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Gods, Heroes, and Ancestors
An Interreligious Encounter in Eighteenth- Century Vietnam
Anh Q. Tran
Gods, Heroes, and Ancestors
An Interreligious Encounter in Eighteenth-Century Vietnam
Errors of the Three Religions
Edited, translated and introduced by
ANH Q. TRAN
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Tran, Anh Q., 1965– author, translator. Title: Gods, heroes, and ancestors : an interreligious encounter in eighteenth-century Vietnam / Anh Q. Tran. Other titles: Container of (expression): Tam giáo chư vọng. English. Description: New York : Oxford University Press, [2018] | Series: AAR religion in translation series | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017007445 (print) | LCCN 2017012745 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190677619 (updf) | ISBN 9780190677626 (epub) | ISBN 9780190677633 (oso) | ISBN 9780190677602 (cloth)
Subjects: LCSH: Tam giáo chư vọng. | Vietnam—Religion. | Vietnam—Church history—18th century. | Christianity and other religions—Vietnam. | Christianity and culture—Vietnam. | Christian converts—Vietnam—History—18th century. Classification: LCC BL2055 (ebook) | LCC BL2055 .T69 2018 (print) | DDC 270.09597/09033—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017007445 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
Ân Cha như núi cao vời vợi
Nghĩa Mẹ tựa biển cả mênh mông
High as a mountain is your merit, Dad
Vast as an ocean is your love, Mom
For my parents
To whom I am forever indebted for my Vietnamese heritage Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Preface xi
Abbreviations xvii
Introduction 1
PART ONE: Errors of the Three Religions in Context
1. When the Cross Met the Lotus: Catholic Mission in Tonkin During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 21
Tonkin of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century 21
The Development of Catholicism in Tonkin 25
Reception of Christianity in Tonkin 30
The Rites Controversy and Its Impact in Vietnam 36
2. Text and Context: Errors of the Three Religions 47
Defending the True Faith 48
The Text: History, Content, and Method 62
3. Of Gods and Heroes: Worship in Traditional Vietnam 76
An Overview of Traditional Vietnamese Worship 77
A Christian Evaluation of Traditional Worship 106
4. In the Realm of the Dead: Filial Piety and Ancestral Worship 108
Vietnamese Anthropology and Ancestral Worship 108
The Ancestral Rites in Practice 113
A Christian Interpretation of the Cult of the Ancestors 126
5. Refutation and Dialogue: Christianity vis-à-vis the Three Religions 133
The Theological Message of Errors 136
The Legacy of Errors of the Three Religions 140
Meeting the Religious Others 145
Conclusion 156
PART TWO: An Annotated Translation of TAM GIÁO CHƯ VỌNG
Preface 161
Book 1: The Errors of Confucianism 164
Book 2: The Errors of Daoism 233
Book 3: The Errors of Buddhism 270
Appendix A: Adriano di Santa Thecla’s Opusculum 323
Appendix B: Glossary of Sino-Vietnamese Terms Used in the Translation
Acknowledgments
This book is based on my doctoral research and studies of Vietnamese traditional religions under the guidance of Peter C. Phan of Georgetown University. I am extremely grateful to him for being my teacher and mentor over the years. From the earliest days of this project, I have been benefited by the assistance and advice of many individuals. For their direction and support, I owe a debt of gratitude to John Witek (1933–2010) and Leo D. Lefebure of Georgetown University, and Cuong Tu Nguyen of George Mason University. In my initial research, Antoine Tran Van Toan (1932–2013) of the Catholic University of Lille in France introduced me to the text of Tam Giáo Chư Vọng. The curator of the archives of the Missions Étrangères de Paris (AMEP) Gérard Moussay (d. 2012) and his assistant Brigitte Appavou helped me access the manuscript of the text and related materials. Father Pietro Scalia of the Discalced Augustinians in Rome generously gave me some private publications of the order. In Vietnam, I owe thanks to Ms. Lã Thị Minh Hằng of the Institute of Hán-Nôm Studies in Hanoi who helped locate some Sino-Vietnamese materials; and Br. Trần Kim Vinh and Mr. Nguyễn Trọng Hóa of the Catholic Hán-Nôm Translation Project (Nhóm Dịch thuật Hán Nôm Công giáo) in Hochiminh City for their help in deciphering difficult Sino-Vietnamese passages. Special thanks to Leon Hooper, the director of the Woodstock Library, and his associates, who provided me a haven for initial research and writing.
