Culture category – Quêhươngtôi

For a long time, I have hoped to one day visit the tomb of the exiled Emperor Hàm Nghi when I knew that he was buried in the commune of Thonac, located in the Dordogne department of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. At the end of the week in May 2017, I had the opportunity to be in that area with my children, but I was completely disoriented and saddened when I found his vault. It continues to be ravaged by moss and does not resemble the photo found on the internet. We are all stunned and outraged by the lack of respect towards Hàm Nghi, a young emperor exiled at 18 by the French colonialists and who died in Algiers. Back in Paris, saddened by this story, I also did not have enough time to post the photos of Thonac on my site, especially those of the Château de Losse, whose owner is none other than the eldest daughter of Emperor Hàm Nghi, Princess Như Mây. She bought the castle in 1930 for the sum of 450,000 francs. Due to financial problems, she sold it to a Frenchman, who later transferred it to an English family in 1999. Today, this castle has been classified as a historic monument since 1932. For this reason, the remains of Emperor Hàm Nghi were brought back to France to Thonac during Algeria’s independence in 1965 and were reburied there with his family (his wife, his eldest daughter Như Mây, his only son Minh Đức, and his housekeeper)

When mentioning King Hàm Nghi, one cannot forget to recall his biography. Known as Ưng Lịch, he was the younger brother of King Kiến Phúc. He was placed on the throne by two regents, Nguyễn Văn Tường and Tôn Thất Thuyết, in 1884 when he was 13 years old. Having killed three successive kings—Dục Đức, Hiệp Hoà, and Kiến Phúc—in less than a year, they thought that with Hàm Nghi’s young age, they could easily guide his governance toward a policy aimed at driving the French out of Vietnam. After the failure of the Vietnamese assault against the French garrison of General De Courcy at Mang Cá, King Hàm Nghi was forced to leave the citadel of Huế and took refuge in Quảng Trị in central Vietnam. He was accompanied by Tôn Thất Thuyết and Nguyễn Văn Tường. For an unknown reason, the latter returned to the citadel of Huế. He later tried to explain through his poem in which he acknowledged that he no longer followed Hàm Nghi in the resistance because, for him, it was preferable to serve the state rather than engage in resistance. For the king or for the Vietnamese state, the choice was difficult. He left it to future generations to judge.

Xe giá ngàn trùng lẫy dặm xanh
Lòng tôi riêng luyến chốn lan đình
Phải chăng phó mặc ngàn sau luận
Vua, nước đôi đường hỏi trọng khinh?

The carriage travels thousands of leagues through the vast green,
My heart alone longs for the place of the orchid pavilion.
Is it perhaps to entrust the judgment to thousands of years hence,
The king and the country, two paths questioning honor and disgrace?

He asked Father Caspar to contact De Courcy to arrange an audience and tried to convince him that he did not participate in the launch of the aborted assault. Pretending to believe him, De Courcy suggested that he write letters urging Hàm Nghi and his supporters to return to the citadel of Huế and set him an ultimatum of two months. After failing to convince Hàm Nghi and Tôn Thất Thuyết, he was first deported to Poulo Condor Island, then to Tahiti to receive treatment for his illness, and finally died in Papeete. As for Tôn Thất Thuyết, he continued to accompany Hàm Nghi in the fight against the French with his children Tôn Thất Đạm and Tôn Thất Thiệp during the four years of resistance. He eventually left for China to seek help from the Qing and died there in exile in 1913.

King Hàm Nghi twice called upon all the vital forces of the nation, especially the scholars, to rise up against the colonial authorities in his name through the movement called « Cần Vương » (Aid to the King) from the North to the South to demand independence. This movement began to find a favorable response among the people. The scale of this movement did not diminish and was visible everywhere, such as in Hà Tĩnh with Phan Đinh Phùng, Đinh Nho Hạnh, in Bình Định with Lê Trung Đình, in Thanh Thủy with Admiral Lê Trực, in Quảng Bình with Nguyễn Phạm Tuân, etc. The name of King Hàm Nghi accidentally became the banner of national independence. Despite the installation of Đồng Khánh on the throne by the French colonial authorities with the approval of the Queen Mother Từ Dũ (mother of Emperor Tự Đức), the insurrection movement continued to endure as long as King Hàm Nghi was still alive. To extinguish the insurrection everywhere, it was necessary to capture Hàm Nghi because he represented the soul of the people while the rebels were part of the body of this people. Once the soul of the people was eliminated, the body disappeared in an obvious way. Between Hàm Nghi and the rebels of the Cần Vương movement, there was always an intermediary who was none other than Tôn Thất Đạm, the son of Tôn Thất Thuyết. Few people had the right to approach Hàm Nghi, who was constantly protected by Tôn Thất Thiệp and a few Muong bodyguards of Trương Quang Ngọc.The latter was known as a local Mường lord living on the banks of the Nai River in Quảng Bình. Hàm Nghi led a difficult and miserable life in the forest during the resistance period.

Because of the betrayal of Trương Quang Ngọc, he was captured in November 1888 and taken back to the citadel of Huế. Silent, he categorically denied being King Hàm Nghi because for him it was an indescribable shame. He continued to remain not only impassive but also mute about his identity in the face of his French captors’ incessant interrogations. Several mandarins were sent to the site to identify whether the young captive in question was indeed King Hàm Nghi or not, but none managed to move him except the old scholar Nguyễn Thuận. Seeing the king who continued to play this charade, he, with tears in his eyes, prostrated himself before him and trembled as he dropped his cane. Faced with the sudden appearance of this scholar, the king forgot the role he had played until then against his captors, helped him up, and knelt before him: « I beg you, my master. » At that moment, he realized he had made a mistake in recognizing him because Nguyễn Thuận had been his tutor when he was still young. He never regretted this gesture because for him, respect for his master came before any other consideration.

Thanks to this recognition, the colonial authorities were certain to capture King Hàm Nghi, which allowed them to pacify Vietnam with the disappearance of the « Cần Vương » movement a few years later. He was then deported to Algeria at the age of 18. He never saw Vietnam again. Even his remains have not been brought back to Vietnam to this day due to his family’s refusal, but they were reburied in the village of Thonac in Sarlat (Dordogne, France) during Algeria’s declaration of independence in 1965 along with his family. During his exile in Algiers, he abandoned all political objectives from 1904, the year of his marriage to a French woman. This was revealed by his niece Amandine Dabat in her work titled « Hàm Nghi, Emperor in Exile and Artist in Algiers, » Sorbonne University Press, published on November 28, 2019. He found solace in another passion, another way of living through art. He was seen mingling with the artistic and intellectual circles of his time (Marius Reynaud, Auguste Rodin, Judith Gautier, etc.). Thanks to this association,

he became a student of the orientalist painter Marius Reynaud and the famous sculptor Auguste Rodin, which allowed him to overcome the eternal pain and sadness of a young patriotic emperor exiled far from his homeland until his death.

Château De Losse

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Référence bibliographique

Vua Hàm Nghi. Phan Trần Chúc Nhà xuất bản Thuận Hóa 1995.

Ham Nghi – Empereur en exil, artiste à Alger. Amandine Dabat, Sorbonne Université Presses, Novembre 2019

Emperor Tự Đức (Version anglaise)

j050807 Culture, Histoire, Văn Hóa, Vietnam novembre 7, 2025novembre 7, 2025

Hồng Nhậm

(1847-1883)

A great tribute to the poet-emperor Tự Đức through my four verses in Six-Eight:

Ngậm ngùi thương xót phận mình
Làm vua chẳng có quang vinh chút gì
Thực dân chiếm đất ở lì
Trẩm đây buồn tủi, sử thì kết oan

I painfully pity my fate
« Being king » does not deserve enough glory
The colonialists confiscated the land to stay there
I am plunged into sadness and humiliation while history has condemned me.

Version vietnamienne
Version française
Galerie des photos

Being the fourth emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty, Tự Ðức was known by the name Hồng Nhậm when he was still a young prince. He was the youngest son of Emperor Thiệu Trị. The latter decided to change his mind at the last minute in his royal will by designating him as the deserving successor instead of the crown prince Hồng Bào, his brother, on the pretext of debauchery. His enthronement was greatly disturbed by the fainting of his brother Hồng Bào before the Court, followed by the imprisonment of the latter, later accused of collusion with Catholic priests and Europeans in view of a coup d’état. Hồng Bào was shortly thereafter eliminated in prison, which later raised some criticisms directed at the emperor by his subordinates through their poems. He was reproached for lacking the magnanimity that King Cao Pi (Tào Phi) had reserved for his brother Cao Tseu (Tào Thực), a great poet also ousted from power during the Three Kingdoms period in China. This was the case of the mandarin Nguyễn Hàm Ninh. One fine day, Tự Ðức, who had accidentally bitten his tongue with his teeth at lunchtime, decided to choose as a poetry subject the theme « the injury caused by teeth » and asked his subordinates to compose poems focused on this theme. Nguyễn Hàm Ninh took advantage of this suggestion to promptly address him with his following four-line epic poem:

Ta ra đời trước chú chưa sinh
Chú phận làm em, ta phận anh
Ngọt bùi sao chẩng cùng san sẽ
Mà nỡ đau thương cô’t nhục tình?

I was born before your birth
You are my little brother, I am your big brother
Why don’t you share happiness with me instead of tearing each other apart so miserably?

Nguyễn Hàm Ninh was thus rewarded for his extraordinary talent with several taels of gold, but at the same time, he received a blow with a stick for each verse composed because each verse was meaningful and profound. Tự Ðức was a great poet of his time. That is why he had an undeniable preference for all the great poets of his era. They were appreciated at their true value even at times when his authority and self-esteem could be insulted by harsh and bitter criticism from independent and strong-willed people like Cao Bá Quát. The latter did not cease to ridicule him many times in front of the mandarins, but he did not hesitate to shower him with praise when Cao Bá Quát managed to aesthetically return his antithetical statement while relying on the calling statement proposed by Tự Ðức through a clever play on words. Taking advantage of Cao Bá Quát’s presence, Tự Ðức spontaneously issued the calling statement:

Nhất bào song sinh, nan vi huynh, nan vi đệ
Một bọc sinh đôi, khó làm anh, khó làm em

There is only one embryo for two human lives. It is difficult to be the older brother but it is also difficult to be the younger brother.

To remind Cao Bá Quát that they were twin brothers (him and his brother Cao Bá Ðạt) who were hard to distinguish.

Cao Bá Quát immediately made the following statement in response:

Thiên tài thất ngộ, hữu thị quân, hữu thị thần
Nghìn năm gập một, có vua ấy, có tôi ấy.

There is only one time in a thousand years. There is the good king but there is also the good servant.

To remind Tự Ðức that a good king is always served by a good servant. Despite this, Tự Ðức was not entirely satisfied because he also knew that it was an intelligent and subtle allusion to the Vietnamese proverb (vỏ quýt dày, móng tay nhọn) (or in French, « à bon chat, bon rat« ).

Not only do we find the same number of words in both the calling statement and the called statement, but also the same position for each repeated word. Once again, Cao Bá Quát was not very happy to see the following two antithetical verses composed by Tự Ðức hanging at the entrance of the Cần Chánh palace:

Tử năng thừa phụ nghiệp
Thần khả báo quân ân.

The capable son inherits the father’s profession
The worthy subject is always grateful to the benevolent king.

He was surprised and asked him the reason for his dissatisfaction. Cao Bá Quát said to him:

The word « Tử » (or son in French) cannot be placed before the word « phụ » (or father in French). Similarly, the word « Thần » (or subject in French) cannot precede the word « quân » (or king in French). This no longer conforms to our hierarchical order.
Tự Ðức asked him to correct this mistake. Without hesitation, Cao Bá Quát instantly recited the following two verses:

Quân ân, thần khả báo
Phụ nghiệp, tử năng thừa

For the king’s benefits, the deserving subject is grateful.
For the father’s trade, the capable son inherits.

