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Assertions of Cultural Well-being in Fourteenth-Century Vietnam: Part I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

O.W. Wolters
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I am interested in ways in which some Vietnamese in the fourteenth century were thinking about their fellow-countrymen. The writings of only a few of them are extant, but their understanding of a well-ordered society survived. For this reason, the fourteenth century may be a watershed in Vietnamese history. Thoughtful men during that century were concerned with more than reaffirming their country's independence, which was never in doubt and had been triumphantly vindicated during the three Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century. Their preoccupation was Vietnam's cultural well-being.

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Articles
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Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , September 1979 , pp. 435 - 450
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Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1979

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References

1 I am indebted to the Guggenheim Foundation for a Fellowship during 1972/73 that enabled me to study Vietnamese history. In December 1978, a draft of this essay was presented to a conference on the classical states of Southeast Asia, organized by the Social Science Research Council. I wish to thank Prof. Michael Dalby for his valuable suggestions on that occasion. I also wish to thank Dr. William O'Malley, Prof. David Marr, Dr. Keith Taylor, and Ms. Esta Ungar for their criticism. I am especially grateful to Prof. Harold Shadick for introducing me to the problems and excitement of Sino-Vietnamese poetry. I use the following abbreviations: TT (“the annals”) = Đại Việt S Ký toàn thir (Tōyō Bunko copy); TVTL = Toàn Việt thi luc (HM 2139 in the possession of the Société Asiatique, Paris; undated preface); HVVT = Hoàng Việt văn tu ên (EFEO microfilm A 3163, preface dated 1825). References to the Chinese imperial histories are to the Po-na edition. Dates in the essay are from the TT unless otherwise stated.

2 The exception is Lê Quát, believed to be a descendant of Lê Văn Thinh, and 11th-century scholar; Nhị Hoàng, “Thanh Hóa, trong bu-ó-c dầu kho sát ca Nhóm tho-văn Lý-Trần”, Tạp ch văn hoc 3 (1974): 155. Lê Quát was born in Ph-lý village, Đông- huyện, Thanh-hóa province.

3 E.g., Nguyên Khc Viên, Historie du Vietnam (Paris, 1974), p. 45; Nguyên Thù a H, “Vê kêt câú ang câp´ ca thiêt chế chính trị-xã hội Lý, Trần [On the structure of caste of the politicosocial institutions of the Lý-Trần period]”, Nghiên cú u lich su 169, 4 (1976): 46, 48.

4 Nguyên Trung Ngạn's inscription of 1335 states that Minh-tôn, the sixth Trần ruler, had received Heaven's protecting Mandate; HVVT, q. 7, p. 1. But I suspect that lip-service was paid to the doctrine. The ruling family's conviction is more accurately expressed by the imperial heir and by the Thiênninh princess in 1268 and 1370 respectively, when they asserted that the empire was their ancestors'.

5 The TT reveals the following instances of incapable Trân princes: princes failed on campaign in 1326 and 1329; Minh-tôn ip 1341 set aside an incompetent heir; a prince was executed for rapacity in 1347. Minh-tôn's plight is demonstrated when he appointed two of his numerous sons by secondary wives to help him in the government; see TT under dates of 1342 and 1353. His predecessors had been assisted by their uncles and brothers. Minh-tôn executed his uncle in 1328 on a trumped-up charge of disloyalty, a deed for which the ruler never forgave himself.

6 For a discussion of this subject, see O.W. Wolters, “Historians and Emperors in Vietnam and China: Comments Arising out of Lê Văn H u's History, Presented to the Trân Court in 1272”, Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Asia, ed. Reid, Anthony and Marr, David (Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, 1979), pp. 69–Google Scholar89. Professor Marr describes the Vietnamese attitude towards Chinese thought and practice in similar terms; Marr, David G., Vietnamese anticolonialism, 1885–1925 (Berkeley, 1971), pp. 19–20.Google Scholar

7 In 1290, immediately after the third Mongol invasion, the ruler decided to attack the Lao. When he explained his reason, his officials admitted that they lacked the “far-sightedness of a sage”. The Vietnamese sage-ruler's chief attribute was his ability to defend the country. The 13th-century historian, Lê Văn Hu, makes this dear in his comment in the TT under the date of 968, when Đinh Bộ Lnh assumed the title of “emperor”: “Was it not indeed Heaven's will that our country should again produce the sages' wisdom so that Triệu v ng would have a successor?” I refer below to the importance Hiru attached to Triệu vng, also known as Triệu-Đà.