At different stages of writing and revising, various scholars and educated readers have read parts or all of the present work in various iterations. I am grateful for the insights, comments, suggestions, and corrections by, in alphabetical order, Katherine Barush, George Dutton, Sophie LeVan, Marcia McMahon, Ron Murphy, Lan Ngo, Phuong-Lan Nguyen, Charles Phipps, Hung T. Pham, John Siberski, Duc Vu, and the late James Walsh. Thanks also to Lisa Maglio-Brown and Melody Noll for their tremendous help in preparing the final manuscript. I
x
Acknowledgments
also want to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of Su-chi Lin for the cover illustration, the Chinese texts and the index.
I would like to express my gratitude to all who have accompanied me on my academic pursuit. Your generosity, encouragement, support, and prayer have made this project possible. They include my colleagues at Santa Clara University’s Jesuit School of Theology whose constant presence has lifted me up on occasional blue days of writing and revising. Thanks to the generosity of the former dean of the school, Tom Massaro, I had a semester off to work on this project while juggling other academic duties, and thanks to the Santa Clara Jesuit Community for offering material support during my revision of this project.
I am also honored to work with my editors at Oxford University Press, in particular, Cynthia Reed and John Nemec, as well as the anonymous reviewers of this book, who provided critical comments and feedback to sharpen the arguments and clarify the ideas. Thanks too, to Drew Anderla, Rajakumari Ganessin, Henry Southgate, and their team for their patience and care as production and copy editors.
Finally, many thanks for my family, friends, and my Jesuit brothers for their moral support and practical help.
Preface
In October 1773, two Catholic prisoners—one Spaniard, one Vietnamese, both of the Dominican order—appeared at the court of Trịnh Sâm, the viceroy of Tonkin (North Vietnam), each carrying a yoke stamped with four words: Hoa Lang Đạo Sư (Teacher of the Portuguese Religion). They were accused of spreading the “Portuguese religion,” a foreign and heterodox sect by the court’s standards. Fathers Jacinto Castaneda and Vicente Liêm de la Paz were allowed to defend themselves in an interreligious panel conducted by the presiding judge of their case, Prince Six, who was a relative of the viceroy. During the debate, the Catholic priests used Christian apologetic arguments and examples from the Chinese classics to explain the merits of Catholic doctrines and practices against those of their Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist opponents. Their eloquence was well received by the audience and even earned the admiration of the judge. Nevertheless, the sympathetic official could not save the two Dominicans from execution. On November 7, 1773, the two priests were beheaded for violation of the imperial prohibition of Catholicism.1 Their famous debate and martyrdom were etched upon the memory of generations of Vietnamese Catholics. The content of their legendary defense of the Christian faith2 was later written down as the Conference of the Four Religions (Hội Đồng Tứ Giáo), a multiedition Catholic apologetic text that was printed during the last half of the nineteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries.3
1. Both were canonized on June 19, 1988 by Pope John Paul II as two of the 117 holy martyrs of Vietnam.
2. In this study, the word “Christian” will be used to refer to the whole Christian tradition, whereas “Catholic” is restricted to the Catholic Church, its doctrines, and practices. Before the twentieth century, Christianity in Vietnam was identified with Catholicism.