Despite his romantic nature and delicate temperament, Tự Ðức was the emperor who knew very little serenity and tranquility during his reign. He had to face not only the development of Western capitalism but also internal troubles due to the eviction of his elder brother Hồng Bào, the Locust War led by Cao Bá Quát later, etc. The loss of the six provinces of Nam Bộ continuously haunted him and plunged him painfully into everlasting sadness because he was the first emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty to bear the heavy responsibility of letting a part of Vietnamese territory slip into the hands of foreigners, particularly the one from which his mother originated.

Tự Đức stele
tuduc_stele

The absence of an heir prince due to his sterility caused by smallpox he contracted when he was young, the suicide of the scholar Phan Thanh Giản, governor of the western provinces of Nam Bộ, saddened him and forced him to often seek refuge in his beautiful red wooden pavilions Du Khiêm and Xung Khiêm, which have now become favorite places for foreign and Vietnamese tourists. It was here that he composed poems, the most famous remaining the love poem titled « Khóc Bằng Phi (Tears for My Concubine) » and immortalized by the following two verses:

Ðập cổ kính ra, tìm lấy bóng
Xếp tàn y lại để dành hơi

I break the old mirror to search for your shadow
I fold your worn clothes to keep your warmth.

Being a pious child, Tự Ðức reigned under the shadow of his mother, Empress Từ Dũ. He took into consideration everything the queen mother had suggested to him. One fine day, while watching the Chinese dramatic theatrical masterpiece titled « Conquest of the West » (Ðường Chinh Tây), the queen mother was shocked by the scene where the heroine Phàn Lê Huê killed her father. To please his mother, Tự Ðức was forced to ask the mandarin in charge of entertainment to completely modify the content of the scene to no longer show this infamous tragedy contrary to the Confucian spirit. The rehabilitation of the mandarin Phạm Phú Thứ in the role of academician responsible for consultation books was not unrelated to the reprimand Tự Ðức had received from the queen mother. This mandarin dared to ask Tự Ðức to correct his laziness because since his accession to the throne, he had abolished grand audiences and gave no follow-up to submitted petitions. Despite his crime of lèse-majesté, Phạm Phú Thứ was not dismissed but rejoined the Court assembly and became a great mandarin under his reign. Due to the influence of the Confucian mandarin clan, Tự Ðức could not initiate reforms in time despite the warning and the pathetic memorandum of the patriotic scholar Nguyễn Trường Tộ.

He did not know how to take advantage of favorable opportunities to bring Vietnam onto the path of modernity, but instead sank deeper into isolation, sadness, and loneliness since the annexation of the six provinces of Nam Bộ by the French colonial authorities.

To try to bring Tự Ðức back to good spirits, the queen mother promised to reward whoever succeeded in making the emperor laugh. He liked to often go to the theater to relax. One fine day, taking advantage of his presence at the royal theater, the leader of the theatrical group named Vung suddenly appeared before Tự Ðức, who was smoking, and said to him:

May you allow me, Lord, to share a puff of your cigarette?
His spontaneous gesture stunned everyone because it was known that he had committed a crime of lèse-majesté. Tự Ðức also laughed at that moment. But he recovered himself and said to him:

You really have audacity.
and pardoned his offense.

Vung was later rewarded by the queen mother.

It is regrettable to attribute to Tự Ðức the image of a despotic emperor responsible for the dismemberment of Vietnam by the colonial authorities. The fate of his country and his people had long been sealed when his grandfather, Emperor Minh Mạng, and his father Thiệu Trị had chosen a policy of persecution against Catholics and foreign missionaries, which allowed the French authorities to justify their intervention and annexation. The French colonial policy had long been set in motion.

Through these anecdotes, we know that Tự Ðức was a tolerant and pious emperor, a man of heart and a great poet of his time. The destiny of his country forced him to become emperor against his will, to kill his elder brother when he became the privileged collaborator of foreigners. Could anyone have done better than him? This is the question one asks when putting oneself in his place. The answer is not found over the years, but one thing is known.

He could not remain indifferent to the events that were cruelly falling upon him and his people. He also could not recover from the deep pain of seeing in the history of Vietnam the fall of the Empire for which he was blamed as responsible.

Galerie des photos

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Hồng Bàng period (Văn Lang civilization):Part 2

j050807 Culture, Histoire, Lịch sử, Văn Hóa novembre 4, 2025novembre 4, 2025

Version française
Version vietnamienne
Galerie des photos

Also noted is the significant event highlighted by the Chinese historian Trịnh Tiều in his work Thông Chí: In southern China, during the reign of King Nghiêu (2253 BC), there was an emissary from a tribe named Việt Thường who offered the king, as a token of allegiance, an old turtle that lived for over 1000 years and measured 3 meters in length. On its back were inscriptions bearing characters shaped like tadpoles (văn Khoa Ðẩu), which allowed the interpretation of all the changes of Heaven and nature. King Nghiêu decided to name them Qui Lịch (or turtle calendar). This form of writing was recently found on a stone that is part of the cultural relics of the Sapa-Lào Cai region in northern Vietnam.

The Vietnamese historian Trần Trọng Kim raised this issue in his work titled Viet Nam sử lược (A Brief History of Vietnam).

Many clues have been found in favor of the interpretation of a single tribe, a single people. It cannot be denied that there is an undeniable link between the tadpole-shaped writing and the toad found either on the bronze drums of Ðồng Sơn or on the popular Vietnamese prints of Ðông Hồ, the most famous of which remains the print « Thầy Ðồ Cóc » (or The Toad Master). On the latter, the following phrase is found: Lão oa độc giảng (The old toad holds the monopoly on teaching). Although it appeared only 400 years ago, it cleverly reflected the perpetual thought of the era of the Hùng kings (Hùng Vương). It is not by chance that the toad is attributed the role of master, but rather to highlight the importance of the representation and meaning of this image. The toad was the bearer of a civilization whose tadpole-shaped writing was used by the Lạc Việt tribe during the time of the Hùng Vương because it was the father of the tadpole. Similarly, through the print « Chú bé ôm con cóc » (or the boy hugging the toad), the original thought of the Lạc Việt people was revealed. The child’s respect for the toad, or rather its master (Tôn Sư trọng đạo), was a concept already existing during the time of the Hùng Vương. Could one conclude that there was a correlation with what was later found in the Confucian spirit with the phrase Tiên học lễ, hậu học văn (First learn manners, then learn knowledge)?

In Vietnam, the turtle is not only a symbol of longevity but also of the transmission of spiritual values in Vietnamese tradition. Its representation can be found everywhere, especially in common places such as communal houses, pagodas, and temples. It is used in the Temple of Literature (Văn Miếu) to support steles praising the merits of national exam laureates.

The crane on the back of the turtle

On the other hand, in temples and communal houses, it is always seen carrying a crane on its back. There is an undeniable resemblance between this crane and the long-beaked wading bird found on the bronze drums of Ðồng Sơn. The image of the crane on the turtle’s back probably reflects the continuity of all religious beliefs derived from the Văn Lang civilization over time. The omnipresence of the turtle in the history and culture of the Vietnamese is neither the result of long Chinese domination nor chance, but it must be due to the fact that the kingdom of Văn Lang was located in a region populated by large turtles. It is only in the southern basin of the Yangtze River (Sông Dương Tữ) that this species of large turtles, now endangered, can be found. This was reported by the Vietnamese author Nguyễn Hiến Lê in his work entitled « Sử Trung Quốc » (History of China) (Văn Hoá Publisher, 1996).

It is unlikely that one day archaeological remains proving the existence of this kingdom will be found, like those already discovered from the Shang dynasty. But nothing invalidates this historical truth because, besides the facts mentioned above, there is even intangible proof of a very ancient civilization in this kingdom, often called « the Văn Lang civilization, » whose foundation was found in the theory of Yin and Yang and the five elements (Thuyết Âm Dương Ngũ Hành). This was demonstrated through the sticky rice cake « Bánh Chưng Bánh dầy, » which was exclusively unique to the Vietnamese people since the period of the Hùng Vương kings. One might question the origin of this theory, which has so far been attributed to the Chinese. It was known that according to the Historical Records of Sima Qian (Sử Ký Tư Mã Thiên), Trâu Diễn (Tseou Yen, a philosopher from the state of Qi (Tề Quốc) (350-270 BC)) during the Warring States period (thời Chiến Quốc), was the first Chinese to highlight the relationship between the theory of Yin and Yang and that of the five elements (wu xing).

Âm Dương
The first was mentioned in the book Zhouyi (Chu Dịch) by the son of King Wen (1), Chu Công Ðán (the Duke of Zhou), while the second was found by Yu the Great (Ðại Vũ) of the Xia dynasty (Hạ). There is practically a gap of 1000 years between these two theories. The concept of the five elements was quickly integrated into the theory of yin and yang to provide an explanation of the tao, which is the origin of all things. Despite the success encountered in a large number of fields of application (astrology, geomancy, traditional medicine), it is difficult to give a coherent justification regarding the date of publication of these theories because the notion of Taiji (thái cực) (the supreme limit), from which the two main elements were born (yin and yang), was introduced only at the time of Confucius (500 years B.C.). Taiji has been the subject of meditation by philosophers from all backgrounds since the philosopher of the Song era and the founder of neo-Confucianism, Zhou Dunyi (Chu Ðôn Di), gave this concept a new definition in his bestseller: « Treatise on the Taiji Diagram » (Thái Cực đồ thuyết):

Vô cực mà là thái cực, Thái cực động sinh Dương, động đến cực điểm thì tĩnh, tĩnh sinh Âm, tĩnh đến cực đỉnh thì lại động. Một động một tĩnh làm căn bản cho nhau….

From Wuji (Limitless) to Taiji (Supreme Limit). The supreme limit, once in motion, generates yang, and at the limit of movement is rest; this, in turn, generates yin, and at the limit of rest is the return to movement. Movement and rest, each takes root in the other.

For the Chinese, there is a sequence in the beginning of the universe:

Thái cực sinh lưỡng nghi là Âm Dương, Âm Dương sinh Bát Quái

From Taiji come Heaven and Earth, a Yin and a Yang that give birth to the eight trigrams.

Hà Đồ (River Diagram)
The inconsistency is so visible in the chronological order of these theories because Fu Xi (1) was attributed with the invention of the eight trigrams around 3500 BC, whereas the notion of Yin and Yang was introduced during the Zhou era (1200 BC). Relying on recent archaeological discoveries, particularly the discovery of the silk manuscripts at Mawangdui (1973), today’s Chinese specialists propose unimaginable statements: The hexagrams precede the trigrams, etc., which proves that the chronological order of these theories is subject to constant revision according to new situations. This leads us to find, in this confusion, another explanation, another approach, another hypothesis according to which the theory of Yin-Yang and the five elements was appropriated by another civilization. That would be that of Văn Lang. Confusion continues to be ingrained in the reader’s mind with the famous River Plan and the Luo Script (Hà Ðồ Lạc Thư).

The Luo Script was supposed to be found before the appearance of the River Plan. This highlights the contradiction found in the chronological order of these discoveries. Some Chinese had the opportunity to question the traditional history established until then in Confucian orthodoxy by the Chinese dynasties. This is the case of Ouyang Xiu (1007-1072), who saw in this famous plan the work of man. He refuted the « Mandate of Heaven » in his work entitled « Questions of a Child on the Yi King (Yi tongzi wen) » (Zhongguo shudian, Beijing 1986). He preferred the version of human invention.

Can the truthfulness of the Chinese legend be granted when it is known that there was also a complete inconsistency in the chronological order of the discovery of these famous River Plan and Luo Script?

Fou Xi (Phục Hi) (3500 BC) first discovered the River Plan (Hà Ðồ) during an excursion on the Yellow River. He saw a dragon horse (long mã) emerge from the water carrying this plan on its back. It was attributed to You the Great (Đại Vũ) (2205 BC) the discovery of the Luo Script found on the back of the turtle. Yet it is thanks to the Luo Script and its explanation (Lạc Thư cửu tinh đồ) that one manages to establish and correctly interpret the stellar diagram based on the North Star (Bắc Ðẩu) and found on this famous River Plan according to the principle of Yin and Yang and the 5 elements.

