Person · monk & Chan patriarch

Bodhidharma

Also known as Damo, Daruma, Bodhidharma of Kanchi

Date

5th–6th century

Function

Religious institution & practice

Tradition

Chan lineage texts; Luoyang Qielan Ji

Confidence

Qualified / contested

Worth knowing

The nine years facing a wall at Shaolin, the cut eyelids that became tea plants, the exchange with Emperor Wu about merit — all of it is later legend. The Shaolin martial tradition's claim of descent from him is seventeenth-century at the earliest.

Connections (3)

• BirthplaceKānchī / Kānchīpuram / Kanchipuram

  The Kanchipuram attribution comes from Chinese Chan genealogies of the eleventh century and from later Tamil and Japanese tradition, not from the earliest notice, which calls him a Brahmin from south India and says nothing about a royal family. A Pallava prince turned monk is a good story with a thin record, and the repository keeps the place and flags the claim.

• Teaching lineageShaolin Temple, China

  The Chan lineage runs from Bodhidharma at Shaolin through Huike and four more patriarchs to Huineng, and from there into every Zen school in Japan, Korea and Vietnam. That transmission is documented from the eighth century. The martial arts attribution appears in a seventeenth-century manual and is a separate and much later claim on the same figure.

• Maritime routeGuangzhou / Canton, China

  Coming by sea rather than over the passes is the significant thing about this tradition. Buddhism had reached China overland through Gandhara and the Tarim for four centuries; the Guangzhou route through the Straits, used by Yijing and dozens of others, meant that a south Indian monk could reach a Chinese court without crossing Central Asia at all.

Sources

Wikipedia, “Bodhidharma”. The subject’s own writings where they survive, and the standard biographical literature.

• Wikipedia — Bodhidharma