3. The text, also known as Hội Đồng Tứ Giáo Danh Sư (Conferences of the Representatives of the Four Religions) appeared in at least twenty-three editions between 1864 and 1959, both in demotic script (nôm) and romanized characters (quốc ngữ). For an introduction to this text, see Anh Q. Tran, “Inculturation, Mission, and Dialogue in Vietnam: The ‘Conference of
Catholicism has been a minor but significant religion in Vietnam since its arrival during the sixteenth century. During its first three centuries of existence, however, the Catholic community was largely shaped by the experience of being marginalized and persecuted. More than the result of a concern for national security, the suppression of Catholicism by various Vietnamese rulers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries represented a clash of culture and ideology between the converts and their fellow citizens, especially on religious worship. A study of Vietnamese religions of this period is thus essential to understand the nature of such conflict. Yet, the scholarly study of the Christian mission in Vietnam has generally neglected the religious and cultural context from which Vietnamese Christianity emerged. Compared to the scholarly attention given to the Christian encounters with the religious cultures of China and Japan, little has been written on similar encounters and interactions in Vietnam.
Scholars who want to study the Vietnamese traditions have to rely on the description about the social, cultural, and religious life of Tonkin found in missionary reports and merchant’s travelogues of earlier centuries. Jesuit missionaries to Tonkin in the seventeenth century were pioneers in giving Europeans information about the little-known kingdom south of China. Besides the annual reports given to their superiors in Macau and Rome and in addition to their occasional letters, a few missionaries published their traveling accounts—often called “relations” in later collections. Travelogues by the Jesuit missionaries Giuliano Baldinotti, Alexandre de Rhodes, Giovanni Filippo de Marini, and Joseph Tissanier were influential eye-witness accounts that provide a general picture of the situation in Tonkin.4 Missionary accounts of Tonkin were translated into many European languages, and the information therein was often summarized in later dictionaries and encyclopedias.
Traders and merchants who visited or settled in Tonkin also composed their own accounts of what was going on. Among these, we can count the work of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Samuel Baron, William Dampier, and others.5 These traveling reports about a fascinating kingdom of two kings (a vua and a chuá)
the Representatives of the Four Religions,’ ” in Beyond Conversion and Syncretism: Indigenous Encounters with Missionary Christianity, 1800–2000, ed. D. Lindenfeld and M. Richardson (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012), 167–94.
4. See the bibliography for full reference of their works. Rhodes had lived for a total of seven years in Tonkin and Cochinchina (1627–30, 1640–45), Marini for twelve years; Tissanier came to Tonkin in 1658 and lived through a chaotic time there. Another missionary description of Tonkin is also found in the report by Cristoforro Borri (1631), although he was never in Tonkin.
5. Again, see the bibliography for full reference of their work. Tavernier’s account must be used with care, since he never set foot in Tonkin. His information mainly came from his brother, Daniel Tavernier, who worked briefly for the Dutch in Tonkin between 1639 and 1645, and the
were collected, translated, and reprinted in later collections. They were combinations of geographical reports, notes on fauna and flora, descriptions of people and customs, and any information that was deemed useful to other missionaries and traders. Until the mid-nineteenth century, these accounts were valuable sources of information on Tonkin.
Unearthing a Treasure
This book intends to contribute to the historical study of traditional Vietnamese religions by introducing, translating, and evaluating a never-before-published eighteenth-century manuscript entitled Tam Giáo Chư Vọng (Errors of the Three Religions). How I found this text is purely coincidental. Back in 2004, while doing research in the archives of the Foreign Mission Society of Paris (AMEP), particularly to trace the sources of the Conference of the Four Religions, I encountered a 1750 Latin treatise on Vietnamese religions entitled Opusculum de sectis apud Sinenses et Tunkinenses (A Small Treatise on the Sects among the Chinese and Tonkinese), (henceforth, Opusculum). The archivist informed me that a translation of this work was published in English in 2002.6 As I read the treatise, I noticed similarities among many arguments and issues raised by the Conference and Opusculum. Their descriptions of Vietnamese religious beliefs and practices are almost identical at places. However, the language and writing styles are different. The Conference was written in a dialogical manner and in the demotic Vietnamese script (chữ Nôm), and Opusculum is a series of essays in Latin with Sino-Vietnamese phrases inserted here and there. In its defense of Christianity and refutation of the tam giao, the Conference cites many Sino-Vietnamese phrases and expressions from the classics that did not appear in Opusculum.