8 Officials' poems during the 14th century reveal that they sometimes paused during their travels to ponder the mystery of the dhyāna. Chu Văn An's poem, written in retreat during the 1360s, is an example of how nature's solitude evoked Buddhist imagery; TVTL, q. 3, p. 7a [“A brief pause south of the village”]. The witnesses recognized Chu Văn An as an exemplary figure, and it is therefore prudent to note that V Tuấn Sán, in his study of Chu Văn An, believes that insufficient evidence is at present available to determine An's attitude towards Buddhism, and that the subject of anti-Buddhist sentiments in An's day requires much more investigation; V Tuấn Sán, “Chu Văn An, thầy dạy hoc và nhà trí thc ni tiêńg cuôí i Trần [Chu Văn An, an outstanding teacher and intellectual (end of the Trần dynasty)], “Nghiên clịch s, 137 (1971), 53.

9 On this subject see Wolters, “Historians and Emperors”, pp. 73, 77–78. I should have emphasized a particular reason why Triệu-Đà, though Chinese, was a convincing founder of the Vietnamese empire. The Lingnan passes in southern China were Triệu Đă's northern outposts, which meant that what came to be known in Vietnam as “the empire of the South”, or the Vietnamese empire, originally included part of what the Vietnamese knew as “the empire of the North”, or China. Kuangtung was not separated administratively from Chiao-chou, or Vietnam, until A.D. 264. Thus, the 15th-century historian Ngô S Liên was able to claim Kuantung as belonging to the original Việt (Chinese: Yüen) empire; TT under date of 137 B.C. Lê Văn Hu commented that, when Nhiếp was the Eastern Han legate in Vietnam, he was able to protect the whole of the territory once ruled by Triệu Đà. Hiru regretted that S Nhiêp's offspring failed to prevent the division of the Việt lands; TT under date of A.D. 210.

10 The Trần prince, Nhật Duật, who was interested in foreign cultures, ate with the Chains as the Chams did; TT under date of 1280. The cremation of widows was a “Cham custom;” TT under date of 1307.

11 E.g., Nguyễn Trung Ngạn's poem on the Bao village (TVTL, q. 3, p. 26a) and Phạm Manh's poem when he was touring the northwest (TVTL, q. 3, pp. 9b–10a).

12 Minh-tôn seems to be quoting from the Book of Mencius; Legge, James, The Chinese Classics. vol. II: The Works of Mencius (Oxford, 1895), I B, VII, 6 (p. 166)Google Scholar; Lau, D.C., Mencius (Penguin, 1970), p. 68.Google Scholar

13 Waley, for example, explains virtus in its early Chinese context as the “latent power” inherent in everything; Waley, Arthur, The Way and Its Power: A Study of the Tao Tê Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought (London, 1934), pp. 31–32Google Scholar.

14 Chu Hsi defined “capacity” as “natural powers” or “stuff”; Yu-lan, Fung, A History of Chinese Philosophy, I, trans. Bodde, Derk (Princeton, 1952), p. 121Google Scholar.

15 Việt điện u linh tệp (Saigon, 1961), p. 202, in connection with Lý Phuc Man.

16 TT under date of 1242.

17 A hint of the importance attached to the census is conveyed in the TTs statement that in 1243 the census was completed in two months.

18 TT under date of 1370.

19 Yamamoto, Tatsuro, “Myths Explaining the Vicissitudes of Political Power in Ancient Vietnam”, Acta Asiatica 18 (1970): 91–93.Google Scholar

20 Yu, Insun, “Law and family in seventeenth and eighteenth century Vietnam”, (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1978)Google Scholar.

