https://science.thanglong.edu.vn/index.php/volb/issue/feed 2023-02-22T16:29:21+00:00 Open Journal Systems <p>About Van hien and Heritage (Vol. B), published in English language.</p> https://science.thanglong.edu.vn/index.php/volb/article/view/25 2023-02-21T15:33:31+00:00 Peter Kornicki pk104@cam.ac.uk

Chinese texts circulated widely in the Sinographic sphere, so much so that one can speak of an ‘East Asian book-road’. Books written in literary Chinese travelled mostly, but not exclusively, in one direction, from China to the neighbouring states. Vietnam was one of those states and in this article I examine how Vietnam fits into the East Asian book-road by considering the evidence for the transmission of Chinese texts to premodern Vietnam.

2023-02-21T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2023 https://science.thanglong.edu.vn/index.php/volb/article/view/28 2023-02-22T15:27:42+00:00 Le Giang Doan Thi Phuong Thuy Nguyen

Nguyễn Thông 阮通 (1827-1884) was a poet and historian in the Nguyễn Dynasty. He served in positions such as the principal of the imperial academy, the administrative commissioner of Quảng Ngãi Province and the administrative commissioner of Bình Thuận Province. He was the author of 越 史通鑑綱目考略 (Việt sử thông giám cương mục khảo lược/A Brief Revision of the Comprehensively Reflected Chronicles of Việt History), usually shortened as 越史考略 (Việt sử khảo lược/A Brief Revision of Việt History), after being assigned to revise the series 欽定越史通鑑綱目(Khâm định Việt sử thông giám cương mục/The Imperially Commissioned Comprehensively Reflected Chronicles of the Việt History), which had been collectively composed under imperial order. In Việt sử khảo lược, Nguyễn Thông dedicated a section to Vạn Lý Trường Sa 萬里長沙, consisting of both the Hoàng Sa and the Trường Sa archipelagos (internationally known as the Paracel and the Spratly archipelagos, respectively). Studies of Vietnam’s islands and maritime sovereignty have barely mentioned this important document. This article introduces Việt sử khảo lược and its significance in confirming Vietnam’s sovereignty over the two archipelagos.

2023-02-22T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2023 https://science.thanglong.edu.vn/index.php/volb/article/view/29 2023-02-22T15:34:51+00:00 Thi Oanh Nguyen

This article uses the methods of textual criticism and interdisciplinary research with reference to toponymy, cultural studies and anthropology so as to analyze some place-names recorded in the copy of Lĩnh Nam chích quái (LNCQ) which is now preserved at the Institute of Sino-Nôm Studies in Hanoi (shelfmark A.2914). As a result, it can be concluded that the text of A.2914 was compiled by Đoàn Vĩnh Phúc in 1584 based on a text compiled by Vũ Quỳnh in 1492. Also, based on the place-names listed in LNCQ A.2914 and in maps such as the Hồng Đức Atlas, the Thiên Nam road map, the Cảnh Hung Atlas and the Đồng Khánh geography, this article clarifies the date of the copies of the Hong Duc Atlas which are preserved in Vietnam and Japan. This article argues for the necessity of identifying the stemma of extant manuscript versions in an effort to determine the "original text". Furthermore, the vocabulary and phraseology of these works need to be studied in combination with cultural re- search in order to identify the oldest version, an indispensable step before translating and publishing Han-Nom works.

2021-11-30T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2023 https://science.thanglong.edu.vn/index.php/volb/article/view/31 2023-02-22T15:41:23+00:00 Thanh Tung Nguyen tungnt.nv@hnue.edu.vn

Despite being a very valuable book, An Nam chí nguyên (Ānnán zhì yuán) 安南志原 has long caused doubt and controversy among Vietnamese and international scholars. Of all its aspects (title, compiler, structure, date, etc.), the provenance of the book is the most controversial topic. This paper, by recounting the history of questioning the origin of the book, as well as introducing and examining some related documents, aims to contribute to determining the clear and reliable provenance of each part of the book. The paper suggests that An Nam chí nguyên’s parts mostly originated from gazetteers which were compiled by officials of the Míng Dynasty. Thus, the paper contributes to affirming the value (reliability, originality, rarity, etc.) of the book. Concurrently, the paper thoroughly explains the origin of the title An Nam chí nguyên and put an end to the long-standing controversy about this title. Through the survey and comparison between relevant documents, the paper also discusses the role and contribution of Gāo Xióngzhēng (Cao Hùng Trưng) 高熊徵 - the only identified author who is often attributed to An Nam chí nguyên, to the book. Finally, the paper proposes some issues that need to be investigated further to have clearer and more accurate perceptions of the textual issues of the book.

