Bodhidharma
Legendary figureA semi-legendary Buddhist monk from the turn of the 5th and 6th centuries, whose link to the martial art of the Shaolin monastery historians regard as a 20th-century invention.
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Bodhidharma was a semi-legendary Buddhist monk from the turn of the 5th and 6th centuries; his life is placed roughly between 480 and 557. According to the dating of scholar Broughton, he stayed in Luoyang from 516 to 526.
Only two period sources on his life survive, and scholar John McRae states that the biographical data is $q$layered with legend and unreliable detail.$q$ The sources already disagree on his origin: Yang Xuanzhi (547) describes him as a Persian from Central Asia, Tanlin (6th century) as the third son of a great Indian king from southern India, and Daoxuan (7th century) as a descendant of a South Indian Brahmin lineage.
According to traditional legend, Bodhidharma, after nine years of meditating facing a wall, taught the monks of the Shaolin monastery the martial art. Historians reject this legend: according to scholars Henning and Green, it is demonstrably a 20th-century invention. The legend derives from the Taoist text Yijin jing of 1624, which was mistakenly attributed to Bodhidharma, and was popularized by the serialized novel The Travels of Lao Can of 1907.
Sources 250 years older mention Bodhidharma and martial arts but do not connect the two in any way. Moreover, the Shaolin monks originally attributed their martial skill to the deity Vajrapani, not to Bodhidharma.