The famous word « Luo » (Lạc) found in the text of the Great Commentary of Confucius:

Thị cố thiên sinh thần vật, thánh nhân tắc chi, thiên địa hóa thánh nhân hiệu chi; thiên tượng, hiện cát hung, thánh nhân tượng chi. Hà xuất đồ, Lạc xuất thư, thánh nhân tắc chi.

Cho nên trời sinh ra thần vật, thánh nhân áp dụng theo; trời đất biến hoá, thánh nhân bắt chước; trời bày ra hình tượng. Hiện ra sự tốt xấu, thánh nhân phỏng theo ý tượng. Bức đồ hiện ra sông Hoàng Hà, hình chữ hiện ở sông Lạc, thánh nhân áp dụng .

Therefore, Heaven gives birth to divine things, the Sages apply them; Heaven and Earth transform and change, the Sages imitate them; Heaven displays images. Manifesting good and bad, the Sages follow the symbolic meaning. The map shows the Yellow River, the character appears on the Luo River, the Sages apply them.

Heaven gives birth to divine things, the Sages take them as criteria. Heaven and Earth undergo changes and transformations, the Sages reproduce them. In Heaven hang images manifesting fortune and misfortune, the Sages imitate them. From the Yellow River comes the Map, from the Luo River comes the Script, the Sages take them as models.

continues to be interpreted up to today as the name of the Luo River, a tributary of the Yellow River that crosses and nourishes central China. These famous River Plan and Luo Script are still seen as the beginnings of Chinese civilization. From drawings and figures to trigrammatic signs, from trigrammatic signs to linguistic signs, one thinks of the progress of Chinese civilization in the Yi King without believing that it could have been the model borrowed by the Sage from another civilization. Yet if Luo is associated with the word Yue, it refers to the Lạc Việt tribe (Luo Yue) from which the Vietnamese descend. Is this a pure coincidence or the name used by the Sages Yu the Great or Confucius to refer to the Văn Lang civilization? Lạc Thư indeed designates the writing of the Luo tribe, Lạc tướng its generals, Lạc điền its territory, Lạc hầu its marquises, etc.

It is wonderful to observe that the theory of Yin-Yang and the five elements finds its perfect cohesion and functioning in the glutinous rice cake, an intangible proof of the Văn Lang civilization. Apart from the water needed to cook the cake, its composition includes the four essential elements (meat, yellow beans, glutinous rice, bamboo or pandan leaves). The generating cycle (Ngũ hành tương sinh) of the five elements is clearly visible in the making of this cake. Inside the cake, there is a piece of red-colored pork (Fire) surrounded by a kind of dough made from yellow beans (Earth). All of this is wrapped in white glutinous rice (Metal) to be cooked with boiling water (Water) before acquiring a green coloration on its surface thanks to the pandan leaves (Wood).

The two geometric shapes, a square and a circle that this cake takes, correspond well to Yin (Âm) and Yang (Dương). Since the Yang breath reflects fullness and purity, it is attributed the shape of a circle. As for Yin, this breath contains impurity and limitation. That is why it is given the shape of a square. A slight difference is notable in the definition of Yin-Yang between the Chinese and the Vietnamese. For the latter, Yin tends to be in motion (động).

Generating cycle

Fire->Earth->Metal->Water->Wood->Fire

Mutual generation of the five elements

That is why only the presence of the 5 elements is found in Yin, represented by the square-shaped rice cake (Bánh chưng). This is not the case for the round-shaped cake symbolizing Yang, which tends to carry the character of « stillness » (tĩnh). This is probably the reason why, up to today, the law of Yin-Yang and the five elements has not made significant progress in its development and why its applications continue to carry a mystical and confusing character in public opinion due to the error introduced in the definition of Yin-Yang by the Chinese.

Temples of the Hùng Kings

HUNG_VUONG

It is customary to say « Mẹ tròn, con vuôn » in Vietnamese to wish the mother and her child good health at the time of birth. This expression is used as a polite phrase if one does not know that it was handed down by our ancestors to draw our attention to the creative nature of the Universe. From the latter were born Yin and Yang, which are not only in opposition but also in interaction and correlation. The complementarity and inseparability of these two poles are the basis for the satisfactory development of nature. The typically Vietnamese game « Chơi ô ăn quan » also demonstrates the perfect functioning of the Yin-Yang theory and the five elements. The game stops when no tokens are found in the two extreme semicircles corresponding to the two poles Yin and Yang.

Ancestor altar

No Vietnamese hides their emotion when they see the sticky rice cake on their ancestors’ altar during the Tết festival. For them, this dish, which may appear unattractive and lacks a delicious taste, has a special meaning. It testifies not only to the respect and affection that Vietnamese people like to maintain towards their ancestors but also to the imprint of a 5,000-year-old civilization.

This sticky rice cake is the undeniable proof of the perfect functioning of Yin and Yang and the five elements. It is the only intact legacy that the Vietnamese have managed to receive from their ancestors amidst the whirlwinds of history. It cannot rival the masterpieces of other civilizations like the Great Wall of China or the pharaohs’ pyramids made with sweat and blood. It is the living symbol of a civilization that has bequeathed humanity knowledge of immeasurable value, which continues to be used in many fields of application (astronomy, geomancy, medicine, astrology, etc.).

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Hồng Bàng period (Văn Lang civilization)

j050807 Culture, Histoire, Văn Hóa, Vietnam novembre 4, 2025novembre 4, 2025

Hồng Bàng period

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The Vietnamese often say: drinking water reminds us of its source (Uống nước nhớ nguồn). It is not surprising to see them continue to celebrate in great pomp on the 10th day of the third lunar month each year the commemorative day of the Hùng kings of the Hồng Bàng dynasty, the founding fathers of the Vietnamese nation. To this day, no archaeological remains have been found to confirm the existence of this dynasty except for the ruins of the Cổ Loa citadel (Shell City) dating from the reign of King An Dương Vương, the temple built in honor of these Hùng kings in Phong Châu, as well as the jade blades (Nha chương) in Phú Thọ province.

Many clues do not disprove this existence if one refers to the legends reported from this mythical era and the Annals of Vietnam and China. Chinese domination (3rd century BC – 939 AD) was not unrelated to the greatest influence on the development of Vietnamese civilization. Everything belonging to the Vietnamese became Chinese and vice versa during this period. There was a policy of assimilation deliberately imposed by the Chinese. This did not leave the Vietnamese the possibility to maintain their culture, inheriting a civilization 5,000 years old called the « Văn Lang civilization, » without resorting to oral traditions (proverbs, folk poems, or legends).

The use of mythical allusion is the surest way to allow posterity to trace its origin by providing a large number of useful clues despite the systematic destruction of their culture and the relentless repression by the Chinese against the Yue (or the Vietnamese). According to researcher Paul Pozner, Vietnamese historiography is based on a very long and continuous historical tradition. This is represented by an oral historical tradition lasting several centuries of the first millennium BCE in the form of historical legends in the temples of ancestor worship (1).

The two verses found in the following popular song (ca dao):

Trăm năm bia đá thì mòn
Ngàn năm bia miệng vẫn còn trơ trơ

With a hundred years, the stone stele continues to deteriorate
With a thousand years, the words of the people continue to remain in force

testify to the practice consciously carried out by the Vietnamese with the aim of preserving what they inherited from the Văn Lang civilization.

This one bears the name of a kingdom bordered at that time to the north by Nam Hải (Nanhai), to the west by the kingdom of Ba Thuc (Tứ Xuyên or Sichuan in French), to the north by the territory of the Ðộng Ðình lake (Hu Nan) (Hồ Nam), and to the south by the kingdom of Hồ Tôn (Champa). This kingdom was located in the Yangtze River basin (Sông Dương Tử) and was under the authority of a Hùng king. He had been elected for his courage and values. He divided his kingdom into districts entrusted to his brothers known as « Lạc hầu » (marquises). His male children held the title of Quan lang and his daughters that of Mỵ nương. His people were known as Lạc Việt. His men had the custom of tattooing their bodies. This « barbaric » practice, often revealed in Chinese annals, was, according to Vietnamese texts, intended to protect men from attacks by water dragons (con thuồng luồng).

This may be the reason why the Chinese often referred to them as Qủi (demons). A loincloth and topknot constituted the usual costume of this people, to which bronze ornaments were added. The Lạc Việt blackened their teeth with lacquer, chewed betel, and manually pounded rice. As farmers, they practiced rice cultivation in flooded fields.

Is the kingdom of Văn Lang a pure invention fueled by the Vietnamese to maintain a myth, or a real kingdom that existed and disappeared in the whirlwinds of history?

According to Vietnamese myth, the land of these Proto-Vietnamians was bounded to the north during the time of the Hùng Vương (the first dynasty of the Vietnamese, 2879 BC) by Dongting Lake (Động Đình Hồ), located in the territory of the Chu kingdom (Sở Quốc). Part of their territory returned to the latter during the Warring States period (thời Chiến Quốc). Their descendants living in this attached part probably became subjects of the Chu kingdom. There was obviously a relationship, an intimate link between this kingdom and the Proto-Vietnamians. This is a hypothesis recently suggested and advanced by a Vietnamese writer, Nguyên Nguyên(2). According to him, it is not uncommon in ancient texts for ideograms to be replaced by other ideograms with the same phonetics. This is the case with the title Kinh Dương Vương taken by the father of the ancestor of the Vietnamese, Lôc Tục. Writing it this way in Chinese, one can easily see the names of two cities: Kinh Châu (Jīngzhōu)(3) and Dương Châu (Yángzhōu)(4), where respectively the Yue ethnic groups of the Thai branch and the Lạc branch lived. There was a translation of an intention to intelligently evoke by the narrator the settlement and fusion of the Yue ethnic groups of the Thai branch (Si Ngeou) and the Lạc branch (Ngeou-lo) coming from migrations from these cities during the conquests and annexations of Chu. On the other hand, the ideogram 陽 (thái dương) is translated as light, solemn.

It is used in order to avoid its use as a family name. By using these words, it allows the translation of Kinh Dương Vương as the solemn King Kinh. But there is also a word Kinh synonymous with the word Lac (), a nickname for the Viet. In short, Kinh Dương Vương can be translated as the Solemn Viet King. As for the title An Dương Vương taken by the king of Âu Viêt, the author does not doubt his explanation: it is indeed the pacification of the Yue country of the Lac branch (trị an xứ Dương) by a son of the Yue of the Thái branch.

This can only support the thesis of Edouard Chavannes (5) and Léonard Aurousseau (5): the Proto-Vietnamese and the subjects of the Chu kingdom have the same ancestors. Moreover, there is a remarkable coincidence found in the clan name Mị (咩) (the bleating of a sheep) borne by the kings of Chu and that of the Vietnamese kings. Based on the Historical Memoirs (Che-Ki) of Sseu-Ma Tsien (Sima Qian) translated by E. Chavannes (6), it is known that the king of the Chu principality comes from the southern barbarians (or Bai Yue): Hiong-K’iu (Hùng Cừ) said: I am a barbarian and I do not take part in the posthumous titles and names of the kingdoms of the Middle.

