On March 15, 1928, Shi Yousan, a subordinate of the northwestern warlord Feng Yuxiang, besieged the Shaolin Temple, set fire to the Dharma Hall, and the next day, ordered the soldiers to burn the Hall of the Heavenly King, the Hall of the Daxiong Treasure, the Bell Tower, the Drum Tower, the Hall of the Six Ancestors, the Hall of the Dragon King, the Hall of the Chennara, the Hall of the Yan King, the Warehouse, and the Hall of Zen, and more than 200 monks were almost killed, and a large number of precious cultural relics and 5480 volumes of Tibetan scriptures were reduced to ashes. At this point, the essence of the Thousand Years Shaolin Temple was destroyed by the Fire Dragon.
Why did Feng Yuxiang and Shi Yousan set fire to the Shaolin Temple? This matter has to start from why there are martial monks in the Shaolin Temple.
The Shaolin Temple was founded in the 19th year of the Northern Wei Dynasty (495 AD). At that time, Emperor Yuanhong of Xiaowen built a temple on Mount Shaomu on Mount Song in order to settle the Indian monk Bata who had come to the dynasty.
In the third year of the Northern Wei Dynasty Emperor Xiaochang (527 AD), Bodhidharma, who was revered by Zen as the twenty-eight ancestors of the Western Heavens, came to the Shaolin Temple, he gathered believers and taught Zen Buddhism, and the scale of the monastery gradually expanded, the number of monks increased, and the Shaolin Temple gradually became the ancestral court of Zen Buddhism.
At the end of the Sui Dynasty, the Shaolin Temple, which had a huge temple property, became the target of mountain thieves, and the Shaolin Temple monks organized forces to fight against the mountain thieves. At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, the thirteen stick monks of the Shaolin Temple were rewarded by Tang Taizong for their meritorious service to Tang, giving a thousand acres of land, a body of water mill, and the monks who participated in the war also had their own titles, and called the Shaolin monks as monks and soldiers, since then, the Shaolin Temple has been famous in the world, known as the first brake in the world.
However, the historical records of the story of the thirteen-stick monk saving the Tang King are not recorded, and it is first found in the preface made by Liang Qichao in the early years of the Republic of China for the book "Chinese New Martial Arts Stick Science", which says:
"At the end of the Sui Dynasty, the world was in chaos. Ten thousand thieves, close to the Shaolin Temple. The monks will disperse. There are old men with short sticks charging at the thief's front, and those who deserve it are easy to break through and dare not enter the temple. It is a hundred young monks who are selected to teach the stick method. Emperor Taizong of Tang, Li Shimin, enlisted Wang Shichong and broke it with sticks from the monks. Thirteen of his first performers. ”
After that, Jiang Rongqiao also held this in the "Shaolin Stick Law", and Han Muxia also held this statement in the preface to it. However, according to the extant inscriptions such as "The Theravada of the Shaolin Temple told Baiguwu by King Li Shimin of Qin", "Tang Taizong gave Shaolin Temple Teachings", and "Emperor Tang Songyue Temple Stele", there are only records of Tanzong and 13 other people capturing Wang Renze, and there is no record of Shaolin monks using sticks and saving Li Shimin. There is no record in the historical records of Shaolin monks practicing martial arts with sticks during the Tang and Song dynasties.
Tanzong, monk of the Shaolin Temple in the late Sui and early Tang dynasties. In 620 AD, when Li Shimin, the King of Qin of the Tang Dynasty, attacked Luoyang, Wang Ren, the nephew of Emperor Zheng of Luoyang, Wang Shichong, was stationed in Yuanzhou, and Emperor Tanzong led the 13 warrior monks of the Shaolin Temple to capture Wang Renze, and Li Shimin sent Li Anyuan to the Shaolin Temple to present the "Book of the Lordship of the Shaolin Temple". Li Shimin wanted to make thirteen monks an official, but Emperor Tanzong and others did not want to be officials, so Li Shimin gave the Shaolin Temple forty acres of land and a body of water.
At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the official did not advocate martial arts, and Shaolin martial arts were not passed down. During the Jiajing period, the Japanese Wokou attacked the coast of China, and the generals Yu Dayu and Qi Jiguang led troops to conquest. During his time in Fujian, Qi Jiguang summoned martial artists from all over China and local Shaolin monks to develop a set of fist and stick techniques against the Wukou pirates. Because of the merits of the monks in resisting the Wo, the government repaired the monastery on a large scale, and the Shaolin Temple also enjoyed the privileges granted by the government to exempt the grain shortage. Subsequently, Shaolin monks were recruited by the Ming government at least six times to participate in wars and make many meritorious achievements, so the imperial court repeatedly built a temple for the Shaolin Temple, and the authoritative position of Shaolin Kung Fu in the national martial arts community was also established.
In the early days of the people's war, the Shaolin Temple was repeatedly plagued by war. In 1912, the monk Yunsong Henglin, the monk of Dengfeng County, was elected by the local gentry as the chief of the Shaolin Guard Regiment, and he purchased firearms, organized the guard regiment, and trained combat skills to maintain local order. In the autumn of 1920, when robbers were everywhere and the people were not happy, Henglin led a vigilante group to fight with the bandits for ten battles, and dozens of villages in Huansi temple were able to live and work in peace and contentment, but they also planted the root of the disaster.
