As Vietnam is an agricultural country, the buffalo is always regarded as a familiar animal for the Vietnamese people, in particular the peasants. The image of the buffalo is closely tied to the rural landscape of Vietnam. Like many other countries in the world, Vietnam has legends among which there is one concerning the buffalo.
Once upon a time, to help the Vietnamese peasants, God was assigned an angel to descend in Viet-Nam with two bags, one filled with cereal seeds to feed people and the other with grass seeds for the cattle. The angel was advised to sow the cereals seeds first, and grass seeds next. Being so absent minded, he forgot the recommendation by doing the opposite: grass seeds first, and cereal seeds next. That is why Viet-Nam was covered with so much grass and forests that the peasants had to make a complaint which echoed to Heaven. Furious, God condemned the angel to exile by turning him into a buffalo and sent him to Viet-Nam. That is why the buffalo was compelled to spend all day long munching grass and pulling the plough to pay for his errors.
The buffalo is a very useful animal in agricultural countries, in particular Vietnam where farming technologies are not very developed. In certain countries, if the dog is the best friend of man, then in Vietnam the buffalo is an inseparable companion of the farmer. Without this animal, the latter will be deprived of everything because it is the buffalo that helps the peasant to till the land everyday, to cart the burdens, to replace him in tiring and ungrateful tasks. This ruminant is also the animal that mountain and highland dwellers sacrifice when it comes to asking God for blessing harvest.
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The buffalo is the Vietnamese peasants’ benefactor. This is why it is generally quoted in folk songs and proverbs. It is one of enriching subjects in the Vietnamese poetry. For the peasant, the buffalo forms part of his heritage. That is why the saying:
Ruộng sâu, trâu nái
The deep rice field, the standard buffalo
indicates a well to do person in the village.
Tậu trâu, lấy vợ, làm nhà
Trong ba việc đo’ trong là khó thay.
Purchasing a buffalo, looking for a wife, and building a home
Among these three jobs, none of them seems to be easy.
As it is the case of fish farming, the breeding of buffaloes is a mean to get rich quick. That is why it is customary to quote in folk songs the following words:
Muốn giàu thì nuôi trâu cái,
Muốn lụn bại thì nuôi bồ câu.
Want to become rich, buy female buffaloes.
Want to be in debts, breed pigeons.
To designate the buffalo, we usually use the word “ngưu (牛)” but this turns out to be incorrect. According to Vietnamese researcher Lại Nguyên Ân, This is a mistake that we should know about. The buffalo lives only in tropical regions. The buffalo is not found in northern China. It seems that this mammal only existed in Kouang Tong and Kouang Si when the Bai Yue territory was annexed by the Han. In ancient Chinese texts written by the Northern Chinese, the word “ngưu” is used to refer to an ox. As for the buffalo, in the Chinese dictionary it is referred to as “thủy ngưu (水牛)” because it is an ox that can swim well in water. That’s a fact worth knowing.
Trâu ơi ta bảo trâu này
Trâu ra ngoài ruộng trâu cày với ta.
Cầy cấy vốn nghiệp nông gia
Ta đây trâu đấy ai mà quản công.
O my buffalo, listen to what I tell you
You go to the rice field and plough with me;
Ploughing and transplanting is a ploughman’s trade
Here I am, here you are, who of us pities his pain.
or
Trên đồng cạn dưới đồng sâu,
Chồng bừa vợ cấy con trâu đi cày.
In the high and low rice fields,
The husband harrows, the wife transplants, the buffalo ploughs.
In the morning, the buffalo can be seen early in the rice field. In the evening, it is brought back to the hamlet by the herdsman after a hard day’s work. Vietnamese have occasion to recall the picture of rustic life in the countryside described by the famous poetess Huyện Thanh Quan (the sub-prefect of Thanh Quan (or Thái Bình of today)) in her poem entitled “Twilight Landscape (Cảnh chiều hôm)”:
Chiều trời bảng lảng bóng hoàng hôn
Tiếng ốc xa đưa lẫn trống đồn.
Gác mái ngư ông về viễn phố,
Gỏ sừng mục tử lại cô thôn……
Evening brings back the shadows of twilight under a pale sky;
The sound of the watchmen’s trumpets can be heard in the distance, answering the tam-tam of the guard post;
The old fisherman lays down his oar to return to his distant station;
The young herdsman beats his buffalo’s horns to return to his lonely hamlet….
In the history of Viet Nam, there are two illustrious characters who took on the role of herdsmen when they were young. Because of poverty, they were forced to spend their days herding buffalo despite being well educated. The first was Đinh Bộ Lĩnh. He had the merit of subduing the rebellions of the twelve local lords and unifying the country. He thus became the first emperor of an independent Vietnam after a thousand years of Chinese domination. The second was Đao Duy Từ. At one time, he fled to the south (Đàng Trong) to look after a herd of buffalo belonging to a wealthy man in the Tùng Châu region. Knowing that Đao Duy Từ was no ordinary character, this wealthy man recommended him to Trần Đức Hoà, the eminent advisor to Lord Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên. Finding in him the qualities of an educated and talented man, Trần Đức Hoà gave him his daughter in marriage and introduced him to the Nguyễn lord, Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên (or bonze lord). It was on his recommendation that the latter succeeded in building two fortresses “Trường Dục” and “Định Bắc Trường thành” along the river Nhật Lê we’re accustomed to calling “the Master’s fortress” at Đồng Hới (Quảng Bình) to withstand assaults from the armies of Lord Trịnh. He was the deserving mandarin of the Nguyễn dynasty and was still regarded by lord Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên as his “Venerated Master”.
In short, one finds through the image of the buffalo most of the image of Viet-Nam, our country. For the overseas Vietnamese, to find the buffalo is to find Vietnam. This animal, along with the bamboo, is one of the representative symbols of Viet-Nam.
The buffalo reflects at the same time the tender way of life and the unshakable resistance
of the Vietnamese people.