The VAN LANG Kingdom (2879 BC – 258 BC, 2621 years)
Hits: 2907
P. HUARD1 & M. DURAND2
Once reaching Phong Châu, the fifty sons of Âu Cơ3 elected their elder brother king of the Hùng Dynasty.
That was the first king Hùng who reigned over Văn Lang, the first vietnamese kingdom. The Văn Lang, with its imprecise boundaries that extended from Vietnam to the Blue river4, is unknown to ancient Chinese geographies. Thereby, HENRI MASPERO5 has estimated that the Văn Lang of vietnamese historians, is just the old kingdom of Ye-lang (Dạ Lang), situated in the South of Tong-T’ing lake which the name had been ill-read and wrongly recopied by Tang Chinese historians who had transmitted their, error to their vietnamese colleagues. In fact, the character Ye (Dạ) could have been wrongly recopied Wen (Văn) and that is the reason why there was a confusion between Ye-Lang and Wen-Lang. There existed, by way of compensation, a Văn Lang located further in the South, on the septentrional part of present-day Central Vietnam; would it be that Văn-Lang which the authors had confounded with the Ye-lang and thought that these two kingdoms arc a same one.
Văn Lang, the first vietnamese kingdom, must have occupied a territory much more confined than that of the Xích Quỷ. The list of districts generally given by various histories and legends does not include any territory relating to Tong-T’ing lake6. The twelve districts do not go beyond Kouang-si and Kouang-tong in the North.
The Văn Lang had a quite long existence. Il had been transmitted between Hùng Kings from legendary time to 257 BC, date of its annexion by An Dương Vương7, a prince of Pa-Chou (Ba Thục).
The information we can gather on Văn Lang political organizations and social life are extracted from Chinese texts, not anterior to 4th century of our era, and from Vietnamese texts much more recent (14th century) but conveying very ancient facts and beliefs.
The inconvenience of drafting a tableau of this kingdom’s life resides in the difficulty to fix the epoch, or even the section of centuries through which it could be valid. The Hùng dynasty probably reigned during almost one thousand years, if we admit an average of fifty years for each reign; while the summary views on Văn Lang’s life are contained in a few scattered texts and a certain number of legends which a critical study has been commenced by HENRY MASPERO. On the 18 Hùng kings counted by tradition, we have very few onomastical and chronological precision.
Any general tableau will contain trails, attributable, for instance, to the year 1000 BC, or 300 BC. Besides, quite a great deal of those traits might belong to epochs posterior to Văn Lang kingdom and might have been transposed to it by vietnamese authors of the 14th and 15th centuries.
The Văn-Lang kingdom, if one believes in texts, was a feudal state, hierarchically organized but decentralized. It was placed under the aulorily of a Hùng (valorous) or (Lạc) king who originally had been elected for his courage and valour. That first Hùng king reigned at Phong Châu8, a place located in present-day Bạch Hạc. He was the eldest son of Lạc Long Quân, the ancestor of the Hundred Yue (Việt) i.e present-day Vietnamese, who was also genie protector of that first vietnamese dynasty. The first Hùng king divided the Văn Lang territory into districts confided to his brothers who were probably the Lạc Marquis (Lạc Hầu or civilian chiefs).
Those districts themselves were divided into circumscriptions entrusted to the king’s brothers or to persons in the royal family (Lạc Tướng Or military chiefs). Territories occupied by such Lords were called Lạc Điền.
Public functions such as king, marquis, generals (or chiefs) seem to have been hereditary. Male children of the king had the title of Quan-Lang and female ones were called Mệ Nàng or Mỵ Nương9. People have compared that political organization to the feudal system which still exists at the present lime in districts of middle and high regions of North Vietnam, particularly, with the Mường10 that still have a hierarchy of heredirary chiefs, united between themselves by bonds of vassality and sovereignty. The inhabitants of Văn Lang had reached a certain degree of civilization. Inheriting the techniques of their Xích Quỷ ancestors, they had improved them and even invented new ones. They were tillers who used fire to clear lands, and hoes to plough. They then came to practice cutting and burning turves; they sowed and reaped sticky and non-slicky rice (See the legend of Bánh Chưng). They, first cooked their rice in bamboo tubes, then came to use earthen and metallic pots. They knew about bronze. They were also fishermen and seamen. They talloed and painted on their bodies images of dragons (crocodiles or alligators), snakes and other aquatic beasts to assure themselves of a magic protection against those animals which they feared the attacks. With a same aim, they drew on their boats and vessels numerous heads and eyes of aquatic monsters. Their clothes originally were made with vegetal fibres. They also weaved mats. Their houses were built high on stills to avoid all possible attacks of wild beasts. They bore, according to certain Chinese texts, long hairs in chignon sustained by a turban. According to certain vietnamese legends they had, on the contrary, short hairs so as to “facilitate their marching in mountainous jungles“. They utilized areca-nuts and betel. The blackening of teeth is not explicitly indicated in the legend of the betel and areca-nul tree or legend of the Cao (Cau) family, but many vietnamese scholars pul it back to that primitive period. They must have been totem worshippers and practiced human sacrifices that lasted until the 10th century of our era, and such practices would have been suppressed by King Đinh Tiên Hoàng11. Marriages among them seemed to have been fairly free and were carried out in proprer seasons. Betel and areca-nuts played a great role in the betrothal. Marriage rituals comprised a sacrifice and a banquet before its consummation.