The similarity and yet difference between the two texts led me to believe that the anonymous author of Conference might have relied on written source(s) other than Opusculum for his citation of the classics. Furthermore, upon reading the preface of the Opusculum, I realized that its author, the Augustinian missionary Adriano di Santa Thecla, claimed that his work relied on other written sources for his information on Vietnamese religions. He mentioned in particular two books written in Vietnamese: the Dị Đoan Chi Giáo (The Teaching of Hereterodoxy) and
Tonkinese who traded with him. In fact, Samuel Baron wrote about his experience in Tonkin partly to refute some of Tavernier’s claims.
6. Adriano di Santa Thecla, Opusculum de sectis apud Sinenses et Tonkinenses / A Small Treatise on the Sects among the Chinese and Tonkinese, trans. Olga Dror as A Study of Religion in China and North Vietnam in the Eighteenth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press / SEAP, 2002).
the Đại Học Chi Đạo (The Way of Great Learning) of Hilario Costa, bishop of East Tonkin.7 Adriano di Santa Thecla’s remark piqued my interest in searching for the lost Vietnamese text(s) that could be the source(s) of the Conference.
With the help of the late professor Antoine Trần Văn Toàn of the Catholic University of Lille, I discovered a Vietnamese text entitled Tam Giáo Chư Vọng from the same archive that houses the Opusculum. The text is written in the Romanized Vietnamese script (chữ quốc-ngữ) and described the “errors” of the traditional religious practices from a missionary’s perspective. The literary affinity between Opusculum and Tam Giáo Chư Vọng is remarkable. Both texts identify their authors as Italian missionaries evangelizing in Tonkin, and their contents are so similar, even mirroring each other at places, that they could be considered works drawn from the same source of information.8 After carefully comparing the two texts (see Appendix A), I believe that my discovery is related to the missing text that Adriano refers to in his treatise of Vietnamese religions.
A close reading of this particular Christian text in its historical and cultural contexts will present a valuable case study of Vietnamese religious practices as missionaries and converts encountered them. My study portrays the religious challenges that converts had to face as they sought to establish their Christian identity within their social interactions. To understand the history of Christian missions within its cultural and religious context, the descriptions of religious beliefs and rituals provided by Errors of the Three Religions are a valuable source to complement standard accounts of Vietnamese religious culture.
An Outline of This Study
As a study and a translation of the text, this book has two major parts. The first part is a historical study of Tam Giáo Chư Vọng or Errors of the Three Religions (henceforth, Errors) by way of a long contextual introduction distributed in five chapters. The first two chapters cover the religious and literary background of Errors. Chapter 1 considers the Catholic presence in Tonkin and its interaction with Vietnamese religions along with a brief description of the effects of the Chinese Rites Controversy in Vietnam. Chapter 2 introduces the text, including the genre, history of composition, structure, content, audience, and authorship of Errors as well as its relationship to other Christian texts in Vietnam at that time.
7. These works presumably were lost.
8. See Appendix A for a discussion comparing Adriano’s Opusculum and the Tam Giáo Chư Vọng.
The next two chapters focus on significant Vietnamese religious practices described in the text. Since many of the beliefs and rituals described belong to popular religiosity, the “errors” will not be analyzed according to the threefold division of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Instead, I will focus on the cultic practices in traditional Vietnam. Chapter 3 analyzes the many religious rites, including the worship of Heaven, nature, spirits, heroes, and religious figures in public cults as well as private rituals. Chapter 4 deals with the afterlife and the cult of the dead, according to both Confucian and Vietnamese folk Buddhist practices; for a comparison, I will also present the Vietnamese Catholic practice of ancestor veneration.
