[i] Mount Song occupied a prominent position among Chinese sacred mountains as early as the 1st century BC, when it was proclaimed one of the Five Holy Peaks (五岳; wǔyuè).

[4][5][6] The Temple's historical architectural complex, standing out for its great aesthetic value and its profound cultural connotations, has been inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

[7] Batuo, also referred to in the Chinese sources as Fotuo and in Sanskrit as Buddhabhadra, had enjoyed the sponsorship of the Emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei since arriving in Pingcheng via the Silk Road, around the year 490.

[8] Yang Xuanzhi, in the Record of the Buddhist Monasteries of Luoyang (AD 547), and Li Xian, in the Ming Yitongzhi (1461), concur with Daoxuan's location and attribution.

Historical sources on the early origins of Shaolin kung fu show that at this time, martial arts practice was existent in the temple.

In the third year of the Xiaochang era (527) of Emperor Xiaoming of Northern Wei, Bodhidharma (达摩; dá mó), the 28th patriarch of Mahayana Buddhism in India, came to the Shaolin Temple.

[10] Bodhidharma's teachings were primarily based on Lankavatara Sutra, which contains the conversation between Gautama Buddha and Bodhisattva Mahamatti, who is considered the first patriarch of Chan tradition.

That this story is clearly a twentieth-century invention is confirmed by writings going back at least 250 years earlier, which mention both Bodhidharma and martial arts but make no connection between the two.

[18][19] Around AD 710, Da Mo is identified specifically with the Shaolin Temple (Precious Record of Dharma's Transmission or Chuanfa Baoji)[18][20] and writes of his sitting facing a wall in meditation for many years.

In 626, Li Shimin, later known as Emperor Taizong, sent an official letter of gratitude to the Shaolin community for the help they provided in his fight against Shichong and thus the establishment of the Tang Dynasty.

[24] According to legend, Emperor Taizong granted the Shaolin Temple extra land and a special "imperial dispensation" to consume meat and alcohol during reign of the Tang dynasty.

In 1260, Fuyu was honored with the title of the Divine Buddhist Master and in 1312 posthumously named Duke of Jin (晉國公; jìn guó gōng) by the Yuan emperor.

During the Red Turban Rebellion in the 14th century, bandits ransacked the monastery for its real or supposed valuables, destroying much of the temple and driving the monks away.

The events of this period would later figure heavily in 16th-century legends of the temple's patron saint Vajrapani, with the story being changed to claim a victory for the monks, rather than a defeat.

[27] With the establishment of the Ming dynasty by mid-14th century, Shaolin recovered, and a large part of the monastic community that fled during the Red Turban attacks returned.

During his stay in Fujian, Qi Jiguang convened martial artists from all over China, including local Shaolin monks, to develop a set of boxing and staff fighting techniques to be used against Japanese pirates.

Due to their outstanding contribution to Chinese military success, the imperial court built monuments and buildings for Shaolin Temple on numerous occasions.

In the 15th year of his rule (1750), the Qianlong Emperor personally visited Shaolin Temple, stayed at the abbot's room overnight, and wrote poems and tablet inscriptions.

Henglin led the militia to fight the bandits on different occasions, thus enabling dozens of villages in the temple's surroundings to live and work in peace.

This particular event served to encourage people to remember the importance of patriotism by celebrating the contribution of Shaolin martial arts to the country's defense from foreign invasion at numerous occasions throughout history.

Shaolin Temple leadership aimed for its historical architectural complex to become a United Nations World Heritage site in order to obtain annual funding for maintenance and development from the UN.

UNESCO reviewed and approved eight sites and eleven architectural complexes, including Shaolin's Resident Hall, Pagoda Forest, and Chuzu Temple as World Cultural Heritage.

[37] As of January 2011, Yongxin and the temple operated over forty companies in cities across the world, including London and Berlin, which have purchased land and property.

[39] Senior theology lecturer Sze Chi Chan of Hong Kong Baptist University interpreted this move as Xi Jinping making an example of the Shaolin Monastery to send a message to other temples and the Chinese Catholic Church.

Shaolin kung fu is manifested through a system of different skills that are based on attack and defense movements with the form (套路; tàolù) as its unit.

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, and especially since the 1970s, cultural exchanges between Shaolin Temple and the rest of the world have continuously improved in terms of content, scale, frequency, and scope.

The temple has been visited by European and American dancers, martial artists, NBA players, Hollywood movie stars, but also renowned monks from traditional Buddhist countries such as Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

Also, a number of political leaders, such as Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf, British Queen Elizabeth II, Spanish King Juan Carlos I, Australia's former prime minister John Howard, South Africa former president Nelson Mandela, Russian president Vladimir Putin, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, and Taiwanese politician James Soong have met with the temple's abbot.

A new management was created that year to operate a joint venture between the government, a private company from Hong Kong, and the abbot of a newly constituted body of monks.

The Shaolin Temple Scenic Spot is located approximately in the middle of Mount Song, an E–W trending massif on the right bank of the Yellow River.