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[This
paper is translated from french by Duy Tâm.]
Rethinking the Status of Vietnamese Women
in Folklore and oral History
Gender Relations in Legends and Vietnamese history
Since
the dawn of the Christian era, the Vietnamese woman has shown both
determination and combativeness. These qualities have been
demonstrated in the persons of the Trung Sisters, not to name them.
Let us just remind ourselves that they are the very first historical
figures - as opposed to mythical ones - to have assumed
rebellion against Chinese domination. According to Nguyen Trai, a
scholar whose literary talent was coupled with a military career,
they renamed the country,
Hùng Lac:
Hung, being
undoubtedly the name of the clan, and
Lac that of the ethnic
group, wherefrom the Vietnamese people is descended. Another text
reveals a no less puzzling detail: the two siblings' surname was Hùng
How, then, not be tempted in speculating on a relation between this
term Hùng and the homonymous first dynasty of Vietnam? Having
had a close look at it, what does one see: a name, Hung, borne by two
different families, separated by an interval of three centuries, that
is, if one refers to the official historiography, dating the
beginning of the Hùng dynasty at around 2600 BC and its fall
at the end of the 3rd century BC. This would simply mean that each of
the 18 Hùng sovereigns,
all males, should have reigned
an average period of one hundred years, if one is to concord with the
date of the Trung Sisters' rebellion in AD 43. Indeed, all common
sense prevents us from considering something so ludicrous. Through
the grace of what miracle could all Hùng sovereigns have
enjoyed a longevity as surprising as supernatural? Moreover, one
knows that the legend of the Hùng dynasty appeared for the
first time, as late as the XVth century, during the Lê dynasty,
after the Ming had been ousted. This precision ought to be underlined
for, as noted Ta Chi Dai Truong, no document prior to that date, has
ever mentioned the existence of such a legend
How did it suddenly come into existence in the XVth-century official
history and namely in Ngo Si Lien's
Dai Viet su ky toan thu
(The Complete History of Dai Viet)? Is it a mythification or the will
of the new ruling dynasty to rewrite history and, in so doing, erase
those parts of history that would not conform with the official line?
Be that as it may, the
history of Vietnam and of her monarchs has always been strewn with
legends which, in the absence of written sources, can prove, within
their own limits, to be useful material. If the founding myth of the
Viet people may now be read in text-books, the mystery as to its true
origin remains whole. Ethnologist Nguyen Tu Chi is the only one to
have attempted to fathom it. Let us, in turn, briefly recall this
legend and read it to the letter.
Vietnam's
national history in its legendary part relates that the Viet people
descends from a mythical couple, Lac Long, an offspring of the
dragons, and Au Co, a fairy. They gave birth to a hundred eggs, out
of which a hundred sons were hatched. Notwithstanding this happy
progeniture, the couple had to part because of astrological
incompatibilities -one belonging to the water element and the other
to the fire element. But before each going their own way, Lac Long
and Au Co divided up the children: half followed their father back
into the waters, territory of the dragons, while the other half went
with their mother up to the mountains. Comparing this legend with a
similar Muong version, Nguyen Tu Chi sees in this separation, a
symbol of the divorce, at a date undetermined, between the two cousin
peoples, the Viet and the Muong
This hypothesis is yet to be confirmed. For the time being, let us
just limit ourselves to the narration of this most astounding legend.
What
has become of the
fifty sons who went in the steps of their dragon-father and returned
to the waters? Nobody knows. For if the Viet people has been able to
develop and prosper, it could only have done so on the firm ground,
where the fifty others remained with their mother, Au Co. (Despite
the fact that they live on a long coast, the Vietnamese have always
preferred the mainland). At this stage of the enquiry, one may ask
oneself how fifty males - those who stayed with the mother - have
been able to reproduce without the aid of any other female, except
that of their own mother. Did they marry among neighbouring tribes,
and in this case, which ones? And how is it, then, that the legend
should not have retained the female factor in the national
reproductive process? Did Au Co resume her role of genetrix? In the
latter case, incest would have been the original mode of reproduction
in those pristine times - we are in 2000 BC, remember! In other
words, the Vietnamese people would be the descendants of the fifty
sons who remained with their mother. So here, it goes without saying:
the maternal element becomes essential. Must one conclude that this
legend, which appeared in the XVth century, the golden age of
confucianism in Vietnam, should have left such a patent trace of a
matrilineal society? Another detail ought to be noted: the «hundred
sons» produced by this mythical couple, may be an unambiguous
indicator of the confucian predominance of men over women. But how
could the forebears of the Vietnamese people in 2000 BC could have
conceived of a theory which had not yet been born? Was Confucius not
Buddha's and Socrates' contemporary, in the VIth century BC? The
legend proves utterly anachronistic in the face of historical
evidence. However, in the share of their progeniture, Au Co appears
to have been the strict equal of Lac Long's, since she was entitled
to half of the children. Is this proof of the legend's feeble
construction, if one accepts it as the work of the confucianists -
who considered males to be superior to females - , or must one just
see a deliberate emphasizing of a tdifficult transitory period during
which two antagonistic systems were at loggerheads. Or is it just an
indication that the practices evoked had not quite disappeared at the
moment of the legend's fabrication?