21 Insun Yu, “Law and family”, p. 135.

22 I am grateful to Prof. Tsu-lin Mei for this information.

23 In 1123 an edict ordered families to be organized into groups of three to guarantee that they would not slaughter buffaloes.

24 In spite of frequent floods, the only famine mentioned in the TT for this period was in 1268.

25 Lê Tắc, An-nam chí-hr , ed. Ch'en Ching-ho (Huấ 1961), pp. 30–31.

26 Yüan-shih. ch. 209, p. 4b.

27 TVTL, q. 2, p. 2a. The poem is addressed to Sài Nghiêm Khanh, The Yüan-shih, ch. 209, pp. 6b–7a, states that Ch'ai (Viet: Sài) Ch'un and others were sent to Vietnam in 1278 and were welcomed by the thái úy. Quang Kh became thaí úy in 1271.

28 TVTL, q. 1, p. 12b, addressed to Ma-hiệp and Kìêu-nguyên-lang. The Yüan-shih, ch. 209, p. 20b, states that Ma-ho-ma and Ch'iao Tsung-liang were sent to Vietnam as envoys in 1301.

29 In 1251 Thái-tôn wrote an inscription for his sons and stressed the importance of such virtues as filial piety. In 1268 Thánh-tôn, the heir, appealed to his family to behave as elder and younger brothers.

30 The death of the empress's son is recorded to Lê Tr ng, Nam ông mộng luc (Shên Chieh-fu, comp., Chi-lu hui-pien, ts'ê 13, ch. 50, Shanghai, 1938), pp. 5b–6a. Lê ng was a son of Lê Quý Ly, who usurped the throne in 1400.

31 He became very angry in 1327 when an official told him that he, Minh-tôn, was more talented and virtuous than his father.

32 Trần Văn Giáp, Les chapitres bibliographiques de Lê Qui Đôn et de Phan Huy Chú (Saigon, 1937), p. 107, no. 56. Several of Minh-tôn's poems reflect an interest in the dhyāna.

33 Quoted in Phan Phu Tiên's comment in TT under date of 1357.

34 Phan Phu Tiên protects Minh-tôn's reputation by attributing the beginning of the dynasty's decline to Minh-tôn's successor, Du-tôn (1357–69). See his comments in TT under dates of 1296 and 1392. Tiên, in his comment under the date of 1357, says that Minh-tôn was benevolent and sincere.

35 The TT records outbreaks of lawlessness and punitive expeditions in 1351, 1354, 1358, 1360, 1366, and 1373.

36 Nghệ-tôn's mother, Minh-tôn's secondary wife, was Lê Quý Ly's aunt. Another aunt, also Minh-tôn's secondary wife, was the mother of Duệ-tôn, whom Nghệ-tôn appointed as heir. At the beginning of Nghệ-tôn's reign, Ly married Nghệ-tôn's young widowed sister.

37 In this essay I do not discuss the whole range of Lê Quý Ly's measures for strengthening the state. An account is given in Lê Thành Khôi, Le Viet-riam. Histoire et civilisation (Paris, 1955), pp. 197–200.

38 The rebel appointed hành-khiên.

39 Hán Siêu was born in Phúc-thanh village, Yêninh huyện, Ninh-binh province, in the southeastern corner of the delta.

40 His inscription is reproduced in HVVT, q. 2, pp. 2a–4b. The text is printed in Nguyễn Đỗng Chi, Việt-nam cồ văn học s(Hanoi, 1970) pp. 183–84. The TT incorporates part of the inscription under the date of 1354, when Siêu died.

41 For a summary of the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, see Kenneth Ch'en, Buddhism in China; A Historical Survey (Princeton, 1964), pp. 378–82. Siêi wrote more sympathetically about Buddhism; see Huỳnh Sang Thông, The Heritage of Vietnamese Poetry (New Haven, 1979), p. 21. no. 62. In 1343 he had declined the monks' invitation to write the commemorative inscription for a restored temple on the mountain to which he refers in his poem. In fn. 8 above I observed that V Tuấn Sán warns against hasty conclusions concerning anti-Buddhist sentiments in the 14th century. My essay suggests an appropriate context for explaining the witnesses' criticism of Buddhism.

