Hey Hendrik, Joy,
Good points, if off-topic. In history, this was often the case with the Secret Societies, which made up links to Shaolin or Ming (no one seems to have had any direct ones, they just knew a friend who knew a friend who had once met a Ming Scion or a Monk) and would use it to raise money, as would some local temples (not Shaolin, also often not Buddhist) the way modern churches use Bingo. It was, for lack of a better modern parallel, a network marketing enterprise, used to fund many things, some noble, some not. Sun Yat-Sen, like your story, also sought to make up history to help make his Nationalist movement more attractive to Foreign Secret Society leaders, based on these olds marketing ploys. Despite his group of “historians” he ultimately failed as well. Perhaps he lacked as far-seeing an Empress. Yet many in the West were raised on these stories and will do and say much in defense of them. People will, in most cases, believe who they want to and what they want to, since they have vested interest in doing so.
Did Chan monks fight and kill in the old days? Maybe some did, didn’t make killing righteous under Chan precepts, but it probably did provide opportunity for rationalization, the way other religions have rationalized Crusades.
Anyway, to get back to application, this is also something common. Does you application really work, or do you make up rationalizations? And do your rationalizations hold up? (It didn’yt work because you made a mistake is one thing, but it didn’t work because your adversary ‘punched wrong’ is quite another).
With things like San Sao, Chi Sao, etc. whether they are 1000 years old or made up last Tuesday, they must also hold up under application, and not just philosophy (lest ye be the most philosophically enlightened body on the ground), and if they are claimed to be from a certain culture, must hold up to that culture (A ‘space shuttle uppercut’ is nice in modern lingo, but anachronistic from a latter Song Dynasty art 
) And, if the art being discussed is extent in varying forms, it must also hold up in contrast to those art (an art claiming to be WCK with no Tan, Fook, or Bong, and a set remarkably similiar to Yangjia Taiji, would be questionable).
So, to sum, it is useful to analyze any teaching/learning process (which is what we’re really discussing here) in terms of its benefits to us (does it help us learn/teach better, with better being more efficient attainment, and attainment in this case being successful application). Not as useful, but still interesting, is to analyze whether its historically consistent (though older != better, there is some folk sense that it does).
BTW- For those not familiar with t_niehoff, and despite his desire to remain an anonymous troll, he is a 20+ year WCK practitioner (who refereshingly eshews the titles master, sifu, and even poobah) with previous experience in the Leung Ting WT, William Cheung TWC, and currently Robert Chu approaches to WCK, with degrees in physics and law (good for science vs. ‘science’ debates ), and some training in logical reasoning (which makes his choice of participating here rather bewildering). I believe he’s available somewhere in the US (you folks have far too many states for me to keep track of) for contact WCK, and, rumor has it, latin dancing. Agree or disagree (and we’ve done both over the years), IMHO, Terence is an aset in that, either way, you’re always forced to really think through your ideas, which serves to strengthen, or challenge previous perceptions, and always leads to new insights. (I’m sure the stalkers are already warming up, but don’t sweat them, TN, their impotent little buggers and hiding behind screen names and talking tough is the only thing that keeps them from remembering that).
RR
My apologies to all involved. 
TN