Why did Feng Yuxiang and Shi Yousan slaughter the Shaolin Temple? The reason is simple, because miaoxing, the abbot of the Shaolin Temple, in order to protect the Shaolin Temple and protect the peace of the party, defected to Wu Peifu, who was directly related, and became the commander of the first regiment of the first brigade. Miaoxing defected to the Beiyang warlords, served as the leader of the regiment, and participated in the conquest, which not only violated the rules of the Buddhist temple, but also attracted the disaster of the Shaolin Temple.
In March 1928, Miaoxing's superior Fan Zhongxiu took advantage of Feng Yuxiang's nationalist rear empty space to capture Gong County and Yanshi County, but was soon recaptured by Feng's general Shi Yousan. Fan Zhongxiu withdrew south and attacked dengfeng county, and its headquarters was located in the Shaolin Temple. Shi You's three troops pursued south, to the Yuanyuan Pass (Eighteen Plates), the Shaolin Temple monks assisted Fan in sniping, and finally collapsed. More than 200 monks were also nearly killed. On March 15, Shi Yousan chased after the Lin Temple and set fire to the Fa Tang.
The next day, Su Mingqi, the brigade commander of the Nationalist Army (Feng Yuxiang's department) stationed in Dengfeng, ordered the sergeant to carry kerosene to the temple and burned the Hall of the Heavenly King, the Hall of Daxiong, the Hall of The Golden Nara, the Hall of the Six Ancestors, the Hall of the Yan King, the Hall of the Dragon King, the Bell and Drum Tower, the Xiangji Kitchen, the Treasury, the East-West Zen Hall, and the Throne Room to vent their anger.
At this point, the historical buildings of the Thousand Years Shaolin Temple were destroyed.
Since then, the Shaolin Temple's master monks, Such as Chunpu and Zhenxu, have only maintained the mountain gate. It was not until after 1982 that the Shaolin Temple was rebuilt and rejuvenated.
Several emperors in the famous "Three Martial Sects and One Sect Destroying the Buddha" in history ended very bleakly: Emperor Taiwu of the Northern Wei Dynasty destroyed the Buddha, demolished the temple, burned the Buddhist scriptures, destroyed the Buddha statues, killed the monks and nuns, and was murdered by the eunuch Zong Ai seven years later, and his father and son were not allowed to die well; the Northern Zhou Wu Emperor Yuwen Yong destroyed the Buddhist temple scriptures, forced the monks and nuns to return to the world, and soon fell ill, his whole body was eroded, and he died at the age of thirty-six, less than three years, and the country was also destroyed; Tang Wuzong Li Yan destroyed the temples and destroyed the Buddha, and died of poisoning by overdoses of Dan medicine that year. He died at the age of thirty-two, and then Huang Chao rebelled against the Tang Dynasty; Later Zhou Shizong Chai Rong died violently four years after the destruction of Buddhism, and Later Zhou was soon destroyed by Zhao Kuangyin.
And the two masterminds who burned the Shaolin Temple did not get a good ending in the end.
Feng Yuxiang's military brigade all his life, good at seeing the wind and steering, eight times before the enemy, so the people are known as "generals who defected"; and because of their deep belief in Christianity, they are known as "General Christ", many times using religious forces to control the army, and launching large-scale destruction of Buddhism in various parts of China, which is the largest destruction of Buddhism in modern China after the destruction of Buddhism by the three martial arts. In 1927, Feng Yuxiang, a firm believer in Christianity, expelled monks from the abandoned temple in Henan and converted the Daxiangguo Temple into a market. It also launched a campaign to destroy Buddhism throughout the province, and all bhikkhus and bhikshunis were expelled. All temple property was confiscated, and monasteries were converted into schools, or used as almshouses, libraries, or entertainment venues. After Henan, the provinces of Zhi, Lu, and Qin also followed suit, and Buddhism in North China almost declined. On September 1, 1948, Feng Yuxiang was on his way back to China on the Soviet steamship Victory, when the ship caught fire and was suffocated by smoke to death, at the age of 65. It is also believed that he died of murder.
Shi Yousan, the first "chameleon" among the warlords of the Republic of China, threw himself in Feng Yuxiang three times and betrayed Feng Yuxiang three times, threw himself against Yan, threw himself against Chiang Kai-shek, threw himself into Zhang Xueliang against Zhang ,joined forces against communism, and resisted Japan; he had no dignity that a soldier should have, which can be described as shameless. Because he liked to use cruel punishments such as burial alive, he was called "King Shiyan". On December 1, 1940, Gao Shuxun, commander of the New 8th Army under Shi Yousan, in accordance with Chiang Kai-shek's secret orders and through the organization of military commander Chen Gongshu, launched a mutiny against Shi Yousan in Puyang and arrested Shi Yousan. On the same day, Shi Yousan was executed and buried alive by the Yellow River, at the age of 50.