From dnfox@hamilton.edu Thu Jul 7 09:26:33 2005

Date: Thu, 07 Jul 2005 12:24:49 -0400

From: "Diane Fox (dnfox)" <dnfox@hamilton.edu>

Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

To: vsg@u.washington.edu

Subject: [Vsg] Hon Chen/Thien Y A Na?

Once upon a time I was told that the godess honored and supplicated at Hon Chen island in the Perfume River, near Hue, was Thien Y A Na, a Cham goddess.

Have others of you heard this, or other things?

thanks--

Diane

From mike.high@earthlink.net Thu Jul 7 10:33:41 2005

Date: Thu, 07 Jul 2005 13:33:14 -0400

From: Mike High <mike.high@earthlink.net>

Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: [Vsg] Hon Chen/Thien Y A Na?

Diane,

Yes, as a matter of fact, that's quite a fertile area for exploration. Thien Y A Na is the Vietnamese name of Po Nagar, who is most famously celebrated at the Cham temple in Nha Trang.

I wrote up a few things in a recent travelogue, summarizing some of my readings:

From the temples around Hue it appears that the Nguyen lords who settled here in the 17th and 18th centuries thought it important to pay homage to the Cham heritage.The most famous temple on the Perfume River is Thien Mu, which was founded by Nguyen Hoang in 1601 in recognition of a mysterious "heavenly lady" who had recently appeared on this promontory to prophesy the advent of a great lord who would come to rule the southern lands. Many scholars believe that the characteristics of the "Heavenly Lady" identify her as the same "Thien Y A Na" who was worshipped as "Po Nagar" at the Cham temple in Nha Trang.

NOTES ON PO NAGAR. According to Nguyen The Anh, Vietnamese rulers had already begun paying their respects to Po Nagar before the Nguyen lords came to the Perfume River--the Ly and Tran dynasties venerated her as a deity as early as the 13th Century, and she was among the"potent spirits of the realm" (Viet Dinh U Linh Tap). Oddly enough, the Cham goddess makes her first appearance in the Viet chronicles as an ally of Ly Thanh Tong, in his campaign against the Champa kingdom in 1069.Evidently, in the belief of the Viet rulers, there was no reason to suppose that the Cham had sole claim to Po Nagar's protection. In addition to enlisting her support, the periodic memorials and titles bestowed upon her may have been part of the process of pacifying and assimilating the many Cham who were brought north to Thang-long as slaves.

I've visited Thien Mu Temple by boat several times, but this was the first time that I had a chance to stop at the Temple of the Jade Cup, perched on a steep hill on the Perfume River. The foundation date of this temple is not known, but it is commonly considered to be dedicated to "Thien Y A Na." One Vietnamese researcher suggests that the inhabitants of the neighboring village are assimilated Cham who have continued the worship of Po Nagar in her modern, Buddhist form...

There are numerous essays relating Thien Y A Na to goddess manifestations in Vietnam, including the Holy Mother cult. PhilipTaylor's "Goddess on the Rise" also mentions some traditions that connect the goddesses of Nui Ba Den and Ba Chua Xu, though he cautions that these are not definitive by any means.

The best & most easily accessible article I can recommend is "The Vietnamization of the Cham Goddess Po Nagar" by Nguyen The Anh, in Essays into Vietnamese Pasts.

:: Mike High

From cwheeler@uci.edu Thu Jul 7 20:09:24 2005

Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 11:08:21 +0800 (SGT)

From: Charles Wheeler <cwheeler@uci.edu>

Reply-To: cwheeler@benfranklin.hnet.uci.edu, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: [Vsg] Hon Chen/Thien Y A Na?

Diane,

Mike's story resonates with my own experiences in the Hoi An region. I haven't been to Hon Chen, but Hoi An region has several such TYAN temples. If you're interested in digging further into Thien Y A Nha in the Hue and Hoi An vicinities, in addition to local scholars there are several essays in the old Bulletin des Amis a Vieux Hue. I don't have my notes here with me, but I do know there is an essay or two on Hue TYAN temples in the local Hue history journals. (Unfortunately, discussion of TYAN in the Hue area tends to begin and end at Thien Mu, instead of attending to other sites; I've had better luck with the literature on Hoi An and cities south, though they too focus on the larger temples. Fortunately for me, Hoi An's resident in the early 20th century took a keen interest in the 'curious' habit Vietnamese locals of Quang Nam had of engaging in so many Cham practices, from farming to boating to religion.) I never found anything of much use in ethnology journals, but maybe I did a sloppy job of it. There are some works on temples in the Hoi An area in archaeological journals & abstracts published in VN, but I don't recall anything from Hue, and definitely not Hon Chen. But then again, I was more focused on Hoi An when I looked. (If anyone finds anything, I'd love to know.)

Tran Ky Phuong could give you a good deal more information if you're interested, of course. Also, I've found Phan Thanh Hai [ditichhue@pmail.vnn.vn] to be a great source for information on Hue history.

Let me know what you find. TYAN temples in mien Trung. Minh Mang was, too; the Hoi An area has numerous memorial inscriptions dedicated to her in the temples. This was clearly a cultural strategy of state cooptation that Nguyen The Anh talks about in his article. In any case, the temples are a potentially good means for sleuthing out the ethnohistory of these regions. Especially for these estuarine or littoral areas, where Cham communities apparently remained long after Vietnamese rule became a well established fact.

Best regards,

Charles Wheeler