American linguists Mei Tsulin (6) and Norman Jerry have identified a number of loanwords from the Austro-Asiatic language of the Yue in Chinese texts from the Han period.
This is the case with the Chinese word jiang 囝 (giang in Vietnamese or river in French) or the word nu (ná in Vietnamese or crossbow in French). They demonstrated the strong probability of the presence of the Austro-Asiatic language in southern China and concluded that there had been contact between the Chinese language and the Austro-Asiatic language in the territory of the ancient kingdom of Chu between 1000 and 500 years before Christ. This geographical argument was never seriously considered in the past by some Vietnamese historians because, for them, this dynasty belonged rather to the mythical period. Moreover, according to Chinese sources, the territory of the ancestors of the Vietnamese (Kiao-tche (Giao Chỉ) and Kieou-tchen (Cửu Chân)) was confined to present-day Tonkin, which made them reluctant to accept without explanation or justification the territorial extent of the Hồng Bàng dynasty up to Dongting Lake. They did not see in the narration of this myth the will of the ancestors of the Vietnamese to show their origin, to display their belonging to the Bai Yue group, and their unwavering resistance against the formidable conquerors who were the Chinese.

In the Chinese annals, it was reported that during the Spring and Autumn period (Xuân Thu), King Gou Jian (Câu Tiễn) of the Yue (Wu Yue) was interested in an alliance he wished to form with the kingdom of Văn Lang in order to maintain supremacy over the other powerful principalities in the region. It is likely that this kingdom of Văn Lang was a neighboring country to that of Gou Jian’s Yue.

He found no interest in forming this alliance if the Văn Lang kingdom was geographically confined to present-day Vietnam. The recent discovery of King Goujian of Yue’s sword (reigned 496-465 BC) in tomb no. 1 of Wanshan (Jianling) (Hubei) helps to better define the boundaries of the Văn Lang kingdom. It would probably be located in the Qui Châu (or GuiZhou) region. However, Henri Maspero challenged this hypothesis in his work titled « The Kingdom of Văn Lang » (BEFEO, vol. XVIII, no. 3).

He attributed to Vietnamese historians the error of confusing the Văn Lang kingdom with that of Ye Lang (or Dạ Lang in Vietnamese), whose name may have been incorrectly transmitted by Chinese historians to their Vietnamese colleagues during the Tang dynasty (nhà Đường). This is not entirely accurate because, in Vietnamese legends, particularly in that of « Phù Ðổng Thiên Vương (or the Celestial Lord of Phù Ðổng village), » it is evident that the Văn Lang kingdom was in armed conflict with the Yin-Shang (Ân-Thương) dynasty during the reign of King Hùng VI and that it was larger than the Ye Lang kingdom found at the time of China’s unification by Qin Shi Huang Di.

In the Annals of Viet Nam, the long reign of the Hùng kings (from 2879 to 258 BC) is mentioned. The discovery of bronze objects in Ningxiang (Hu Nan) in the 1960s eliminated any doubt about the existence of centers of civilization contemporary with the Shang, which were ignored by texts in southern China. This is the case, for example, with the Sanxingdui culture (Sichuan) (Di chỉ Tam Tinh Đôi). The bronze wine vessel decorated with anthropomorphic faces clearly testifies to contact established by the Shang with Melanesian-type peoples, as these faces show round human faces with a flat nose. The casting of this bronze used in the making of this vessel requires the incorporation of tin, which northern China did not possess at that time.

Could there have been real contact, an armed conflict between the Shang and the kingdom of Văn Lang if we stick to the legend of the celestial lord of Phù Ðổng? Could we grant truthfulness to a fact reported by a Vietnamese legend? Many Western historians have always seen the Đông Sơn civilization period as the beginning of the formation of the Vietnamese nation (500-700 BC). This is also the shared opinion found in the anonymous historical work « Việt Sử Lược. »

Under the reign of King Zhuang Wang (Trang Vương) of the Zhou (696-691 BC), there was in the Gia Ninh district a strange figure who succeeded in dominating all the tribes with his magic, taking the title Hùng Vương and establishing his capital at Phong Châu. Through hereditary succession, this allowed his lineage to maintain power with 18 kings, all bearing the name Hùng.

On the other hand, in other Vietnamese historical works, a long period of reign was attributed to the Hồng Bàng dynasty (from 2879 to 258 BC) lasting 2622 years. It seems inconceivable if we stick to the number 18, the number of kings during this period, because that would mean each Hùng Vương king reigned on average 150 years. We can only find a satisfactory answer if we accept the hypothesis established by Trần Huy Bá in his presentation published in the journal Nguồn Sáng no 23 on the day of commemoration of the Hùng Vương kings (Ngày giỗ Tổ Hùng Vương) (1998). For him, there is a misinterpretation of the word đời found in the phrase « 18 đời Hùng Vương. » The word « Ðời » should be replaced by the word Thời meaning « period. » (7)

With this hypothesis, there are therefore 18 reign periods, each corresponding to a branch that can be composed of one or several kings in the genealogical tree of the Hồng Bàng dynasty. This argument is reinforced by the fact that King Hùng Vương was elected for his courage and merits, referring to the Vietnamese tradition of choosing men of value for the supreme position. This was reported in the famous legend of the sticky rice cake (Bánh chưng bánh dầy). Thus, the word đời can be justified by the word branch (or chi).

We are led to provide a more coherent explanation for the number 2622 with the following 18 branches found in the work « Văn hoá tâm linh – đất tổ Hùng Vương » by the author Hồng Tử Uyên:

Chi Càn	Kinh Dương Vương húy Lộc Túc
Chi Khảm	Lạc Long Quân húy Sùng Lãm
Chi Cấn	Hùng Quốc Vương húy Hùng Lân
Chi Chấn	Hùng Hoa Vương húy Bửu Lang
Chi Tốn	Hùng Hy Vương húy Bảo Lang
Chi Ly	Hùng Hồn Vương húy Long Tiên Lang
Chi Khôn	Hùng Chiêu Vương húy Quốc Lang
Chi Ðoài	Hùng Vĩ Vương húy Vân Lang
Chi Giáp	Hùng Ðịnh Vương húy Chân Nhân Lang
…………..	manquant dans le document historique …
Chi Bính	Hùng Trinh Vương húy Hưng Ðức Lang
Chi Ðinh	Hùng Vũ Vương húy Ðức Hiền Lang
Chi Mậu	Hùng Việt Vương húy Tuấn Lang
Chi Kỷ	Hùng Anh Vương húy Viên Lang
Chi Canh	Hùng Triệu Vương húy Cảnh Chiêu Lang
Chi Tân	Hùng Tạo Vương húy Ðức Quân Lang
Chi Nhâm	Hùng Nghị Vương húy Bảo Quang Lang
Chi Qúy	Hùng Duệ Vương

This also allows us to trace the storyline in the armed conflict between the kingdom of Văn Lang and the Shang through the legend of « Phù Ðổng Thiên Vương. » If this conflict took place, it could only have been at the beginning of the Shang dynasty’s reign for several reasons:

1) No Chinese or Vietnamese historical document mentions trade relations between the kingdom of Văn Lang and the Shang. However, contact was noted later between the Zhou dynasty and King Hùng Vương. A silver pheasant (chim trĩ trắng) was even offered by the latter to the king of Zhou according to the work Linh Nam Chích Quái.

2) The Shang dynasty only reigned from 1766 to 1122 BC. There would be approximately a 300-year discrepancy if one attempted to calculate the arithmetic mean of 18 reign periods of the Hùng kings: (2622 / 18) and multiply it by 12 to roughly give a date at the end of the reign of the sixth Hùng branch (Hùng Vương VI), adding 258, the year of the annexation of the Văn Lang kingdom by King An Dương Vương. This would bring us roughly to the year 2006, the end of the reign of the sixth Hùng branch (Hùng Vương VI). It can be deduced that if there was a conflict, it should be at the beginning of the advent of the Shang dynasty. This discrepancy is not entirely unjustified since there has been little historical precision so far beyond the reign of King Chu Lệ Vương (Zhou LiWang) (850 BC).

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Orchard culture (Văn hóa miệt vườn)

j050807 Culture, Traditions, Văn Hóa, Vietnam octobre 19, 2025octobre 19, 2025

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Before becoming the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, this territory belonged to the kingdom of Funan for seven centuries at the beginning of the Christian era. Then it was taken back and included in the Angkorian empire at the beginning of the 8th century before being ceded to the lord of the Nguyễn at the beginning of the 17th century by the Khmer kings. It is a region irrigated by a network of canals and rivers that fertilize its plains through alluvial deposits over the centuries, thus promoting orchard cultivation. The Mekong perpetually pits the native of its delta against it, much like the Nile does with its fellah in Egypt. It has succeeded in building a « southern » identity for him and granting him a culture, the one the Vietnamese commonly call « Văn hóa miệt vườn (orchard culture). » Beyond his kindness, courtesy, and hospitality, the native of this delta shows a deep attachment to nature and the environment.

With simplicity and modesty in the way of life, he places great importance on wisdom and virtue in the education of his children. This is the particular character of this son of the Mekong, that of the people of South Vietnam who were born on land steeped in Theravada Buddhism at the beginning of the Christian era and who come from the mixing of several peoples—Vietnamese, Chinese, Khmer, and Cham—over the past two centuries. It is not surprising to hear strange expressions where there is a mixture of Chinese, Khmer, and Vietnamese words.

This is the case with the following expression:

Sáng say, Chiều xỉn, Tối xà quần

to say that one is drunk in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening. The Vietnamese, the Chinese, and the Cambodians respectively use say, xỉn, xà quần in their language to signify the same word « drunk. » The same glass of wine can be drunk at all times of the day and shared with pleasure and brotherhood by the three peoples.

The native of the Mekong Delta easily accepts all cultures and ideas with tolerance. Despite this, he must shape this delta over the centuries with sweat, transforming a land that was until then uncultivated and sparsely populated into a land rich in citrus orchards and fruits, and especially into a rice granary. This does not contradict what the French geographer Pierre Gourou, a specialist in the rural world of Indochina, wrote in his work on the peasants of the delta (1936):

It is the most important geographical fact of the delta. They manage to shape the land of their delta through their labor.

Before becoming the Mesopotamia of Vietnam, the Mekong Delta was a vast expanse of forests, swamps, and islets. It was an apparently inhospitable environment teeming with various forms of life and wild animals (crocodiles, snakes, tigers, etc.). This is the case in the far south of Cà Mau province, where today lies the world’s second-largest mangrove forest. That is why the difficulties faced by the first Vietnamese settlers are still recounted in popular songs.

Muỗi kêu như sáo thổi
Đỉa lội như bánh canh
Cỏ mọc thành tinh
Rắn đồng biết gáy.

The buzzing of mosquitoes resembles the sound of a flute,
leeches swim on the water’s surface like noodles floating in soup,
wild grasses grow like little elves,
field snakes know how to hiss.

Lên rừng xỉa răng cọp, xuống bãi hốt trứng sấu

Going up the forest to pick tiger teeth, going down to the shore to collect crocodile eggs

This describes the adventure of people daring to venture perilously into the forest to face tigers and descend into the river to gather crocodile egg clutches. Despite their bravery, danger continues to lurk and sometimes sends shivers down their spines, so much so that the song of a bird or the sound of water caused by the movement of a fish, amplified by the boat’s motion, startles them in an inhospitable environment full of dangers.

During the monsoon season, in some flooded corners of the delta, they do not have the opportunity to set foot on land and must bury their loved ones by hanging the coffins in the trees while waiting for the water to recede or even in the water itself, so that nature can take its course, as recounted in the moving stories reported by the famous novelist Sơn Nam in his bestseller « Hương Rừng Cà Mau. »

Here comes the strange land
Even the bird’s call is fearful, even the fish’s movement is scary.

It is here that, day and night, the swarm of hungry mosquitoes is visible in the sky. That is why it is customary to say in a popular song:

Tới đây xứ sở lạ lùng
Con chim kêu cũng sợ, con cá vùng cũng ghê.

Cà Mau is a rustic land,
mosquitoes as big as hens, tigers as big as buffaloes.

Cà Mau is a rural region. The mosquitoes are as large as hens and the tigers are comparable to buffaloes.