This
legendary story is testified in the common phrase, known to every
Vietnamese,
Con rong chau tien, «children of the dragon,
grandchildren of the fairy », a proud epithet which the
Vietnamese have bestowed upon themselves to legitimize their origin.
Here again, one notices that, «dragon» and «fairy»
are not on the same hierarchical level. The former is placed just
above the ego-level whereas the latter is once-removed from there
(grandmother or great-grandmother, since the term
chau is used
both by grandchildren and great-grandchildren). The dissymetry, both
parental and temporal, situates the female element prior to the male
element. From this expression, at least two assumptions may be made :
-
relations between parent (
viz. the father) and child are
closer; consequently, the male takes precedence over the female.
- second hypothesis : the
grandparents' position, in this case : the grandmother, is more
important than the parents', represented here in the person of the
father, because the elder comes before the younger. This temporal
indicator which recalls the respect of ancient rituals forces one to
acknowledge a prevalence of women over men. In short, the male/female
opposition remains, though the male is no more, as has often been the
case, represented as the omnipotent figure.
In
another respect, if one looks at the literary form of the phrase
Con
rong, chau tien, that which comes to mind is the scholarly style
of parallel sentences
(câu dôi), very much in
fashion in the Chinese classical culture. In the sentence
con (child)
is opposed to or rather finds its parallel (
doi)
in
chau (grandchild); likewise, for
rong (dragon) and
tien
(fairy). Conceived by a confucianist scholar, this
expression could only have come into being during the sinization
period. It is highly probable that it should have appeared at the
same time as the aforementioned founding myth in the XVth century.
Last
remark: the dragon is one of the four wonder animals, embodying
imperial power in Chinese symbolism, introduced in Vietnam at the
very earliest in the beginning of the Christian era. This remark also
applies to the Lac Long and Au Co episode, and specifically to Lac
Long. The adoption of this honorific symbol could only have been the
works of the sinized ruling classes.
Long is, besides, a
Chinese term for «dragon»; the Vietnamese vernacular
being
rông. In the same perspective, one may also read
in text-books a variant where
Lac Long becomes
Lac Long
Quan (Lord/His Worship Lac Long) and
Au Co becomes
Bà
Au Co (The Mistress Au Co). Lac Long is here qualified with the
title
Quan used for a person of high rank. The nominal group
«Lac Long + Quan» follows the Chinese syntax ; on the
converse, it is the Vietnamese syntax which is applied to the
feminine element «Ba + Au Co». Two rationales therefore
cohabit in the same tale: the male element imbued with Chinese
thought, and the female one reflecting Vietnamese usage, syntactical
and otherwise.
As
for the term
tien, it is a Chinese-based word which may be
translated by «fairy», «immortal», «being
that has attained immortality through wisdom and detachment»
(
tu, in Vietnamese). One observes that
Tien in Chinese
is formed by two characters : « mountain »,
preceded by the radical « man ». In other
words,
tien ought merely to designate «the man in the
mountain». Would it be pushing it too far to assume that the
feminine ancestor of the Vietnamese - the fairy Au Co - be a
Montagnard ? Did the population of today's Vietnam not correspond
with a slow emigration from the South of China and through the
mountains to the plains? One could, of course, carry on speculating
endlessly; but with the true intention of finding new paths, and
without prejudice or partiality, to prepare the ground for further
fields of investigation is no vain endeavour. Even though this last
interpretation may seem far-fetched, the term
tien does
nevertheless convey a Chinese notion that could not have been
introduced into Vietnamese society before its sinization. One falls
once more on an absolute anachronism.
Notes
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