The last chapter evaluates Errors from a contemporary perspective. It traces the influence of Errors on later Vietnamese Catholic texts of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and appraises its legacy for the understanding of the nature of Vietnamese religions. The significance and limitation of the work in light of contemporary interreligious dialogue and theology of religions will also be discussed.
The second part contains an annotated translation of the original text published here for the first time. It comprises three books; each is divided into a series of dialogues between a Christian priest and a Confucian scholar, explaining and evaluating many religious beliefs, practices, and rituals of the Tonkinese that the author considers problematic or erroneous from a Christian point of view. Issues regarding Confucianism are treated in fifteen articles, Daoism in twelve articles, and Buddhism also in twelve articles. The footnotes of my translation will provide essential references for those interested in the details of Chinese/Vietnamese concepts, historical figures and religious customs.
For interested readers, Errors can be considered a snapshot of Vietnam’s traditional religious practices. Nevertheless, this rare work is not a survey of Vietnamese religions in general, but rather a Christian presentation of the “errors” (chư vọng) of the tam giáo in eighteenth-century Tonkin. The author focuses only on popular cults, beliefs, and practices that he considers harmful to the Christian life. Viewed from this perspective, readers should not rush to conclusions about the past or present religious situation in Vietnam based on the text alone, without a deeper understanding of the author’s motivation and circumstances. Errors helps explain the attitude of the missionaries toward certain religious beliefs and practices that were considered incompatible with Christianity. As elsewhere in East Asia, Christianity is often considered foreign to—and by extension, incompatible with—Vietnamese culture. In Errors, the author strives to show that the so-called native religions of Vietnam are in fact Chinese imports, and thus they are no more legitimate than Christianity when it comes to the question of compatibility with the minds and hearts of the people.
Preface
In the absence of other comparable works, Errors (and Opusculum) are the most informative source on traditional Vietnamese religious customs. Taken together, they are the first extant treatments of the Vietnam’s religious heritage. Whereas the discussion of Vietnamese beliefs, rituals, and worship in other missionary reports or travelogues are, for the most part, cursory and dismissive, Errors and Opusculum elaborate and supply the details that other descriptions of Vietnamese religions glossed over. In the aftermath of the Chinese Rites Controversy, they serve as handbooks to explain to Christian converts why certain beliefs and practices of their fellow Vietnamese were incompatible with the Christian faith. The translation, annotation, analysis, and evaluation of an important, hitherto neglected manuscript—Tam Giáo Chư Vọng will be a valuable addition to the corpus of important texts that describe the Christian perception of Vietnamese religious traditions from first-hand observations. By making available an annotated translation of a rare, complex, and important manuscript of the history of Vietnamese Christianity, I hope to encourage the readers to do further studies on similar subjects.
Abbreviations
AMEP Archives de la Societé des Missions Étrangères de Paris
BEFEO Bulletin de l’École Français d’Êxtreme-Orient
Cathechismus Cathechismus pro ijs qui volunt recipere baptismus in octo dies divisus
Conference The Conference of the Four Religions (Hội Đồng Tứ Giáo)
Cương Mục Khâm Định Việt Sử Thông Giám Cương Mục
DHCJ Diccionario Historico de la Compañia de Jesus
Errors Errors of the Three Religions (Tam Giáo Chư Vọng)
Loại Chí Lịch Triều Hiến Chương Loại Chí
Opusculum Opusculum de sectis apud Sinenses et Tunkinenses
Toàn Thư Đại Việt Sử Ký Toàn Thư
Gods, Heroes, and Ancestors
Introduction
Religions of Traditional Vietnam
The dominant ideology in pre-twentieth-century Vietnam was influenced by the “triple religious tradition” or tam giáo Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Any serious attempt to understand the history of the development of Christianity in Vietnam had to take into account this religious background.1 At first glance, a comparative study of Chinese religions can shed light on the Vietnamese tam giáo, since it is customary to assume that the cultural heritage of the country is an extension of imperial China.2 Historically, the area that comprised today’s North Vietnam was incorporated into China as a frontier province that lasted until the tenth century.3 During this long period of Chinese rule, there was a constant influx of Chinese migrants mixing with the indigenous population. As a result, over the centuries, Sino-Viet elements—from writing to religion, customs and laws, architecture and culinary practices—permeated into the population, even long after the Vietnamese people secured their autonomy from Chinese rule
1. The best survey on traditional Vietnamese religions today remains Léopold Cadière, Croyances et pratiques religieuses des Viêtnamiens (Hanoi, 1944–1956; repr., Paris: École Française d’Extrême- Orient, 1992); and Joseph Nguyen Huy-Lai, La tradition religieuse, spirituelle et sociale au Viêtnam: Sa confrontation avec le christianism (Paris: Beauchesne, 1981).