Courage and tenacity are among the qualities of these delta natives as they strive to find a better life in an ungrateful environment. The great Vĩnh Tế canal, more than 100 km long, dating back to the early 19th century, bears witness to a colossal project that the ancestors of these delta natives managed to accomplish over five years (1819-1824) to desalinate the land and connect the Bassac branch of the Mekong (Châu Ðốc) to the Hà Tiên estuary (Gulf of Siam) under the direction of Governor Thoại Ngọc Hầu. More than 70,000 Vietnamese, Cham, and Khmer subjects were mobilized and forcibly enlisted in this endeavor. Many people had to perish there.

On one of the 9 dynastic urns arranged in front of the temple for the worship of the kings of the Nguyễn dynasty (Thế Miếu) in Huế, there is an inscription recounting the excavation work of the Vĩnh Tế canal with gratitude from Emperor Minh Mạng to the ancestors of the natives of the Mekong. Vĩnh Tế is the name of Thoại Ngọc Hầu’s wife, whom Emperor Minh Mạng chose to recognize her merit for courageously helping her husband in the construction of this canal. She passed away two years before the completion of this work.

The delta was at one time the starting point for the exodus of boat people after the fall of the Saigon government (1975). Some perished on the journey without any knowledge of navigation. Others who failed to leave were captured by the communist authorities and sent to re-education camps. The harshness of life does not prevent the natives of the Mekong from being happy in their environment. They continue to maintain their hospitality and hope to one day find a better life. Over the centuries, they have forged an unparalleled determination and community spirit in search of fertile land and a space of freedom. Speaking of these people of the delta, one can recall the phrase of the writer Sơn Nam at the end of his book titled « Tiếp Cận với đồng bằng sông Cửu Long » (In Contact with the Mekong Delta): No one loves this delta more than we do. We accept paying the price for it.

It is in this delta that one finds today all the charming facets of the Mekong (the sun, the smile, the exoticism, the hospitality, the conical hat silhouettes, the sampans, the floating markets, the stilt houses, an abundant variety of tropical fruits, cage fish farming, floating rice, local specialties, etc.). This is reflected in the following proverb:

Ðất cũ đãi người mới
The old land welcomes the newcomers.

At the time of the country’s reunification in 1975, the Vietnamese government settled more than 500,000 farmers from the North and Central Vietnam in the labyrinth of this delta. Fed by rich alluvium, it is highly fertile. Today, it has become the economic lung of the country and a boon for the 18 million people in the region. It is said that it alone could feed all of Vietnam.

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Bronze drums (Part 3,VA)

j050807 Art, Đồng Sơn, Lịch sử, Traditions, Vietnam octobre 19, 2025novembre 5, 2025

Who are the Dongsonians?

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It is very important to know them because we know they were the owners of these bronze drums. Are they the ancestors of the current Vietnamese? Very little is known about these people and their culture because the research started in the early 20th century by the French was interrupted during the long years of war that Vietnam experienced. However, it is certain that in the 1st century AD, the Dongsonian culture ended with the Chinese annexation.

It was only from 1980 that archaeological excavations resumed. We began to better understand their origin, way of life, and sphere of influence. Thanks to the exceptionally enriched archaeological documentation in recent years, the origin of the Dongsonian culture has been fairly clarified. This culture has its roots among the pre-Dongsonian cultures (those of Phùng Nguyên, Ðồng Dậu, and Gò Mun). There is no need to look so far north or west for the origin of this culture. The Dongsonian culture is actually the result of a succession of stages corresponding to these three cultures mentioned above in a continuous cultural development. The eminent Vietnamese archaeologist Hà Văn Tấn was right to solemnly say: To search for the origins of the Dongsonian culture in the North or West, as several researchers did in the past, is to put forward a hypothesis without scientific basis.

Thanks to the distribution maps of archaeological sites in the Red River basin, it is evident that the pre-Dongson Bronze Age cultures occupied exactly the same region where the sites of the Phùng Nguyên culture were located. It can be said without hesitation that the Đông Sơn culture extends from Hoàng Liên Sơn province in the north to Bình Trị Thiên province in the south.

The Dongsonians were above all skilled rice farmers. They cultivated rice using slash-and-burn methods and flooded fields. They raised buffaloes and pigs. But it was water that was both their wealth and their primary concern because it could be deadly, overflowing from the Red River to engulf crops. They were daring navigators, so close to rivers and coasts that they were accustomed to using dugout canoes for their movements. This custom was so deeply ingrained in their minds that they built their homes as wooden stilt houses with immense roofs curved at both ends, decorated with totemic birds and resembling a dugout canoe.

Even in their death, they designed coffins shaped like canoes. According to Trịnh Cao Tường, a specialist in the study of communal houses (đình) of Vietnamese villages, the architecture of the Vietnamese communal house elevated on stilts reflects the echo of the spirit of the Dongsonians still present in the daily life of the Vietnamese.

The Dongsonians used to tattoo their bodies, chew a preparation made from areca nuts, and blacken their teeth. Tattooing, often described as a « barbaric » practice in Chinese annals, was, according to Vietnamese texts, intended to protect people from attacks by water dragons (con thuồng luồng).

The habit of chewing betel is very ancient in Vietnam. It existed long before the Chinese conquest. When mentioning the blackening of teeth, one cannot forget the famous phrase spoken by Emperor Quang Trung before the liberation of the capital « Thăng Long, » occupied by the Qing: « Đánh để được giữ răng đen. » Fight the Chinese to liberate the city and to keep the teeth blackened. This clearly shows his political will to perpetuate Vietnamese culture, particularly that of the Dongsonians.

They wore their hair long in a bun and supported by a turban. According to some Vietnamese texts, they had short hair to facilitate their movement in the mountain forests. Their clothing was made from plant fibers. During recent excavations of the Làng Cả necropolis (Việt Trì) in 1977 and 1978, it was observed that differences in wealth were pronounced among the Dongsonians in the analysis of funerary furniture. Opulence is visible in certain individual tombs. Society began to structure itself in a way that revealed the gap between the rich and the poor through funerary furniture. There is no longer any doubt about the increasingly advanced hierarchy in Dongsonian society. It is also found in their military hierarchy: the wearing of metal armor was reserved for the great military chiefs. Lesser chiefs had to make do with leather cuirasses or tree bark coats of armor, similar to those of the Dayak in Borneo, Indonesia.

During recent archaeological excavations, Vietnamese archaeologists are confronted with the burial practices used by the Dongsonians. They employed various modes of burial: interments in pits (mộ huyện đất) with the deceased in a lying or crouching position (Thiệu Dương), burials in dugout coffin boats (mộ thuyền) (Việt Khê, Châu Can, Châu Sơn), burials in bronze jars or inverted drums (mộ vò). ( Đào Thịnh, Vạn Thắng) .

The burial mode in boat-shaped coffins has only been found in certain regions of Northern Vietnam (Hải Phòng, Hải Hưng, Thái Bình, Hà Nam Ninh, and Hà Sơn Bình). The area is very limited compared to the zone of influence of the Đồng Sơn culture. On the other hand, in famous Dong Son sites such as Làng Cả (Vĩnh Phú), Đồng Sơn, Thịệu Dương (Thanh Hoá), Làng Vạc (Nghệ Tĩnh), no burial mode involving boat-shaped coffins has been reported. Some Vietnamese archaeologists like Hà Văn Tấn believe that the coffins had the possibility of being preserved because they were located in a marshy area. This is not the case for other coffins, as they were situated in unfavorable places where water could erase everything over time.

According to Vietnamese archaeologist Hà Văn Tấn, the marsh area could have been, during the Dong Son period, a swampy region where people lived under conditions similar to those who habitually soaked their skin and skeleton in water throughout their lives and in death. (Sống ngâm da, chết ngâm xương). It is not surprising to find in these people their way of thinking and their method of burying the dead in boat-shaped coffins because for them, from birth to death, the means of transport was always the boat.

Other archaeologists question the disappearance of this custom among the Vietnamese. Why does this burial method continue to be practiced by the Mường, close cousins of today’s Vietnamese? Yet they share the same ancestors. The explanation that can be given is as follows: the diversity of burials clearly shows the « disparate » nature among the Dongsonians. Considered as Indonesians (or Austroasians (Nam Á in Vietnamese)), they are in fact populations of the same culture but remain physically heterogeneous. According to Russian researchers Levin and Cheboksarov, the Indonesians would be a mix of Australoids and Mongoloids. They originated from the fusion of the Luo Yue (Lac Việt), (Australo-Melanesian elements, ancient inhabitants of eastern Indochina who still remained on the continent) and Mongoloid elements probably coming via the Blue River from the borders of Tibet and Yunnan during the Spring and Autumn period (Xuân Thu). It does not appear that physical diversity is accompanied by cultural diversity. At each era, the same tools and customs seem common to all. If there is a difference in the burial method, this can be explained by the lack of resources and forced Sinicization among the Vietnamese. This is not the case for the Mường, who, taking refuge in the most remote corners of the mountains, can perpetuate this custom without any difficulty.

According to archaeologist Hà Văn Tấn, it is possible to find oneself in this hypothesis illustrated by the example of the burial method, which is carried out differently today among the Southern Vietnamese (descendants of a mixture of Vietnamese, Chinese, Chams, and Khmers) and those from the North, even though they come from the same people and the same culture.

It is through picturesque traits that we begin to better understand the Dongsonians during archaeological excavations. There is no longer any doubt about their origin. They belonged to the Hundred Yue or Bai Yue because in them we find everything related to the Bai Yue: tattooing, teeth lacquering, betel chewing, worship of totem animals, stilt houses, use of drums, etc., among the 25 characteristic elements found among the Yue and cited by the British sinologist Joseph Needham. They were designated in Chinese annals by different generic names: Man Di during the Spring and Autumn period, Hundred Yue (or Bai Yue) during the Warring States period (Tam Quôc), Kiao Tche (or Giao Chi in Vietnamese) during the Han (or Chinese) domination.

According to Vietnamese scholar Đào Duy Anh, the name Kiao Tche (Giao Chỉ) given to the Yue peoples in northern Vietnam originally designates the territories occupied by the Yue who worship the kiao long (giao long) (crocodile-dragon), kiao and tche meaning respectively dragon and territory.

This hypothesis was adopted and supported by Vietnamese archaeologists Hà Văn Tấn and Trần Quốc Vượng. This crocodile-dragon, a totemic animal of the Dongsonians, is found in funerary artifacts: axes, spears, armor plates, and thạp vases (for example, Đào Thịnh). It is from this multiple mixture of Dongsonians with other ethnic groups from Si Ngeou (Tây Âu), ancestors of the Tày, Nùng, Choang, and close relatives of the Thai in the mountainous regions of Kouang Si (Guangxi) and Northern Vietnam at the beginning of the Iron Age (3rd century BC, Âu Lạc period) that today’s Vietnamese originate.

The territory of the Hundred Yue is so vast that it forms an inverted triangle with the Yangtze River (Dương Tử Giang) as the base, Tonkin (Northern Vietnam) as the apex, the regions of Tcho-Kiang (Zhejiang), Fou Kien (Fujian), and Kouang-Tong (Guangdong) on its eastern side, and the regions of Sseu-tchouan (Sichuan), Yunnan (Vân Nam), Kouang Si (Guangxi) on its western side. (Paul Pozner).
Many chiefdoms were established there, and there were no borders hindering the spread and circulation of their traditions, particularly the making and use of bronze drums. This is why it is possible that bronze drums were made at the same time in distinct centers within the territories of the Yue (Vietnam, Yunnan, Guangxi) according to different casting techniques (lost-wax casting in Vietnam, mold sections in Yunnan) and according to the availability of local mining resources.

In the analyses of Ðồng Sơn bronzes, it is observed that the percentage of lead is higher than that of tin, which is an exceptional fact in the technology of Dong Son bronze. But it is surprising to find roughly the same lead and tin content in the analysis of the Kur drum bronze in Indonesia. It would have been impossible for the Indonesians of that time to chemically analyze this drum to know the content of each metal. They must have learned from the Dong Son people either directly or indirectly. This strongly supports the hypothesis of the diffusion of metallurgy from the Red River basin starting in Vietnam, unless Dong Son metallurgists were present on their territory at that time.

