On Sun, 24 Nov 1996, Brendan O'Donnell wrote:

 Didn't Japanese styles come from China? Heck, all >martial arts came from
 India or so the stories say.

The legend says that the first martial arts where brought >from India to 
China by a Bhuddist monk named Bodhidhrama who went when >he heard that 
the Chinese were teaching an inncorrect form of Bhuddism. >It is quite 
likely that he first practiced Kalaripayit or one of it's >forebears. 

  
	The story as I recall is that the monk came teaching the Zen form of 
Budism.  He came to the Shaolin temple and taught the monks but saw that they 
were too out of shape to meditate properly.  So he taught the monks a series of 
exercises based on animal movements and the fighting techniques he had learned 
in his own past.

Yes, that part is right too, but at the time the five animals as we know 
it had not been created. I am not sue about the reference Kalarpayit, but 
the Hindu Brahmin caste of India have been practicing a formalised 
fighting system for nearly 2000 years. It could be that this is what it 
was or, as you say, just a system of Bodhidhrama's creation. This story, 
like most martial arts legends, has many variations and is subject to 
individual interpretation.

P-word.