HotSoup wrote:Bao wrote: That’s a stretch. Why would you want to attribute a creation of something to someone else? Wouldn’t that be disrespectful?
Disrespectful? Attribution to ancestors/significant historical (or mythical) characters is a key feature of any confucian society. It’s rooted in the ancestor veneration and constitutes the desired behavior protocol of its every and each member. Perhaps nowadays it’s not as strong, but at Chen Xin’s time it was still in full swing.
Because of a related sentiment, nowadays people keep attributing to Zhang Sanfeng, Southern Shaolin, or Wudang. I personally feel that it is even more disrespectful by our standards.
If they knew, or thought that Wangting invented something, yes of course it would be disrespectful not to honor that legacy. People worship or pay their respect to, yes, Zhang Sanfeng, Damo etc. If people had knew about that Wangting created a forerunner to modern TJQ, it is HIGHLY unlikely that people would forget about Wangting or dishonour him buy hiding him away. But before Tang Hao "invented" this legacy, nobody thought that Wangting had made such a contribution.
I will stick to the theory based on the research of professional historians until more conclusive proofs are discovered.
I wish I could do that as well. But Tang Hao didn't act professional. He mistook Chen Xin's note about "Wangting creating Quan" for "wangting creating Taijiquan" when Chen Xin didn't mean TJQ. He explicitly said in interviews, which has been confirmed by independent sources, that Chen Xin thought that Chen Bu might have been the inventor of TJQ.
At least it’s based on the logic
Basing a whole theory on mistakes does not prove a very good use of logic.
The first documented example of “a connection between Daoism, neidan and Chinese Martial arts” was created by Chang Naizhou whom CWT predated by at least one century. CNZ’s work was most likely based on the theories that had been brewing in the area for some time, but “many hundreds years before CWT” makes me feel skeptical. Could you cite any sources supporting this claim?
There was already a connection in the 200s from . I have already cited this source from the Taoist master Ge Hong (283-363) who wrote:
“All the martial arts [quan] have secret formulas to describe important techniques and have secret mysterious methods to overcome an opponent. If an opponent is kept unaware of these, then one could defeat him at will.”
We can also go forward to the early Song dynasty. From around the 10th century, there were many Daoists from various schools who travelled around and taught scholars, officials and high people in the court Daoist exercises. Those long-life and self-improvement exercises were extremely popular, many people practiced various exercises.
So there are actually several times in history we can make assumptions, "based on the logic", that neidan and other Daoist material could have had a broader influence on the Chinese martial arts. This, "based on the logic", did not occur by one or two, or even a few people, trying to infuse neidan or similar into existing martial arts. Rather, that martial arts and taoist methods melted together and developed together, was something which happened naturally as the Daoist influence was something highly prevalent in that society.
So there is really no need to trying to find any single inventor, creator or similar to Taijiquan. Personally, I suspect, that this and other arts, developed gradually in a much more complex manner than any of those legends could possibly reveal. By many more things and much more knowledge passing through many different people and many hands.
Myths and legends usually tend to simplify events in a way that the myths and legends themselves become completely useless for revealing any kind of truth. IMHO.