If one believes in vietnamese legends, during the reign of Hùng kings and probably towards the end of their dynasty, indirect relations were established with Occident or more simply with the South seas. The Legend of the Water Melon seems to testify the arrival in Vietnam of foreigners of a different race that would have imported the seeds, and this probably by sea (3rd century BC.?).
REFERENCES :
1: PIERRE HUARD (16 October 1901, Bosnia – 28 April 1983) was a French physician (surgeon and anatomist), historian of medicine and anthropologist, long in post in Indochina, dean of several faculties of medicine (Hanoï, Paris), rector of the Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny, a pioneer in the history of medicine. (See all details: P. HUARD)
2: MAURICE DURAND was a French-Vietnamese linguist born in Hanoi. (See all details: M. DURAND)
3: ÂU CƠ (嫗 姬) was, according to the creation myth of the Vietnamese people, an immortal mountain fairy who married Lạc Long Quân (“Dragon Lord of Lac“), and bore an egg sac that hatched a hundred children known collectively as Bách Việt, ancestors to the Vietnamese people. (See all details: ÂU CƠ)
4: Blue river: means Yangtze River, sometimes referred to as the Blue River in older English sources. The Yangtze or Yangzi (English: /ˈjæŋtsi/ or /ˈjɑːŋtsi/) is the longest river (6,300 km # 3,900 mi) in Asia, the third-longest in the world and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains (Tibetan Plateau) and flows 6,300 km (3,900 mi) in a generally easterly direction to the East China Sea. It is the sixth-largest river by discharge volume in the world.
5: HENRI PAUL GASTON MASPERO (15/12/1883, Paris – 17/3/1945, Buchenwald concentration camp, Nazi Germany) was a French sinologist and professor who contributed to a variety of topics relating to East Asia. (See all details: HENRI PAUL GASTON MASPERO) (See all details: HENRI MASPERO)
6: Tong-T’ing lake or Dongting Lake (Chinese: 洞 庭 湖) is a large, shallow lake in northeastern Hunan Province, China.
7: AN DƯƠNG VƯƠNG was the king and the only ruler of the kingdom of Âu Lạc, a classical antiquity state centered in the Red River Delta. As the leader of the Âu Việt tribes, he defeated the last Hùng king of the state of Văn Lang and united its people – known as the Lạc Việt – with his people the Âu Việt. An Dương Vương fled and committed suicide after the war with Nanyue forces in 179 BCE. (See all details: AN DƯƠNG VƯƠNG)
8: Phong Châu (峯州, Bạch Hạc District, Việt Trì, Phú Thọ Province today) was the capital city of Văn Lang (now Viet Nam) for the most part of the Hồng Bàng period,1 from the Third Dynasty to the Eighteenth Dynasty of Hùng kings.
9: Mỵ Nương (chinese: 媚 娘 or 媚 嬝) is a title used during the Hong Bang period to refer to the daughter of the Hung kings. (See all details: MỴ NƯƠNG)
10: The Mường (Vietnamese: Người Mường) or the Mwai are an ethnic group native to northern Vietnam. The Muong is the country’s third largest of 53 minority groups, with an estimated population of 1.45 million (according to the 2019 census). The Muong people inhabit the mountainous region of northern Vietnam, concentrated in Hòa Bình Province and the mountainous districts of Thanh Hóa Province. They are most closely related to the ethnic Vietnamese (Kinh). (See all details: MƯỜNG)
11: ĐINH BỘ LĨNH (924–979) (r. 968–979), originally named Đinh Hoàn (丁 桓 1), was the first Vietnamese emperor following the liberation of the country from the rule of the Chinese Southern Han Dynasty, as well as the founder of the short-lived Đinh Dynasty and a significant figure in the establishment of Vietnamese independence and political unity in the 10th century. (See all details: ĐINH TIÊN HOÀNG)
NOTES :
◊ Sources: Connaissance du Vietnam – P. HUARD. Hanoi, 1954.
◊ Image: wikipedia.com.
◊ Header title, citations, uppercase, bold, italic textes, featured sepia image has been set by Ban Tu Thư – thanhdiavietnamhoc.com
BAN TU THƯ
6 /2021