It is generally believed that the art of Karate-Do can be traced back to sixth century China. There, in the Mt. Sung Hennan Province, Dharma, and the founder of Zen, a sect of Buddhism composed a sutra or collection of precepts to promote the physical development of the monks and missionaries to help protect them from bandits and criminals.The sutra developed by Dharma was called "Ekkin-Kyo," and it is believed that it evolved into Shaolin Temple Kenpo, " the way of Fists". Unfortunately, not much is known about this period in the history of Karate-Do and the relationship between Karate-Do and Shaolin Kenpo remains an ambiguous one.

Shaolin kung-fu History

History for me has always been something that you were forced to learn in school. It is only in later years that I have learned to appreciate an old saying, I now like to quote; "appreciate and learn from the past, dream and plan the future and live today!" And this is so very true. So, after years of studying and training Kung Fu I searched for the history of my style only to find . . . not much. This began something that I thought I would never do, research Chinese History and specifically Shaolin Kung Fu. This page is the result of that decision. Life is full of surprises
In no way is this account perfect. It is said that the victors write history, well it is actually written by people who can write, and in China, this was a slim minority. Chinese history also had the added challenge that successive dynasties liked to 're-write' aspects of history to suit them. This is also common in Western and other societies. Finally, each new dynasty removed much of the previous dynasty, to the point of moving its capitol city. The current capitol is Beijing also know as Peking. But there are many other 'former' capitol cities including Nanjing Xi'an and a number of others. All this considered, I believe that it would be difficult to say what actually happened during the 1500 years or so since the first Shaolin temple was built .

Jiu jitsu

don't think anyone can answer this question with certainty, but there are plenty of good hypotheses. Every culture has some form of hand to hand combat in its history. Combat without weapons usually appears in the form of wrestling and sometimes boxing. Looking at the history timeline, one good hypothesis is that the wrestling techniques of Jiu-Jitsu could very well have come from Ancient Greece. Olympic games were one of the Greek's strongest traditions. It is most likely that along with Greek ideas, came one of its most popular sports, Pankration. Pankration was a sport that involved both boxing and wrestling techniques and became more popular to the Greeks than either of those sports individually. Pankration would later be overshadowed by the Roman Gladiators, and then banned from the Olympics by Christian leaders of the Roman Empire. Even though new rulers would come and go, Greek customs and ideas still reached India, where Jiu-Jitsu's foundation was likely to have been born. During Alexander the Great's conquests (356 - 323 B.C.), he brought the Greek culture to the areas he conquered. His conquests stretched all the way to India, where he introduced the customs and ideals of Greek culture to the people of that area. Jiu-Jitsu wasn't being formally taught in Japan for over one thousand years after this. Many say that the Greek influence in India led to the development of Kung Fu or more appropriately, Wu Shu (martial arts) in China.

karate shotokan

Gichin FunakoshiShotokan karate traces its roots to the islands of Okinawa, which now form part of Japan. An indigenous fighting system know as Okinawa-te (Okinawa hand) would eventually become karate (Chinese hand) ...

Aikido

Aikido development and historyAikido's founder, Morehi Usheba , was born in Japan on December 14, 1883. As a boy, he often saw local thugs beat up his father for political reasons. He set out to make himself strong so that he could take revenge. He devoted himself to hard physical conditioning and eventually to the practice of martial arts, receiving certificates of mastery in several styles of jujitsu, fencing, and spear fighting. In spite of his impressive physical and martial capabilities, however, he felt very dissatisfied. He began delving into religions in hopes of finding a deeper significance to life, all the while continuing to pursue his studies of budo, or the martial arts. By combining his martial training with his religious and political ideologies, he created the modern martial art of Aikido. Ueshiba decided on the name "Aikido" in 1942 (before that he called his martial art "aikibudo" and "aikinomichi").
Aikido is the best sport