Talk:Five Elders

NEED A PAGE ON LAU GAR — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.221.152.189 (talk) 09:22, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

5 Elders
This page seems to be about 3 separate groups that are loosely connected - shouldn't this be broken up into 3 separate pages? They are clearly 3 separate groups. 24.175.174.14 (talk) 00:02, 17 July 2013 (UTC) Bantaro

Professor Barend J. ter Haar wrote that "Future research should also include an exhaustive investigation of the folklore traditions, which tell of the burning of the Shaolin Monastery. They tell us that the southern Shaolin school of martial arts was spread through Guangdong and Fujian by the Five Ancestors, i.e. the five monks who survived the burning of the monastery. One of these schools was formed by the Cai family, but the names are not the same as in the burning of the monastery account (as included either in the "Mixed Records" or the late Qing novel).

At the present stage of our knowledge, it seems likely that a local tradition existed of the burning of a Shaolin Monastery somewhere in southern China, maybe to provide an explanation for the spread of the martial arts tradition of this name. Sadly we cannot confirm this as an historical event, but whether as a folkloric tradition or historical event, the account was then incorporated into the Triad foundation story. At any rate, even if we assume that the "Mixed Records" account is historically reliable, this does not make the local Shaolin monastery into the ancestral temple of the Triads. The Triad version of the Shaolin burning is too different to assume a direct connection with the "Mixed Records" account. Instead, I would suggest that stories on the burning of a real or mythological Shaolin monastery were circulating in southern China towards the end of the eighteenth century, which were then taken up in different ways by martial arts specialists and by the Triads." Dougweller (talk) 16:34, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

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