Claims that Chinese and Japanese martial arts come from Indian martial arts via Bodhidharma are complicated by disputes over Bodhidharma's origins and history as well as the documented existence of martial arts in China—and specifically at the Shaolin Monastery—prior to the purported arrival of Bodhidharma.

Historical texts speak of Bodhidharma, the legendary founder of Chan Buddhism, a Brahmin born in Kacheepuram in Tamil Nadu, in 522 A.D. arriving at the courts of the Chinese Emperor Liang Nuti, of the 6th dynasty, as the person responsible for bringing Kalaripayattu from India to China. He taught meditative and physical exercises to the chinese monks so that they could defend themselves against the frequent attacks of bandits.

It is not until centuries after Bodhidharma's death that the "Jingde Chuandenglu" (1004) makes the first explicit association between Bodhidharma and the Shaolin temple. Even then, it contains no record of Bodhidharma teaching martial arts to the Shaolin monks or reference to any fighting skill or martial prowess on his part.

The association of Bodhidharma with martial arts is made in a text whose provenance Matsuda Takamoto could trace back no further than 1827 and which Lin Boyuan dates to 1624. Moreover, in the course of his research Matsuda found that, in the thirteen hundred years between Bodhidharma's time and 1827, the earliest date to which he could attest the existence of this text, none of the many contemporary texts written about the Shaolin martial arts even mentions Bodhidharma, let alone gives him credit for Shaolin martial arts. Even then, the association of Bodhidharma with martial arts only becomes widespread with the 1904–1907 serialization of the novel The Travels of Lao Ts'an in Illustrated Fiction Magazine.

Shaolin monastery records state that two of its very first monks, Huiguang and Sengchou, were expert in the martial arts years before the arrival of Bodhidharma. None of the canonical Buddhist sources associates Bodhidharma with martial arts whereas they do note Sengchou's skill with the tin staff.

In addition, the Spring and Autumn Annals of Wu and Yue, the Bibliographies in the Book of the Han Dynasty and the Records of the Grand Historian all document the existence of martial arts in China before Bodhidharma.

The Shaolin Temple in China contains fresco murals with dark-skinned, not black, but similar in skin tone to Indians, monks teaching ostensibly Chinese monks fighting forms. On the mural that survived three fires between 1644 to 1927, it says in Chinese script "Tenjiku Naranokaku" translating as "the fighting techniques to train the body which come from India ...

Cited in support of the Indian progeniture of Shaolin kung fu is a fresco painted during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) depicting light-skinned and dark-skinned monks sparring, supposedly inscribed and translated in Japanese as "Tenjiku Naranokaku," which translates as "the fighting techniques to train the body which come from India..." Elsewhere, however, the title is given in Chinese as "Quanpu Bihua," which translates as "Boxing Drills Mural."

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