Martial Arts Of The World - Webs

128 Folklore in the Martial Arts
versions, a snake and a fox. From Sumatra comes the same tale of a fight
between a snake and a bird, witnessed by a woman who was then inspired
to create Indonesian Silat.
Folklorists label narratives of this sort migratory legends (believed by
the folk, set in the historical past, frequently incorporating named legendary
figures, yet attached to a variety of persons in different temporal
and geographic settings). Among the three possible origins of the tale
type—cross-cultural coincidence of events, cross-cultural creations of virtually
identical fictions, and an original creation and subsequent borrowing—the
latter is the most likely explanation.
The animal-modeling motif incorporated into the taiji, yongchun, and
silat legends is common among the martial arts. This motif runs the gamut
from specific incidents of copying the animal combat pattern, as described
above, to the incorporation of general principles from long periods of observation
to belief in possession by animal “spirits” in certain Southeast
Asian martial arts.
Sometime after 1812, a legend arose with the spread of membership
in the Heaven and Earth Society (also known as the Triads or Hong
League), a secret society. Associating themselves with the heroic and patriotic
image of the Ming-period Shaolin Monk Soldiers, Heaven and Earth
Society branches began to trace their origins to a second Shaolin
Monastery they claimed was located in Fujian province. According to the
story, a group of Shaolin monks, said to have aided Emperor Kangxi to defeat
a group of Mongols, became the object of court jealousies and were
forced to flee south to Fujian. There, government forces supposedly located
and attacked the monks’ secret Southern Shaolin Monastery. Five monks
escaped to become the Five Progenitors of the Heaven and Earth Society.
Around 1893, a popular knights errant or martial arts novel, Emperor
Qianlong Visits the South (also known as Wannian Qing, or Evergreen),
further embellished and spread the story. Like such heterodox religious
groups as the Eight Trigrams and White Lotus sects, and the Boxers of
1900, secret-society members practiced martial arts. The factors of their involvement
in martial arts, the center of their activity being in southern
China, and identification with the mythical Southern Shaolin Monastery
resulted in a number of the styles they practiced being called Southern
Shaolin styles.
The connection of sanctuaries, political resistance, and the clandestine
practice of martial arts apparent in these nineteenth-century Chinese legends
is a widespread traditional motif. The following two examples suggest
its dissemination as well as suggesting that this dissemination is not due to
the diffusion of an individual narrative. Korean tradition, Dakin Burdick
reports, holds that attempts to ban martial arts practice by the conquering