2023-02-22T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2023 https://science.thanglong.edu.vn/index.php/volb/article/view/30 2023-02-22T15:41:23+00:00 Van At Le

Hoàng Lê Cảnh Hưng bản đồ is an atlas which depicts the road from the capital (Thăng Long) to Champa. This article applies statistical, comparative and interdisciplinary methods and a cartographic study- oriented approach to discuss the characteristics of cartography in the 19th-century Vietnam, focusing on Hoàng Lê Cảnh Hưng bản đồ. Although the extant atlas is a copy made in the 19th century (1833), it retains many of the original text captions. However, some changes were also made in accordance with the copyist’s geographical knowledge at that time.

2023-02-22T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2023 https://science.thanglong.edu.vn/index.php/volb/article/view/32 2023-02-22T15:49:08+00:00 Momoki Shiro momoki@let.osaka-u.ac.jp

This paper tries to shed new light on the research on the village history in the Red River Delta during the 18th to early 19th centuries, based on the reexamination of the materials collected at former Bách Cốc Village (Vụ Bản District, Nam Định Province) and its surrounding villages in the joint field research project during 1994-2006. Although several preliminary studies on these materials have already been published, there is still room for deeper research. After summarizing the history of the research for the communal village in Northern Vietnam, this paper closely examines the information of landholdings in 1805 of Bách Cốc and two neighboring villages (Tiểu Cốc and Dương Lai). The striking deviation among these villages are then analyzed from new viewpoints other than conventional one that concentrate in the scale of landholdings (of only rice fields). For instance, judging from the records of Bách Cốc and another nearby village named Thị Mai, female landholders played an important role through their marriage in the land transfer among villages. Records of Tiểu Cốc shows that, besides rice fields, the land category of “housing lots, gardens and ponds” should be paid more attention to understand the household economy and the relationship among clanspeople as well. Finally, textual problems so far overlooked (the lack of uniformity among the sources of a same category and that among the listed information within a single material as well) of well-known materials related to the three villages such as địa bạ (land cadasters) and gia phả (family genealogy) are raised, hopefully providing basis of further research.

2023-02-22T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2023 https://science.thanglong.edu.vn/index.php/volb/article/view/33 2023-02-22T15:53:46+00:00 Ueda Shinya

In this article, family structure and land ownership in Vietnam during the first half of the nineteenth century are considered by analyzing two testaments and the land cadastre of the Nguyễn Dynasty. From these, it seems probable that the nineteenth-century Vietnamese village had multi-household compounds that were biased toward patrilocal residence. These compounds share certain characteristics with Southeast Asian multi-household compounds and indicate that paternal kinship groups (dòng họ) were formed from cohabitation groups based on bilateral descent owing to the spread of patrilocal marriage with the popularization of Confucianism in the early modern period. Although abundant village documents still exist in Vietnam, they have not been fully utilized as historical materials owing to a lack of cooperation with anthropologists. The analysis in this article incorporates anthropological as well as historical perspectives and offers new possibilities for the utilization of village documents.

2023-02-22T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2023 https://science.thanglong.edu.vn/index.php/volb/article/view/34 2023-02-22T16:01:01+00:00 Yoshikawa Kazuki jichuan_hexi@yahoo.co.jp

Although previous studies have provided a general outline of the administrative policies of the Nguyễn Dynasty in the Northern Uplands, further research is needed on the Nguyễn court’s governance in the region and its effort to maintain state integration during the mid-nineteenth century. This study examines the transitioning local governance of the Nguyễn Dynasty through official documents, by focusing on the revival of the native chieftain’s post in the Northern Uplands. This analysis draws on terminology changes of “native chieftains” [thổ ty 土司] and “native officials” [thổ quan 土官] recorded in primary sources, which has not been considered by previous studies. Prior to the Minh Mang reforms, “native chieftain” only referred to those recognized by the court-maintained list of native chieftains, whereas “native official” referred to local people holding positions beginning with the word “native.” Subsequent to the suppression of Nông Văn Vân’s revolt, the native chieftain’s post was abolished. In Lạng Sơn Province, the usage of “native official” was discontinued in 1846, when Vi Thế Tuân’s post changed from native prefect to district magistrate. In the Lạng Sơn and Cao Bằng Provinces, a series of attacks by Chinese bandits in the 1850s, caused the revival and recognition of the native chieftain’s post as a category, exempt from labor and military services, without implying the revival of the pre-Minh Mang governance system. In fact, the Nguyễn court nominally maintained an administrative system similar to that in the delta provinces, but viewed the native officials’ revival as a retreat from the Minh Mạng reforms.

