Mythology and History

Happy new moon. Today is the first day of the 6th lunar month. I thought I'd look more into the meaning behind the 6th month, and share what I found, but I found diddly. Wikipedia states that this is the month of the lotus in the Chinese lunar calendar. Incidentally, the mix of Chinese and Vietnamese language is screwing with my head. I've just thought to myself "sen yue," which is fail. Half of the phrase is Vietnamese, and half is Chinese. At least our favorite open source reference gives us the Chinese characters for the sixth month. So I copied those characters and plugged them into a Google search, just to see if I could get more information. But our omniscient modern day oracle came back with hits from Japanese social networking websites. I'm not sure what to make of it all.

Yesterday, I posted a piece about the legend of Vietnamese origin. It was a fun piece for me to write. I built a narrative based on details I found around the internet. I had to make a few decisions about what to include and what to cut, not just for brevity, but also due to conflicting accounts. Mythologies tend to vary from source to source. This one on the heroes that founded Vietnam was no exception. The most notable variation between stories was Âu Cơ's relationship to the character Đế Lai, the cruel emperor of the north. In some versions, Đế Lai was the father of Âu Cơ. In others, Âu Cơ was Đế Lai's wife. To make the situation more like a soap-opera, there are versions in which Đế Lai was Lạc Long Quân's uncle, making the dragon lord's wife either his cousin, or his auntie, respectively.

What is the basis of these discrepancies? Well, history keeps its lips tight. The best I can do is cite the sources. Two significant Vietnamese historical texts record the mythology. The Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư was written in about 1479. In it, Âu Cơ was Đế Lai's daughter, but that's not the most interesting aspect. This text states that the Hồng Bàng dynasty began in 2879 BC. This date is significant because it puts the beginning of Vietnamese history about 8 centuries earlier than the first Chinese dynasty. This is huge, because the portrayal of Vietnam as the older country is basically a political bite of the thumb toward China. This text was put together during the Lê dynasty, roughly fifty years after the end of the fourth period of Chinese dominion over Vietnam. Đế Lai, the cruel northern emperor, was probably from China. His daughter Âu Cơ was Chinese as well, and subsequently, the Hồng Bàng rulers would have been descended from the Chinese. And so, this version of the fable might be an homage to the cultural influence that China had on Vietnam. It's like saying to China, we realize you've influenced us culturally, but we're still older.

In the other text, called the Lĩnh Nam chích quái, Âu Cơ was Đế Lai's wife. This text is a collection of Vietnamese stories. They were collected late in the Trần dynasty, sometime around the late 14th century, in an era when Vietnam must have felt elevated security and autonomy from China. Vietnam had been free from China for about 350 years. It had even fended off repeated Yuán/Mongol invasions during the 13th century. Vietnamese rulers of the Trần dynasty must have felt confidently autonomous from China. It seems their mythology reflects this autonomy. In this fable, it's not clear where Âu Cơ came from. There's no claim that the children of the dragon and faery were descended from the Chinese. Of course, the absence of evidence is no evidence for the opposing argument. It would help my research if I could get a good English source on the Lĩnh Nam chích quái, but there's no Wiki page and even the Encyclopædia Britannica doesn't mention it. Oh well.

At any rate, the difference between the date of Vietnam's origin and the point in time in which it was recorded is roughly 4,000 years. It's no wonder that there are competing mythologies. The myth was recorded twice, in two different political climates. There's two points here to realize. History is--and I realize I might make some of my historian friends roll their eyes at my folly--history is prone to subjective interpretation of the elite powers of a given period. And, Chinese and Vietnamese histories are linked. There's no separating one from the other. Kind of like "sen yue." And, in the search for information about the origins of the Vietnamese people, I still haven't found diddly.

So, for the next few posts I'll be looking at what the historians have to say about Vietnamese origins. I understand that the subject is contentious. I don't mean to incite or inflame. I'll just be reporting the academic account of who the Vietnamese are, where they came from, and how they got to Vietnam. And, if I'm lucky, I hope to draw parallels between the history and the mythology. Happy sixth month! Happy sen yue!