2. Scholars who study Vietnam find themselves vacillating between East Asian and Southeast Asian studies. In the field of Asian studies, it is customary to group Vietnam with China, Japan, and Korea as part of the Sinosphere. Contemporary scholarship, however, classify Vietnam studies as part of Southeast Asian studies.
3. It was called Jiaozhi (交趾) during the Han dynasty and Annam (安南) during the Tang dynaty, among others. For account of the history of Vietnam before the tenth century and its many names, see Keith W. Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).
and established their own kingdom called Đại Việt (大越) from the eleventh century forward.
Until the twentieth century, the country continued to adopt many facets of the Chinese culture. Since the majority of traditional customs, philosophy, social, and religious institutions in premodern Vietnam were similar to those of the Chinese, it is customary to see them as “copies” of Chinese institutions of the Han, Tang, Song, Ming, and Qing dynasties.4 In the history of Christian mission, the conflation of China and North Vietnam was also carried over in ecclesiastical policies.5 During the nearly one-hundred-year debates on the Chinese Rites Controversy (1645–1742), many religious practices of Tonkin were cited as examples of Chinese superstition by those who opposed the Jesuit method of evangelization.6
This observation is partially correct. After almost two millennia of Chinese influence, it is difficult to distinguish between which cultural and religious elements are native to Vietnam and which were borrowed from its northern neighbor. Nevertheless, it is insufficient to describe Vietnamese traditional religions through Chinese religious and philosophical texts, for not everything in China was mirrored in Vietnam. In appropriating the religious teachings and practices from China, Vietnamese people also developed their own version of tam giáo.
A characteristic of traditional Vietnamese religions was the tendency to harmonize diverse religious beliefs and practices. Endowed with a practical religious sense, people were disposed to welcome and accept the possibility of multiple religious sentiments. The Vietnamese language did not have an equivalent word for the Latin term religio. Instead, people referred to religion as “way” (đạo) in common speech, or “teaching” (giáo) in scholarly writings.
The traditional religions of Vietnam can be a characterized as a blending of both indigenous spiritual cults and the teachings and practices of Chinese religious traditions. According to the noted French missionary Léopold Cadière, the
4. See for example, Alexander Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model (1971; repr., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988); Stephen O’Harrow, “Men of Hu, Men of Han, Men of Hundred Man: The Biography of Si Nhiep and the Conceptualization of Early Vietnamese Society,” BEFEO 75 (1986): 249–66; Neil Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Liam C. Kelly, Beyond the Bronze Pillars: Envoy Poetry and the Sino-Vietnamese Relationship (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005).
5. When Rome appointed François Pallu, MEP (1626–1684) as the first Apostolic Vicar for Tonkin in 1658, he was also put in charge of the vast regions of South China.
6. The footnotes attached to the 1704 and 1715 papal pronouncements against the Chinese Rites mention drawing on the descriptions of the rites by Alexandre de Rhodes and others who labor exclusively in Vietnam.
“true religion of the Viet people is the cult of the spirits.”7 The people venerated elements of the natural world, such as the sun, moon, stars, mountains, streams, rocks, and trees, as well as spirits of deceased ancestors, heroes, and even people who died accidentally. This indigenous form of animism was the foundation on which Confucian ethics, the Buddhist view of the afterlife, and Daoist magical practices were integrated.
