Wang Lang (王朗) — the Mantis Founder-Legend & the Eighteen Schools

Wang Lang (王朗, also written 王郎) is the legendary founder of Northern Praying Mantis boxing (螳螂拳) — the figure to whom tradition credits the creation of the art after he watched a praying mantis defeat a larger insect, and synthesized the techniques of "eighteen schools" (十八家) of boxing into a new system. Like Bodhidharma for Shaolin or Zhang Sanfeng for the internal arts, Wang Lang is best understood as the tradition's mythic founder — a story that organizes the art's identity — rather than a documented historical individual.

The legend

By the most common telling, Wang Lang was a martial artist of Shandong in the late Ming / early Qing who, after losing a duel (to a Shaolin monk or a senior, depending on the version), sat dejected in a courtyard and watched a praying mantis seize and overpower a much larger cicada. Struck by the insect's hooking, trapping, and relentless forward pressure, he studied its movements and built them into a fighting method — grafting the mantis arms onto monkey (猴) footwork for mobility, and fusing in what he had gathered from many earlier boxing styles. The result was 螳螂拳.

The Eighteen Schools (十八家)

The signature of the legend is that Wang Lang did not invent from nothing but gathered the best of eighteen earlier boxing masters — preserved in mantis lore as the 十八家拳歌 ("Song of the Eighteen Schools"), which pairs each master with the technique Wang Lang is said to have taken from him, ending with his own mantis as the eighteenth that "masters them all":

太祖的長拳起首，韓通的通背為母；鄭恩的纏封尤妙，溫元的短拳更奇；馬籍的短打最甚，孫恆的猴拳且盛；黃祐的靠身難近，綿盛的面掌飛疾；金相的磕手通拳，懷德的摔捋硬崩；劉興的勾摟採手，譚方的滾漏貫耳；燕青的拈拿跌法，林沖的鴛鴦腳強；孟甦的七勢連拳，崔連的窩裡剖捶；楊滾的棍採直入，王朗的螳螂總敵。

A rendering (the technique-names are compressed Ming fighting-cant, so this is interpretive):

The transmission tradition

From the legendary Wang Lang, lineage tradition runs the art through a Daoist named Shengxiao (升霄道人, "the Ascending-to-Heaven Daoist") and a set of hand-copied manuscripts — the 羅漢行功短打 (Luohan Conditioning Short-Striking) and the 少林衣缽真傳 (True Transmission of the Shaolin Robe-and-Bowl) — before the documented 19th-century Shandong masters take over the record. These manuscripts, not Wang Lang himself, are where the art first becomes textually traceable.

See also

Praying Mantis (螳螂拳) — the style this legend founds

Seven Star Mantis (七星螳螂拳) — the branch with the fullest manuscript record

Shaolin Kung Fu — the temple the legend invokes (and Bodhidharma, the parallel founder-myth)

A Short History of Chinese Martial Arts

Sources

[1] 螳螂拳 and 七星螳螂拳, Chinese Wikipedia (zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/螳螂拳) — the Wang Lang origin tradition, the 十八家 synthesis, and the note that several "ancestors" are Water Margin figures.

[2] 王朗（螳螂拳始祖）, Baidu Baike / Factpedia (baike.baidu.com/item/王朗/10484949) — Jimo/Laiyang origin, late-Ming/early-Qing dating, the founding legend.

[3] The 十八家拳歌 as transmitted in the mantis 拳譜 — verbatim verse from the lineage record (e.g. 學德武術館). The eighteen masters and their techniques.