Moreover, the Dong Son people knew how to seek an appropriate alloy for each type of object they made. This is the case with the weapons found in the Dong Son burial sites, where the lead content is lower and the tin content quite significant, giving them a remarkable degree of hardness. Furthermore, the percentages of metals in the chemical composition of the bronzes from Jinning (Yunnan) are roughly the same as those of ancient Chinese bronzes. (Nguyễn Phước Long: 107). This is not the case with the Dong Son bronzes.

These were local and original products and belonged to the Red River civilization. Living on the edge of the East Sea or South China Sea (Biển Đông), the Dong Son people were close to major trade routes, which allowed for a wide dissemination of their culture and their bronze drums. It was about 2 km from the Vietnamese coast in the Vũng Áng region (Hà Tĩnh) that a Vietnamese fisherman accidentally caught two objects in his net in 2009 in the East Sea: a bronze axe and a spearhead dating from the Đồng Sơn period.

This proves that the Dongsonian people used maritime routes to establish a network of exchanges with all the states bordering the South China Sea (starting from the north, clockwise). In Zhejiang (Triết Giang), during an archaeological excavation at Thượng Mã Sơn (An Cát, Hồ Châu or Huzhou Shi), Chinese archaeologists found an object that was not native to this region and undoubtedly belonged to the Dongsonian civilization. It is a bronze drum similar to the one found in Lãng Ngâm in Bắc Ninh province in Northern Vietnam. (Trịnh Sinh 1997). Then in Canton, in the tomb of King Zhao Mei (Triệu Muội), identified as the second ruler of Nan Yue and known as Nam Việt Vương in Vietnamese, cylindrical situlas with geometric decoration (thạp) were discovered, frequently found in Dongsonian sites in Vietnam. Finally, along the Vietnamese coast (Champa, Chenla), in territories where the Sa Huỳnh culture was present at that time, bronze drums, daggers, and Dongsonian axes were also found in bronze jar burials (mộ vò).

Further inland, on the island (Hòn Rái) of Kiên Giang province, near Phú Quốc island, in the Gulf of Siam, a Đông Sơn bronze drum was discovered in 1984 during the exhumation of bodies, inside which were found axes, spearheads, as well as human bones. We must also not forget the bronze drums found in Thailand, characterized by the three elements copper, lead, and tin, with lead content reaching up to 20% (U. Gueler 1944), which testifies to one of the characteristics of Đông Sơn bronzes (Trinh Sinh: 1989: 43-50). The Đông Sơn civilization developed in a very open environment. In northern Vietnam, the flow of information and objects was facilitated by the Red River, which originates in Yunnan and was considered the river Silk Road between the Dian kingdom and that of the Đông Sơn people. Benefiting from the abundance of mineral deposits in their territory and the proximity to the coasts of the East Sea, they succeeded in developing a spectacular bronze art and imposing a very original and distinctive style through their bronze drums, situlas, and magnificent objects, which probably explains their leadership role in mastering lost-wax casting and facilitating exchanges not only within the Yue territories but also in territories as distant as those.

For the Dongsonians as for the Yue, the bronze drum was not only a common cult heritage that they were supposed to keep carefully but also an emblem of power and rallying beyond their village and ethnic community. The bronze drum, which guaranteed agrarian rites and social cohesion, was made by talented local metallurgists solely to perpetuate their ancestral tradition, never considering that their artistic work could become an object of dispute between the two peoples, Vietnamese and Chinese, one being considered the legitimate heir of the Hundred Yue and supposed to revive the civilization of its ancestors, that of the Bai Yue, and the other, conqueror of the territories of the Bai Yue and supposed to restore to the descendants of the Yue the place they deserve in today’s China. One cannot remain indifferent to the hypothesis defended by the sinologist Charles Higham in his work entitled « The Bronze Age of Southeast Asia« :

The search for origins and changes occurring in the second half of the 1st millennium BCE in the region leads to the overlooking of an important point. These changes taking place in what have become today the south of China and the Red River Delta basin were accomplished by groups exchanging their ideas and goods in response to strong pressure from the north, from powerful and expansionist states (Chu (Sỡ), the Qin (Tần), and the Han (Hán)) who ultimately managed to crush them.

From a historical and cultural perspective, all those descended from the Yue have the right to claim this heritage. But from a logical standpoint, only the Luo Yue (or the Dongsonians) among the Baiyue succeeded in forming a nation and having an autonomous and independent country (Vietnam). This is not the case for the other Yue, who were all sinicized over the centuries during the imperial expansion initiated by the Qin and the Han. No one has the right to contest the Yue character in present-day Vietnamese. This is also the observation made by the French ethnologist Georges Condominas:

Mentioning the Yue is to go back to the origins of Vietnamese identity. (G. Condominas). It is obvious that the paternity of the bronze drums belongs to the Vietnamese, especially since these sacred instruments could carry a message left to them by their ancestors (the Dongsonian people). The inscription engraved on the bronze column of General Ma Yuan is well known: Let this column fall and Giao Chỉ will disappear (Ðồng trụ triệt, Giao Chỉ diệt). Where is this bronze column when we know that Giao Chi (Vietnam) continues to exist today? By closely observing a bronze drum, one notices that it resembles a cut tree trunk. Its tympanum bearing several concentric circles is analogous to the cross-section of the trunk with rings added over the centuries.

Does the bronze drum evoke Ma Yuan’s bronze column? Some scientists believe that the bronze drum is the « tree of life. » This is the case for the Russian scientist N.J. Nikulin from the Moscow Institute of Culture. Relying on the discoveries and suggestions of Vietnamese researchers (such as Lê Văn Lan) about the idea of a « totality » represented by the bronze drum through its depictions, he arrives at the following conclusion: The bronze drum is a representation of the universe: the tympanum (or the plate), symbolizing the celestial and terrestrial world (thiên giới, trần giới), the trunk representing the marine world (thủy quốc), and the base representing the underground world (âm phủ). According to him, there is an intimate relationship between the bronze drum and the mythical narrative of the Mường, close relatives of the present-day Vietnamese.

In the Mường conception of the creation of the universe, the tree of life symbolizes the notion of universal order, as opposed to the chaotic state found at the moment of the world’s creation. The worship of the tree is a very ancient custom of the Vietnamese. The areca palm found in the betel quid (chuyện trầu cau) testifies to this worship. According to historian and archaeologist Bernet Kempers, the bronze drum illustrates a fundamentally monistic (Oneness) vision of the cosmos.

It is this bronze drum that the Han wanted to destroy to seal the fate of the Dongsonians because it was the tree of life symbolizing both their strength and their conception of life. Fortunately, over the centuries, the bronze drum did not disappear, but thanks to the picks and shovels of French and Vietnamese archaeologists, it reappeared splendid and radiant, allowing the descendants of the Dongsonians to rediscover their true history, their origin without being seen as cooked barbarians.

Being a sacred instrument, the bronze drum is more than ever involved in the restoration and testimony of the identity of the Vietnamese people, which was nearly erased many times by the Middle Kingdom throughout its history.

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Bronze drums (Part 2,VA)

j050807 Art, Đồng Sơn, Histoire, Vietnam octobre 19, 2025octobre 19, 2025

The star appears in the center of the drums

Bronze drums debates

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In this important study on bronze drums, he distinguishes 4 main types:

In type I, the bronze drum is of imposing size. It consists of three distinct parts: a conical base, a straight or slightly inclined cylindrical body, and a bulging part (or tang in Vietnamese) that ends at the meeting point of the drumhead with an edge. For Heger type I drums belonging to the last period of the Bronze Age and dating from the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, various motifs (figures, birds, boats, stilt houses) and concentric zones with a raised star in the center with a number of rays appear on the drumhead (Ngọc Lũ, Hoàng Hạ, Sông Ðà, Thựơng Lâm, Quảng Xương, etc.). Its resonating body has 4 pairs of handles.

In type II, the drumhead overhangs its bulging part which, together with its slightly flared straight part towards the bottom, forms the resonating body of the drum. Moreover, it has only two pairs of handles. These drums have been discovered in the habitation area of the Mường ethnic minorities. The drumhead is richly decorated with 4 or 6 toads, even elephants and turtles in relief. These animals are placed counterclockwise. The motifs are so stylized as to become unrecognizable. A large number of drums of this type have been found in Vietnam, in southern China and the Malay Archipelago.

In type III, the drums are always equipped with a plate on which toads are stacked in limited numbers. These amphibians are aligned counterclockwise. There is an elongation of the cylindrical body up to the lower edge without much flaring. The handles are small and elegant. The distribution area of these drums is mainly to the west of the Trường Sơn mountain range, in Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, and Yunnan.

In type IV, these are copies of type I drums. Sometimes there are Chinese characters. They are found in large numbers in Yunnan (China). The plate fits directly onto the body and never overhangs. These drums are generally small in size. The star in the middle of the plate always has twelve rays corresponding to the duodenary cycle (12 earthly branches). They are found in Vietnam in the northern border region among the Lo Lo and Pupe ethnic minorities.

In general, the ornamentation is considered rich in information on the plate (or tympanum), particularly that of type Heger I: warriors armed with crossbows or javelins, humans adorned with bird feathers, musicians playing the khène or handling castanets, women wearing loincloths pounding rice in a mortar, fish, stylized birds, deer, ritual canoe races, funeral rituals, etc.

Regarding the ornamentation found on the drum body, there are significant differences from one drum to another in terms of themes and animal representations. The order of decoration seems arbitrary. It can be observed that many drums have no ornamentation on their bodies. However, this is not the case for the drumheads. The ornamentation with concentric circles presents an identical structure from one drum to another. On the other hand, the figurative character found on the drumheads of the earliest drums (Ngọc Lũ, Hoàng Hạ, Sông Ðà, Cổ Loa, Moulié, etc.) increasingly evolves towards abstraction and geometrization. Despite this, the overall structure, particularly the orientation of the drum, is generally maintained by the presence of a minimal circle of four birds, which gives the drumheads a sacred character and the drums their true raison d’être.

According to Catherine Noppe, curator of the Oriental Collections at the Royal Museum of Mariemont, the Dongson culture was the origin of a number of specific forms recognizable in decoration. In the repertoire of geometric motifs, there are dots, dotted circles, triangles, diamonds, straight lines, and spirals.

The concentric circles and straight lines used to organize the decoration into precise zones (on the drums or vessels) attest to a desire for clarity and readability necessary for the identification of a decoration often abundant, integrating both animals and figures.

In many debates and writings, there is a tendency to focus on dating and ornamentation. Until today, Vietnamese archaeologists believe that Heger’s general classification structure remains valid because, for them, the fundamental criterion to respect is ornamentation. The finer, more complex, and more numerous the motifs visible in the decoration, the easier it is to prove the origin. This is why they concentrate their efforts on details and propose dividing Heger Type I into several subtypes. This is not the case for Chinese archaeologists who find Heger’s classification obsolete since the discovery of a large number of drums in southern China (Yunnan, Guangxi, and Guangdong). Moreover, according to them, originality should be expressed through simplicity in ornamentation and size. Initially divided over Heger’s classification due to regional affinities (between the Chinese supporters from Guangxi and Yunnan), they have managed to unify their viewpoints and now accept Heger’s classification while adding another type which they have called under the name of » Pre Heger-I » since the discovery of several bronze drums (Wanjiaba (Vạn Gia Bá), Yunnan) believed to belong to the « Pre Heger I » type in 1975 and 1976.