The story of the development of the three teachings/religions of traditional Vietnam before the tenth century was shrouded in obscurity. The few surviving records and artifacts make it difficult to delineate the development of these traditions during the early period. It seems like the introduction of these traditions coincided with the greater influx of Chinese migrants in the local population and with the introduction of Chinese civilization to Tonkin during the first millennium of the common era.8 In the following sections, I will sketch a history of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism from its beginning until the eighteenth century.
Confucianism
Confucianism came to Vietnam along with Chinese customs during the Han dynasty.9 Early attempts to bring “civilization” to the Viet natives were met with resistance, for the Han officials could not subdue the indigenous population after the annexation of the Nan-yue kingdom in 111 bce. By the third century of the common era, Shi Xie (Sĩ Nhiếp or Sĩ Tiếp), a learned scholar and a good administrator of the Jiaozhi commandary (r. 187–226), was able to promote
7. Cadière, Croyances et pratiques religieuses des Viêtnamiens, 1:6.
8. For a general account the development of the Three Religions of traditional Vietnam, I rely on the Vietnamese primary sources which were composed in Sino-Vietnamese: the Đại Việt Sử Ký Toàn Thư (Complete Chronicle of the Great Viet), abbreviated as Toàn Thư; and the Khâm Định Việt Sử Thông Giám Cương Mục (The Imperially Ordered Mirror and Commentary on the History of the Viet), abbreviated as Cương Mục. Another important source is the encyclopedia of Phan Huy Chú, the Lịch Triều Hiến Chương Loại Chí (Categorized Records of the Institutions of Successive Dynasties), abbreviated as Loại Chí. See the bibliography for the full references and translations into Vietnamese of these works.
9. For an introduction to Confucianism in Vietnam, see Nguyen Ngoc Huy, “The Confucian Incursion into Vietnam,” in Confucianism and the Family, ed. Walter H. Slote and George A. De Vos (Albany: SUNY, 1998), 91–136; Keith Taylor, “Vietnamese Confucian Narratives,” in Rethinking Confucianism: Past and Present in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, ed. John B. Duncan and Herman Ooms (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), 337–69; Liam C. Kelly, “Confucianism in Vietnam: A State of the Field Essay,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 1, nos. 1–2 (2006): 314–70; see also Nguyen Huy-Lai, La tradition religieuse spirituelle sociale au Viêtnam, 127–92.
Confucian learning among the natives. For this reason, he was later on credited by the Vietnamese scholars as the “originator of Viet learning” (nam giao học tổ) for his efforts to propagate Confucian thought, along with Chinese writings, literature, rites, and customs.10 Yet, before the eleventh century, the impact of Confucianism on the population, beyond a few people who worked in official capacities, was unknown.
During the early period of independence from China, under the Đinh (968–980) and Early Lê (980–1009) dynasties, Vietnamese rulers often appointed Buddhist monks, the most learned men in the country, as court advisors and chancellors (quốc sư). However, a century later, the kings of the Lý dynasty (1009–1225), although Buddhists themselves, realized that they needed a strong sociopolitical system to govern the country and to resist Chinese incursion from the north. They decided to appropriate Confucian statecraft to secure loyalty, establish law and order, and bring stability to society. At the same time, they continued to use Buddhist advisors in their court.11 With the establishment of the National Academy (Quốc Tử Giám) in 1070, where sons of aristocratic families studied Confucian literature, Confucianism gradually exerted a greater role in the court of independent Đại Việt.
