultural differences wer affected by these techniques in generally similar ways. Systemaically deconstructing cognitive structures through sitting breath meditation seems to yield similar experiences of tranquility and of a unified awareness, despite distinct cultural differences.

Morever, despite providing evidence of early commercial contact India and China, Mair has not been able to show any archological evidence that religious practices and ideas were transmitted along with trade. Perhaps they were, and perhaps some day we will find evidence of this. But until we do, Mair evidence and arguments simplicle indicate the possiblity of an Indian influence, no the necessity of it." pp. 137-138.

I also had another academic source, which is in my files, that indicates, looking at commercial trade along early lines that there was no evident influence of Indian medicine on traditional Chinese medicine and in the latter, years, some evidence of the reverse. I think Indian public hygiene practices may have influenced some of Chinese practices but I can't remember.

I would defer to Josh, who posts here, to these issues. He has done doctoral work in Chinese religion and probably has a very good command of the literature.