They claim that these were earlier than those of Ðồng Sơn (Ngọc Lũ, Sông Ðà (Moulié), Hoàng Hạ, Sông Hồng (Gillet), etc.) based on the radiocarbon dating of funerary objects found at the same time as these drums. For them, the important criteria to consider in determining the antiquity of the drum are as follows: its large face, its trunk being reduced from three to two parts, and its less complex decoration. There is no doubt that the oldest bronze drums originated from Yunnan. Unfortunately, their beliefs have been endorsed neither by the global scientific community nor by Vietnamese archaeologists. According to the latter, the dating of bronze drums could not be based solely on the radiocarbon dating of funerary objects because the margin of error would be too high, around 235 years, based on their experience with a piece of wood from a coffin. But there are other factors that should be taken into consideration. This is the case with the example of the bronze drum found in a burial at Việt Khê. Radiocarbon dating indicates that the tomb was 2480 ± 100 years old before 1950 CE (Common Era) or around 530 BCE (Before the Common Era). However, based on its decorative style, the bronze drum could have been made only between the 3rd and 6th centuries BCE.

Besides radiocarbon dating, there is a total divergence between Chinese and Vietnamese archaeologists in the interpretation of the decoration. This is important as it can help archaeologists identify the ethnic and geographical affiliations since it reflects the spiritual life of the people who invented this drum. Each side tries to provide its own interpretation regarding the stilt bird, the amphibian, and the boat.

The stilt bird:

This flying bird seen on the bronze drum with a long beak and long legs is very familiar to the Vietnamese because it is indeed the heron. It is obvious to see it depicted on the bronze drum as it symbolizes the labor and diligence of the proto-Vietnamese. It is part of their daily life. It is often seen accompanying Vietnamese farmers in the rice fields. It is mentioned many times in their popular poems. Thanks to recent linguistic research, the term Văn Lang used to designate the kingdom of the Hùng kings during the Đông Sơn period is nothing other than the phonetic transcription in Chinese characters of an ancient Austro-Asiatic word: vlang, meaning a large stilt bird. Similarly, the name of the Hùng clan known as « Hồng Bàng » also refers to a stilt bird related to the heron.

For the Chinese, the heron is considered the accompanying bird, after death, of the soul towards immortality (cỡi hạc qui tiên). It is a long tradition to decorate drums with heron motifs in the central plains of China. The spread of this belief first becomes visible in the area of the Chu principality (Sỡ Quốc) and then among other ethnic groups in southern China. This is undoubtedly Chinese influence.

The amphibian

It can be seen on certain bronze drums, particularly those of the Heger I type belonging to the last period of the Bronze Age and dating from the 1st and 2nd centuries AD (late drums) (or trống muộn Heger I). Chinese archaeologists believe that the small amphibians found on the faces of these drums are frogs used for ornamental purposes without any special meaning. However, for the Vietnamese, the presence of frogs on the drum surface suggests that the drum could be a rain drum because, according to Vietnamese tradition, there is a close kinship between amphibians and Heaven:
Toads and frogs are the uncles of the Lord Heaven
Beware those who mistreat them; they will be punished accordingly.

Their presence can be explained by beliefs common to all peoples of southern Asia: the croaking of amphibians announces the rain essential for the sown fields.

The boat:

For the Chinese, the boat is mentioned to reflect the ancient tradition of the annual ritual race in the Chu kingdom during the Warring States period. This custom aims to honor the memory of the famous poet Qu Yuan (Khuất Nguyên). He committed suicide in 278 BC to denounce the endemic corruption of his time in this kingdom, which was later annexed by the Qin. For the Vietnamese, opinions are divided. Some share the same view as the Chinese, opting for the theme of the « Paddled Boat » because it is more detailed and visible on certain drums (Sông Đà, Miếu Môn, Làng Vạc, etc.), but others continue to think of funerary ceremonies. This is a thesis defended by Goloubew (1929), citing ethnographic examples of the Dayak (Borneo), and has become the dominant thesis today in popular writings.

This custom is still practiced today by the Dayak, who were formerly established on the eastern coast of Indochina. They still believe in the existence, in the middle of the ocean, of a mysterious island where their ancestors enjoy supreme happiness. It is this golden boat (or boat of the dead) that can be seen depicted on the Hoàng Hạ and Ngọc Lữ drums with warriors without paddles, ready to fight the malevolent spirits that threaten them in the afterlife. This mystical theme is essentially based on the funerary cult, an ancient tradition known by the Dayak who, born near the rivers and close to the coasts, should one day return to their distant paradise by taking this ghost boat upon their death.

The Tiwah (lễ chiêu hồn) or the festival of the dead continues to be celebrated to this day by the Dayak of Borneo. The canoe-shaped coffins (mộ thuyền) found in Dong Son burials (Việt Khê for example) are not unrelated to this tradition. It is important to recall that, being dolichocephalic Indonesians (Deniker) (or Austroasiatics), the Dayak Ot-Danom and Olo-ngadju had a hierarchical organization identical to that which still exists among the Mường of the Black River (Sông Ðà), an ethnic minority close to the present-day Vietnamese. The power of their chiefs is considered hereditary.

Besides the Sino-Vietnamese disagreements mentioned above, there remains an important element pitting several theories against each other. It is the star depicted at the center of the drum’s plateau. The number of rays varies from one drum to another. On the Ngọc Lũ drum, there are 14 rays while the Hoàng Hạ drum has two more. As for the Vienna drum, it has only 12 rays. It is unlikely that this central star with multiple rays is a star, as people of that time could not have seen it larger than the one they observed in the sky. There is only one star larger than the others around which scenes of life are arranged in rhythm with the seasons. Could it be anything other than the sun?

In an agrarian society, the sun and rain are needed to fertilize the soil and have good harvests. The French archaeologist M. Colani, who discovered the Hoà Bình culture in 1926, held this view when speaking of a solar cult in Indochina. (7). But this hypothesis was contested by the Australian anthropologist and historian Helmut Loofs-Wissova. He rejects the idea that the inter-radial triangles are passive decorative elements. There is no reason to think of a celestial body, but these triangles should be considered as the product of a differentiation into « quarters. » He went further in his approach by considering that these drums are like regalia (quyền trượng). He explains their dispersion by the desire of local chiefs wishing to have the grace of ritual authority (but not political) located somewhere in northern Vietnam and having the power to give them bronze drums, like the papacy in the West with regalia. This hypothesis cannot be corroborated first by the presence of dotted circles, simple or concentric, found abundantly on the ornaments and weapons of warriors disguised as spirit-men, as these have long been known as heliacal symbols in prehistoric Western art (on Caucasian and Hispanic bronzes).

Moreover, after the annexation of the Giao Chỉ territory by the Chinese, the distribution of bronze drums continued to spread towards Southeast Asia. It seems unthinkable to imagine that there exists in this territory an independent political or religious power without the agreement of the Han (or Chinese). Those who are only the destroyers of bronze drums in the manner of their general Ma Yuan cannot use them as regalia. Although this theory is appealing, it seems less convincing.

According to the beliefs of the Austroasiatic peoples, the drum is not only a sacred instrument but also a living fetish. By designating the drum with the word « trống » in Vietnamese, it is known to be masculine. It is customary to refer to the rooster with the word « gà trống or gà sống. » Similar to the Yue’s knife (Alain Thote), it must be nourished with blood, alcohol, and rice. It is awakened from time to time during ritual ceremonies by strikes of a mallet at the center of its surface, where the sun is depicted symbolizing the driving force of the gift of life. It is also here that its soul and magical power reside.

Being of a yang nature and always accompanied by gongs (of a Yin nature) which the Mường, close cousins of the Vietnamese, consider as a stylized representation of the woman’s chest in ritual festivals, it is charged with protecting not only the village but also the clan or tribe that must demonstrate its legitimacy in possessing it and its ability to maintain it with remarkable regularity. Sometimes its prestige can go beyond its regional sphere, and its capacity for rallying and mobilization is considerable. It can express its wrath through the voice of a female medium (kruu) among the Kantou of the Annamite Range (Trường Sơn), as reported by Yves Goudineau in his article entitled « Bronze Drums and Ceremonial Circumambulations » (BEFEO, Volume 87, no. 2, pp. 553-578).

In northern Vietnam and in Yunnan province, there is a strange custom of getting rid of the bronze drum. Considered a living fetish, the drum is given its birthday (a grand celebration) but it can also be « killed » by piercing the center of its drumhead where the sun is depicted, as this symbolizes the generative force of the gift of life. By destroying it in this way, it is believed that one destroys not only its soul but also the symbol of power of the tribe or clan that owns it and its magical power, in order to prevent later revenge. This also explains the behavior of the Chinese general Ma Yuan during the repression against the Giao Chi. That is why during archaeological excavations in northern Vietnam, drums are sometimes found with the center of the drumhead completely pierced.

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[Bronze drums: Part 3, VA]

Bronze drums (Part 1,VA)

j050807 Art, Đồng Sơn, Histoire, Traditions, Vietnam octobre 19, 2025octobre 19, 2025

vanhoa_dongson

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Version vietnamienne

Until today, the bronze drums continue to sow discord between the Vietnamese and Chinese scientific communities. For the Vietnamese, the bronze drums are the prodigious and ingenious invention of peasant metallurgists during the time of the Hùng kings, the founding fathers of the Văn Lang kingdom. It was in the Red River delta that the French archaeologist Louis Pajot unearthed several of these drums at Ðồng Sơn (Thanh Hoá province) in 1924, along with other remarkable objects (figurines, ceremonial daggers, axes, ornaments, etc.), thus providing evidence of a highly sophisticated bronze metallurgy and a culture dating back at least 600 years before Christ. The Vietnamese find not only their origin in this re-excavated culture (or Đông Sơn culture) but also the pride of reconnecting with the thread of their history. For the French researcher Jacques Népote, these drums become the national reference of the Vietnamese people. For the Chinese, the bronze drums were invented by the Pu/Liao (Bộc Việt), a Yue ethnic minority from Yunnan (Vân Nam). It is evident that the authorship of this invention belongs to them, aiming to demonstrate the success of the process of mixing and cultural exchange among the ethnic groups of China and to give China the opportunity to create and showcase the fascinating multi-ethnic culture of the Chinese nation.

Despite this bone of contention, the Vietnamese and the Chinese unanimously acknowledge that the area where the first bronze drums were invented encompasses only southern China and northern present-day Vietnam, although a large number of bronze drums have been continuously discovered across a wide geographical area including Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia, and the eastern Sunda Islands. Despite their dispersion and distribution over a very vast territory, fundamental cultural affinities are noted among populations that at first glance appear very different, some protohistoric and others almost contemporary. Initially, in the Chinese province of Yunnan where the Red River originates, the bronze drum has been attested since the 6th century BCE and continued to be used until the 1st century, just before the annexation of the Dian kingdom (Điền Quốc) by the Han (or Chinese). The bronze chests intended to contain local currency (or cowries), discovered at Shizhaishan (Jinning) and bearing on their upper part a multitude of figures or animals in sacrificial scenes, clearly testify to the indisputable affinities between the Dian kingdom and the Dongsonian culture.

Then among the populations of the Highlands (the Joraï, the Bahnar, or the Hodrung) in Vietnam, the drum cult is found at a recent date. Kept in the communal house built on stilts, the drum is taken down only to call the men to the buffalo sacrifice and funeral ceremonies. The eminent French anthropologist Yves Goudineau described and reported the sacrificial ceremony during his multiple observations among the Kantou of the Annamite Trường Sơn mountain range, a ceremony involving bronze drums (or Lakham) believed to ensure the circularity and progression of the rounds necessary for a cosmogonic refoundation.

These sacred instruments are perceived by the Kantou villagers as the legacy of a transcendence. The presence of these drums is also visible among the Karen of Burma. Finally, further from Vietnam, on the island of Alor (Eastern Sunda), the drum is used as an emblem of power and rank, as currency, as a wedding gift, etc. Here, the drum is known as the « mokko. » Its role is close to that of the bronze drums of Ðồng Sơn. Its prototype remains the famous « Moon of Pedjeng » (Bali), whose geometric decoration is close to the Dong Son tradition. This one is gigantic and nearly 2 meters high.