Although most officials were still chosen from military families or Buddhist and Daoist monks, civil-service examinations, first held in 1075, were employed to select competent mandarins to serve the expanding bureaucratic needs.12 Members of aristocratic families and the monks competed in a wide range of subjects, including the teachings of Confucius, disseminated through the works of Dong Zhongshu and others.13 The incorporation of Confucianism into the examination curriculum provided a political philosophy and a system of ethics to maintain the social order. Selected elements of Confucian morality and political philosophy were appropriated to construct a practical philosophy for civil life and governance. Through its emphasis on the virtues of filial piety and loyalty
10. After his death, various legends and worship were attached to him, especially in Departed Spirits of Viet Realm (Việt Điện U Linh Tập); Shi is honored in some temples today as King Sĩ (Sĩ Vương). See Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam, 70–80.
11. Keith Taylor, “Authority and Legitimacy in 11th century Vietnam,” in Southeast Asia in the 9th to 14th Centuries, ed. David C. Marr and A. C. Milner (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1986), 139–76.
12. Toàn Thư, Bản kỷ, 3:8a (translation, 1: 294); Loại Chí, Khoa mục chí, 1 (translation, 2:7–8). During the Lý dynasty, examinations were held in 1086, 1152, 1165, 1185, and 1193. The exact content of these exams were not known, but it was most likely based on similar civil-service examinations of the Tang and Song dynasty.
13. Van Doan Tran, “Confucianism: Vietnam,” in Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy, ed. Antonion S. Cua (New York: Routedge, 2003), 173–74.
and the Three Bonds (tam cương), that is, the subordination of wife to husband, children to father, and subject to ruler, Confucianism formed the relational ethics necessary in an agrarian society. The mixing of the pragmatic elements of Confucianism with Buddhist and Daoist metaphysical elements results in a harmonization of the three teachings that, from a Vietnamese perspective, more or less share the same roots, that is, from China. Beginning in 1195 under the reign of Lý Cao Tông, the examination included teachings from the Three Religions, and the practice continued during the Trần dynasty (1225–1400).14 It provided the kings of Lý and Trần dynasties with the needed institutional framework to run the country and defend it from invasions from the north (China) and the south (Champa and Khmer).15
During their brief occupation of Đại Việt (1407–1427), Ming officials launched a project of Sinicization.16 They established a number of Confucian schools and brought newly edited Confucian classics and Neo- Confucian works.17 This policy altered the course of Confucianism in Vietnam even long after the Ming had gone. Civil-service examinations that began during the LýTrần era were expanded and revised under the Lê dynasty on the basis of the Ming curriculum. Beginning in 1442, civil examinations were organized every three years at three levels: the province (thi hương), the national (thi hội), and at the imperial courts (thi đình) to recruit competent administrators for the kingdom. Examinations at all levels took four days, the first day on the Chinese classics (kinh nghĩa), the second day on composition of official writings, petitions, and reports (chiếu, chế, biểu), the third day on composition of poetry and prose (thi phú), and the fourth day on philosophical, historical, or political essays (văn sách). At the province level, successful candidates who passed the first three days of exams were awarded the title learned person (sinh đồ or tú tài), and those who passed all four exams were entitled recommended scholar (hương cống or cử nhân). Candidates who passed all four exams at the national level were named
14. The examination based on a Three Religions curriculum was first given in 1195, and again in 1227 and 1247. Loại Chí, Khoa mục chí 1 (translation, 2:7–9).
15. On Confucianism in the Trần dynasty, see O. W. Wolters, Two Essays on Đại Việt in the Fourteenth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale Southeast Asia Studies, 1988).
16. Toàn Thư, Bản kỷ, 9:25b (translation, 2:252). Also see John K. Whitmore, “Chiao-chih and Neo- Confucianism: The Ming Attempt to Transform Vietnam,” Ming Studies 4 (1977): 51–91.
17. Toàn Thư records that “[in 1419] the Ming sent officials to bring over the Four Books, Five Classics, Compendium of Nature and Principle (Tính Lý Đại Toàn), On Goodness (Vi Thiện Âm Chất), and On True Filial Service (Hiếu Thuận Sự Thực) to teach Confucianism in all districts, counties, and prefectures.” (Bản kỷ, 10:3b; translation, 2: 259). The first three books are mentioned in Errors of the Three Religions.