2023-02-22T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2023 https://science.thanglong.edu.vn/index.php/volb/article/view/35 2023-02-22T16:07:39+00:00 Thi Thuy Lan Do landttt@ussh.edu.vn

In the studies of Vietnamese territorial expansion, the perception of the ‘March to the South’ has become overwhelming in scholarship. Beginning in the 16th century and in collaboration with the group of Nguyễn Lords, the southward movement turned out to be most active and was able to reach the end of the long coast-line forming the shape of the letter S that characterizes modern Vietnam’s territory. Ever since then, the Việt people have been dominant in the Central region, the Lower Mekong and have even touched the Central Highlands in the West. Nevertheless, the Vietnamese history of going up to the mountains and going west started much earlier and it was another part of the history that has not been covered to any depth in Anglophone publications, despite a number of excellent works, especially in recent years (Anderson 2007, Churchman 2016, Baldanza 2016, Davis 2017, Anderson & Whitmore 2017, Lentz 2019, and others). While these authors so far have focused on the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands and the Northeast uplands, mostly over a limited period, this article offers an overview of the relationship between the Đại Việt central state and the entire upland regions through a ‘longue durée’ approach, from the Pre-Modern to the Early Modern periods. The Northwest region will be the focus both spatially and chronologically. Firstly, I seek to answer the following question: What were the conceptualizations that the Đại Việt imperial courts of Lý, Trần and Lê had built up towards the people and lands in the mountainous areas around Thăng Long (Hanoi), further up to the Northeast and especially the Northwest regions? Although retaining the traditional view of looking north from the delta, this study attempts to challenge the theoretical concept of ‘Zomia’ about the disjunction between highland and lowland polities, as seen from the case of Lý - Trần - Lê Đại Việt and its surrounding powers.

2023-02-22T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2023 https://science.thanglong.edu.vn/index.php/volb/article/view/36 2023-02-22T16:16:49+00:00 Komine Kazuaki komine@cronos.ocn.ne.jp

This article takes comparative tale literature as one facet of the study of the Sinographic sphere in East Asia and reads the various works included in Yuenan hanwen xiaoshuo jicheng not as ‘Sinitic fictional literature’, as suggested by the title of the collection, but as ‘Sinitic tale literature’. Focusing on important collections of tale literature such as the early 14th-century Việt điện u linh tập lục, the late 15th-century Lĩnh Nam chích quái, the mid-18th-century Công dư tiệp ký and the late 18th-century Kiến văn lục, I have selected some particularly interesting tales and here offer analyses of them. Behind these collections of tale literature were literati officials who were deeply involved in the formation of state identity and ideology. These were living collections which were revised and rearranged generation after generation. The contents changed with the times, too, moving gradually from mythic tales narrating the origins of the world to everyday topics, popular legends, Buddhist tales and other tales. I argue that Vietnamese tale literature, which has hitherto not been well known, has a significance which requires its position in the East Asian Sinographic sphere to be rethought and I suggest that more collaborative research is needed.

2023-02-22T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2023 https://science.thanglong.edu.vn/index.php/volb/article/view/37 2023-02-22T16:23:18+00:00 Thi An Tran tranan1962@vnu.edu.vn

Thiên Y A Na is a special female deity in the system of Vietnamese goddesses. On the one hand, historical ups and downs are reflected in the transition of her story; from a story about a Chăm goddess (Po Ina Nagar) to a story about a Vietnamese goddess (Thiên Y A Na). On the other hand, cultural changes, which mask discourses of power, and the cultural symbiosis phenomenon, which represents the vitality of ancient beliefs in spite of the deepening and spreading roots of new beliefs, can be observed from an analysis of performing practices of the Po Ina Nagar/Thiên Y A Na cult. Using theories on folklore genres, including myths and legends, and cultural symbiosis theory as well as the concepts of “discourse” and “invented tradition,” this paper critically analyzes the use of myths and legends in the creation of discourse, identifies the impact of discourses of power on the formation and transformation in the tangible and intangible heritage complex of Tháp Bà Po Ina Nagar (Nha Trang, Khánh Hòa), and confirms that cultural symbiosis has brought about heritage cohesion and encouraged the enduring vitality of the religious life of local communities.

2023-02-22T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2023 https://science.thanglong.edu.vn/index.php/volb/article/view/38 2023-02-22T16:29:21+00:00 Xuan Giao Chu dzjao@yahoo.com.vn

Based on ethnographic field surveys over many years in a coastal village of Fukuoka (Japan) combined with a historical anthropology approach, this article presents and explains an exception to the existing theoretical framework on tourism and tourism development in the fields of folklore and cultural anthropology in Japan. It is the case of an isolated and completely unknown small island that has been deeply involved in the local tourism service system since the early twentieth century and became a famous resort destination for a large area covering the two prefectures of Fukuoka and Saga for about half a century, and then faded very quickly after 1945, with the result that it now looks pristine as if nothing has changed since ancient times. Since current theories on tourism often focus on the present, it is easy to overlook individual realities in localities. These individual realities can only be discovered by combining the long-term field survey method with an historical anthropology approach (harmoniously combining data from observations at the present with on-site documentation).

2023-02-22T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2023