More than 65 citadels spread across the territories of the Bai Yue responded favorably to the call of the uprising led by the Vietnamese heroines Trưng Trắc and Trưng Nhị. Perhaps this is why, under Chinese domination, the Yue (which included the proto-Vietnamese or the Giao Chi) hid and buried all the bronze drums in the ground for fear of them being confiscated and destroyed by the radical method of Ma Yuan. This could explain the reason for the burial and location of a large number of bronze drums in the territory of the Bai Yue (Bách Việt) (Guangxi (Quảng Tây), Guangdong (Quảng Đông), Hunan (Hồ Nam), Yunnan (Vân Nam), Northern Vietnam (Bắc Bộ Vietnam)) during the conquest of the Qin and Han dynasties. The issuance of the edict by Empress Kao (Lữ Hậu) in 179 BC, stipulating that it was forbidden to deliver plowing instruments to the Yue, is not unrelated to the Yue’s reluctance towards forced assimilation by the Chinese.

In Chinese annals, bronze drums were mentioned with contempt because they belonged to southern barbarians (the Man Di or the Bai Yue). It was only from the Ming dynasty that the Chinese began to speak of them in a less arrogant tone after the Chinese ambassador Trần Lương Trung of the Yuan dynasty (or Mongols (Nguyên triều)) mentioned the drum in his poem entitled « Cảm sự (Resentment) » during his visit to Vietnam under the reign of King Trần Nhân Tôn (1291).

Bóng lòe gươm sắc lòng thêm đắng
Tiếng rộn trống đồng tóc đốm hoa.

The shimmering shadow of the sharp sword makes us more bitter
The tumultuous sound of the bronze drum makes our hair speckled with white.

He was frightened when he thought about the war started by the Vietnamese against the Mongols to the sound of their drum.

On the other hand, in Chinese poems, it is never recognized that the bronze drums are part of the cultural heritage of the Han. It is considered perfectly normal that they are the product of the people of the South (the Yue or the Man). This fact is not doubted many times in Chinese poems, some lines of which are excerpted below:

Ngõa bôi lưu hải khách
Ðồng cổ trại giang thần

Chén sành lưu khách biển
Trống đồng tế thần sông

The earthenware bowl holds back the traveling sailor,
The bronze drum announces the offering to the river spirit.

in the poem « Tiễn khách về Nam (Accompanying the traveler to the South) » by Hứa Hồn.

Thử dạ khả liên giang thượng nguyệt
Di ca đồng cổ bất thăng sầu !

Ðêm nay trăng sáng trên sông
Trống đồng hát rơ cho lòng buồn thương

The moon of this night shimmers on the river
The barbarians’ song to the sound of the drum arouses painful regrets.

in the poem titled « Thành Hà văn dĩ ca » by the famous Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty, Trần Vũ.
In 1924, a villager from Ðồng Sơn (Thanh Hoá) recovered a large number of objects including bronze drums after the soil was eroded by the flow of the Mã river. He sold them to the archaeologist Louis Pajot, who did not hesitate to report this fact to the French School of the Far East (École Française d’Extrême-Orient). They later asked him to be responsible for all excavation work at the Ðồng Sơn site.

But it was in Phủ Lý that the first drum was discovered in 1902. Other identical drums were acquired in 1903 at the Long Ðội Sơn bonzerie and in the village of Ngọc Lữ (Hà Nam province) by the French School of the Far East. During these archaeological excavations begun in 1924 around the Ðồng Sơn hill, it was realized that a strange culture with canoe-tombs was being uncovered.

These are actually boats made from a single piece of wood, sometimes reaching up to 4.5 meters in length, each containing a deceased person surrounded by a whole set of funerary furniture: ornaments, halberds, parade daggers, axes, containers (situlas, vases, tripods), pottery, and musical instruments (bells, small bells). Moreover, in this funerary skiff are objects of quite large dimensions and recognizable: bronze drums, some measuring more than 90 cm in diameter and one meter in height. Their shape is generally very simple: a cylindrical box with a single slightly flared bottom forming the upper part of the drum. On this sounding surface, there is at its center a multi-pointed star which is struck with a mallet. Four double handles are attached to the body and the middle part of the drum to facilitate suspension or transport using metal chains or plant fiber ropes. These drums were cast using a clay mold, into which a bronze and lead alloy was poured.

The Austrian archaeologist Heine-Geldern was the first to propose the name of the Đồng Sơn site for this re-excavated culture. Since then, this culture has been known as « Dongsonian. » However, it is to the Austrian scholar Franz Heger that much credit is due for the classification of these drums. Based on 165 drums obtained through purchases, gifts, or accidental discoveries among bronze workers or ethnic minorities, he managed to accomplish a remarkable classification work that still has a significant influence in the global scientific community today, serving as an essential reference for the study of bronze drums. His work was compiled into two volumes (Alte Metaltrommeln aus Südostasien) published in Leipzig in 1902.

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[Bronze drums: Part 2, VA]
[Bronze drums: Part 3, VA]

Con Đò (La barque)

j050807 Culture, Littérature octobre 17, 2025octobre 17, 2025

Con đò

Tình nào thổn thức đêm dài
Đò nào bến cũ tháng ngày tiếc thương
Bao năm chồng chất tóc sương
Sông nào đãi hết tỏ tường với ai

La barque

Pour quel amour se tourmente-t-on avec des longues nuits?
Pour quel sampan et son ancien débarcadère, continue-t-on à être accablé d’affections et de regrets ?
Les cheveux blancs s’accumulent sous le poids des années
Le fleuve n’arrive pas à tout effacer, à qui doit-on révéler les confidences ?

The boat

For what love does one torment oneself with long nights?
For what sampan and its old pier does one continue to be overwhelmed with affections and regrets?
White hairs accumulate under the weight of years
The river cannot erase everything, to whom should the confidences be revealed?

Po Nagar Shrine (Sanctuaire Po Nagar): Part 1

j050807 Art, Chămpa, Culture, tourisme octobre 15, 2025octobre 16, 2025

Thánh Địa Po Nagar

Version française

Version vietnamienne

This sanctuary is a must-visit for those who have the opportunity to visit Nha Trang, the most upscale seaside resort in Vietnam. Located on a hill at the mouth of the Cái River, it was built continuously from the 8th to the 13th century according to inscriptions found on site. The appearance of this sanctuary in the Champa kingdom is linked to the turmoil that Champa experienced in the 8th century. The Champa kingdom was actually a federation of several states or rather « city-states, » with the most powerful one playing the role of « leader » (vai trò chủ đạo). Upon the advent of a new dynasty, its pura ascended to the top rank and thus became the capital of the kingdom. Thanks to Chinese historical documents and Cham inscriptions, it is known that until the beginning of the 7th century, the pura (or city-state) of Singhapura (lion citadel) in Trà Kiệu (in the current district of Duy Xuyên, Quảng Nam province) predominated.

At that time, the northern royal lineage was always protected by the male deity Bhadresvara, a linga representing a benevolent form of Shiva honored in the most sacred sanctuary of Mỹ Sơn. A new royal lineage soon made itself recognized in the mid-8th century in the southern part of the Champa kingdom (Kauthara) and needed another deity to protect it.
Po Nagar Shrine

The Trà Kiệu and Mỹ Sơn region, belonging to the current Quảng Nam province (the Cham province of Amaravâti), thus lost its importance in favor of Khánh Hòa (Nha Trang plain) and Ninh Thuận (Phan Rang region). Although its political center of power (Virapura) has not been located to this day, it is claimed to be somewhere around Phan Rang. On the other hand, it is certain that a major political event took place in the south of this kingdom, as this perfectly aligns with the date 758 provided in Chinese annals to mark the beginning of the Huanwang period (or Hoàn Vương in Vietnamese), lasting about 100 years. Lin Yi (or Lâm Ấp in Vietnamese), the former name given to this kingdom, is no longer used and is replaced by Huanwang in Chinese texts. This deity is a one-faced linga and is honored in the sacred Pô Nagar sanctuary located by the sea. She is clearly feminine and presented as the shakti of Shiva, Bhagavati.

Despite the sidelining of the Prathivindravarman lineage of the South reported in Chinese annals in 859 and the seizure of supreme power by the Bhrgu lineage in the northern kingdom at Indrapura (near Hội An) in 875 with the new king Indravarman II, the deity of Nha Trang in Kauthara continued to be honored as the protective goddess of the kingdom.

This shows the willingness of the Bhrgu lineage to integrate it into a coherent religious system which, until then based on the veneration of Bhadresvara (Mỹ Sơn sanctuary), recognizes a complementary position for Bhagavarti. The religious bipolarity around the god Bhadresvara at Mỹ Sơn and the goddess Bhagavati at Nha Trang would henceforth dominate the entire kingdom. The veneration of Bhagavarti aligns not only with the importance given to the matrilineal system adopted by the Chams but also with the unity the Chams needed at that time in the face of their enemies (Vietnamese, Khmers, and Javanese).

In order to acclimate to an unfamiliar natural environment where the stupas and religious constructions of the Chams, bearing the deep mark of Indian culture, were visibly strange, frightening, and mysterious with statues of Brahma, Shiva, Vishnu, and Pô Nagar, these new Vietnamese arrivals were forced to develop a lifestyle adapted to their new cultural environment. They did not hesitate to use the remnants of Cham culture to transpose them into their own religious universe and places of worship. They attempted to establish harmony between the supernatural and temporal powers of the territories they had managed to conquer. Fearing to disturb local spirits capable of bringing them harm, they sometimes appropriated the places of worship of the defeated or local people. This is the case of the Pô Nagar sanctuary where the Champa goddess Uma was appropriated by the Vietnamese. They did not hesitate to assimilate the legend of Po Nagar into a mythology arranged in their own way without managing to erase the Cham substrate of the myth. The Champa goddess thus became Thiên Y A Na (Thiên Y Thánh Mẫu) of the Vietnamese. This appropriation is renewed in other places in Vietnam during the southward march: the Black Lady in Tây Ninh or the goddess Chúa Xứ on Mount Sam (Châu Đốc).

In his inventory of Cham towers located on the Pô Nagar site, the French archaeologist Henri Parmentier recorded about a dozen worship buildings grouped in an area of 500 m2 at the top of a hill. Due to weathering and war, only 5 buildings remain spread over two construction levels. At the top, there are two rows of towers, the first consisting of three towers from north to south: the main tower dedicated to the goddess Yan Pu Nagara (or Thiên Y A Na in Vietnamese), the southern temple, and the southeastern kalan. As for the second row, only one tower with a curved saddle-shaped roof remains, dedicated to the children of Thiên Y A Na.

Facing the main tower of the first row, at the lower level, stands an open mandapa consisting of two rows of ten octagonal brick columns, each measuring three meters in height and more than one meter in diameter, surrounded by fourteen similar columns of smaller size. These columns were intended to support a roof shaped like an inverted boat hull, whose structure was made of wood.

This mandapa was built by Senapati Par and mentioned in the steles erected by this general of King Harivarman in 817. It was connected to the main tower by a brick staircase. This type of building is found at other Cham sites: Mỹ Sơn (Đà Nẵng), Po Kloong Garai (Phan Rang), or Bánh Ít (Bình Định). According to Henri Parmentier, next to these brick buildings, there was a wooden temple (or bimong in Cham) which was somewhat a resting place for offerings.
Thanks to Cham inscriptions, we learn that in 774, the wooden religious sanctuary of Pô Nagar was pillaged and destroyed by the Javanese (Chà Và in Vietnamese). This term refers to the populations of the South Seas, i.e., the archipelago and the Malay Peninsula. It was rebuilt in 784 in brick and stone by King Satyavarman. Then, around the middle of the 10th century, the site of Nha Trang was sacked by the Khmers, whose inscriptions spoke of the loot (a gold statue) taken from the goddess Bhagavati.

It was reinstalled in 965 by replacing a stone statue by King Indravarman. The 10th-century statue under the reign of King Jaya Paramesvaravarman could be the one still seen today in the main tower, but its head was restored in the Vietnamese style.

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