42 Book of Mencius, I A, III, 4; James Legge, op. cit., p. 131; Lau, op. cit., p. 51.

43 TT under date of 1370.

44 Wolters, “Historians and Emperors”, p. 77.

45 Phan Phu Tiên's comment in the TT's under date of 1357.

46 Their status is mentioned in the TT's obituary notice for Chu Văn An under date of 1370.

47 Siêu and Ly use t and tng , terms used in the Book of Mencius; see Fung Yu-lan, A history of Chinese philosophy, I, 119. Nguyên Đan's poem, quoted below, also uses t ng. Quát uses hoc cung , and the context indicates that he has in mind a passage in the Ch'ien Han-shu: “Travelling inspectors must first go to the , see the students, and test them”, Ch'ien Han-shu, ch. 86, p. 2b.

48 For Chu Văn An's birth date, see Vũ Tuấn Sán, “Chu Văn An …,” 44. He was born in Thanh-liệt village near the capital.

49 My authority for these dates is Lê Tr ng's Nam ông mộng tục, p. 7a.

50 TT under date of 1370 in connexion with Chu Văn An's death.

51 In 1372 Hán Siêu was posthumously honoured in the Hall.

52 Đán addresses An by the name the latter assumed when he went into retreat in Dụ-tôn's reign. The second half of this poem refers to An's retirement, when Dụ-tôn was as unable to obtain his services as were the sage rulers, Yao and Shun, unable to obtain the services of Ch'ao Fu and Hsü Fu. The TT, under the date of 1370, quotes Du-tôn's mother as saying that An's services were unobtainable.

53 This sentence seems to be based on the Book of Mencius, VI B, VII, 2; Legge, op. cit., p. 436; Lau, op. cit., p. 176. Instead of ju (), Mencius writes “talented and virtuous persons” ().

54 TVTL, q. 3, pp. 20b–21a. For translations of this poem, see Anthologie de la littérature vietnamienne, ed. Nguyên Khắc Viên et al.(Hanoi, 1972), p. 125 and Huýnh Sang Thông, The Heritage of Vietnamese Poetry, p. 31, no. 75.

55 Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, II, 409.

56 E.g., Nan-shih. ch. 18, pp. 15a–b; Chiu T'ang-shu, ch. 21, chih 1, p. la. Bùi Huy Bích's compilation of Vietnamese poems gives instead of in Nguyên Đán's poem. The pronunciation and meaning of the two words are identical; Bui Huy Bich, Hoàng Việt thi tuyên (HM 2214, Société Asiatique copy, preface dated 1825), q. 2, p. 17a. Bùi Huy Bićh's version may be more accurate because it also supplies the word “Yi”, the river where Confucius bathed. An's retreat is being compared with that of Confucius. appears in the other texts, referring to the 14th century, that I discuss in Part II of this essay.

57 follow Tung-tsu Ch'ü's interpretation of li as “social and political institutions, including law and government”; Ch'ü, Tung-tsu, Law and Society in Traditional China (Paris, 1961), pp. 230–31Google Scholar and note 11 on these pages.

58 Sung-shih, ch. 439, p. 6b. One of Minh-tôn's poems exhibits the same attitude towards antiquity; he writes of “the simple and primitive rule of the Three Emperors”; TVTL, q. 1, p. 21b (“Peacefully sitting on a spring day”).

59 de Bary, W. Theodore, “A Reappraisal of Neo-Confucianism”, Studies in Chinese Thought, ed. Wright, Arthur F. (Chicago, 1976), p. 86Google Scholar.

60 TT under date of 1370. Nguyen Đán wrote a poem in honour of Manh; TVTL, q. 3, p. 27b. Manh is believed to, have given his sister in marriage to Quát; Trần Ngha, “Sắp xêp lai trât tụ các tác gia Trần-Hồ-Hạu Trần [On the classification of authors of Trần, Hồ, and post-Trần periods]”, Tạp chí văn hoc 2 (1976): 57.