A question about Binh Ngo Dai Cao
From: Jason Morgan
Date: Sat, May 15, 2010 at 6:46 AM
Dear list,
I happened to see this blog entry, in which the author claimed that this might not be the "declaration of independence” as commonly understood.
http://leminhkhai.wordpress.com/2010/05/09/north-and-south-in-the-%e2%80%9cbinh-ngo-d%e1%ba%a1i-cao%e2%80%9d/
According to the author :
"Throughout much of the period prior to the twentieth century we can find the words “north” and “south” used by Vietnamese writers to refer to “China” and “Vietnam,” respectively. However, that is not what these terms refer to in the “Bình Ngô đại cáo.”
"For the sentence “Just as the areas of its territory are distinct, so are the customs in the north and south also different,” the subject is still “Our kingdom of Dai Viet.” “North” here cannot possibly refer to China, because no new subject has been introduced.
So if this sentence doesn’t refer to Vietnam and China, then what does it refer to? Well let’s see, Lê Lợi was from Thanh Hóa and had just brought the entire realm under his control, a realm in which scholars in the north (Hanoi) had recently cooperated with the Ming. With that as a clue, I’ll leave it to others to figure out the rest."
I understand that since the Le dynasty, there has often been a rivalry between the Thanh Hoa - Nghe An people and Thang Long people. So this kind of interpretation, if true, is not suprising. However, the problem is I have never heard about such an interpretation before. Could you offer your thought on this issue?
My sincere thanks,
Jay
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From: Shawn McHale
Date: Sat, May 15, 2010 at 8:16 AM
Jay,
This is not a new view. O'Harrow, in his Binh Ngo Dai Cao essay, discusses contending interpretations about "North" and "South" and comes to the conclusion that in Sino-Vietnamese usage, North would refer to China, South to Vietnam. Truong Buu Lam, on this list, has weighed in on this interpretation. Later, I seem to remember Keith Tayor disagreeing with this view, as he interprets Le Loi as speaking in regional terms. And I assume this English language debate has Vietnamese language antecedents.
Interpretation of this text aside, the problem, I suspect, is that modern historians in Vietnam have so wanted to emphasize national unity over the centuries (in the face of mounds of evidence of a more contested history) that the China/ Vietnma interpretation of this text has become so dominant.
Shawn McHale
Director
Sigur Center for Asian Studies
Associate Professor of History and International Affairs
George Washington University
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From: Jason Morgan
Date: Sat, May 15, 2010 at 3:53 PM
Dear Shawn, thank you for your explanation. I'll try to find O'Harrow's essay for more information. It would be fascinating to know whether young Vietnamese scholars will ever revisit this issue, although not in the near future.
Jay.
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam Ho
Date: Sat, May 15, 2010 at 6:40 PM
The problem with the interpretation of South as representing Thanh Hoa and North as the Delta is that the actual author of the Binh Ngo Dai Cao is Nguyen Trai and not Le Loi. And Nguyen Trai, for his pains, was very much a Delta man.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Kenneth T. Young Professor
of Sino-Vietnamese History
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From: Mike High
Date: Sun, May 16, 2010 at 9:06 AM
Indeed, it would be very strange to open a bold proclamation of the “pacification of the Ngo (Wu)” with a reference to different customs in the Song Hong and Song Ma regions.
If Nguyen Trai was using regional differences within Vietnam as part of an elaborate comparison to justify the Vietnamese uprising against Ming occupation, that would set up the basis for further division within Vietnam. (Think of the philosophical questions raised when West Virginia “seceded” from the Confederacy!) However, the rest of the proclamation doesn’t develop such a comparison.
This discussion inspired me to go back to O’Harrow’s 1979 article, which is full of rich detail on Ho Quy Ly and the Le “uprising.” As noted, O’Harrow concludes that Nguyen Trai was using “bac” and “nam” to refer to China and Vietnam. (As to the other point of view, he cites Ung Qua’s and T.B. Lam’s interpretation of the phrase as “emphasizing diversity within Vietnam itself.”)
I also revisited Keith Taylor’s “Surface Orientations” essay, also rich in detail—his essay doesn’t use the “Binh Ngo Dai Cao” proclamation as evidence of the conflict that he describes between the regions of “Dong Kinh” and “Thanh Nghe.”
Regionalism is a powerful undercurrent in Vietnamese history, but official pronouncements are understandably couched in terms of unity.
"Nguyễn Trãi’s Bình Ngô đại cáo (Proclamation on the pacification of the Ngo) of 1428,"
Stephen O’Harrow, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 10, 1979
“Surface Orientations in Vietnam: beyond Histories of Nation and Region,”
Keith Weller Taylor, Journal of Asian Studies 57, 1998
:: Mike High
Great Falls, Virginia
USA
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From: Charles Wheeler
Date: Sun, May 16, 2010 at 6:45 PM
I think one should be cautious about making sweeping claims about qualifiers like "north" and "south" over a thousand year time span and a radically changed geography (and ethnic "map") over that period. My own take, working with these references, is that they mean different things at different times. I agree with Shawn, that the impulse to associate "north" with China is great, and so should be taken skeptically. And Prof. Tai's emphasis on location is crucial. And also, when trying to make such fine distinctions in a historical document, don't believe anything you read in English or quoc ngu translation. Go to the source.
Charles Wheeler
Dr. Charles J. Wheeler
Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (Incorporating the Centre of Asian Studies)
The University of Hong Kong
G-09 May Hall
Pokfulam, Hong Kong
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From: Minh Tran
Date: Mon, May 17, 2010 at 5:28 AM
The author of that Blog piece mentioned something in the line of “Unless a new subject is introduced, the subject remains the same.” While structurally, there is no mention of China (Trung quoc) in the early section of the Bình Ngô đại cáo, the context of the essay would imply the declaration is aimed toward declaring a territorial division from their former colonizer because the following sentence actually references the Han, Tang, Song, and Yuan. Can we postulate that these dynasties 漢唐宋元 are referring to the Northern Empire and that they are dynasties that preceded the Ming?
仁義之舉要在安民，吊伐之師莫先去暴。
惟我大越之國，實為文獻之邦。
山川之封域既殊，南北之風俗亦異。
自趙丁李陳之肇造我國，與漢唐宋元而各帝一方。
Nhân nghĩa chi cử, yếu tại an dân,
Điếu phạt chi sư, mạc tiên khử bạo.
Duy ngã Đại Việt chi quốc,
Thực vi văn hiến chi bang.
Sơn xuyên chi phong vực ký thù,
Nam bắc chi phong tục diệc dị.
Tự Triệu Đinh Lý Trần chi triệu tạo ngã quốc,[1]
Dữ Hán Đường Tống Nguyên nhi các đế nhất phương.
The author of the Blog piece wants the readers to form a hermeneutical conclusion to what “North” and “South” refer to, because no new subject was introduced. Then, why would Nguyen Trai includes Han, Tang, Song, and Yuan in the sentence?”
Minh Huynh Tran
PhD Student
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam Ho
Date: Mon, May 17, 2010 at 5:51 AM
Thanks to Minh Tran for inputting the original text.
The Nam Bac chi phong tuc diec di harks back to "Nam quoc son ha Nam de cu", attributed to Ly Thuong Kiet in 1076. Even if that attribution is open to question, that line would have been circulating by 1428 among Vietnamese literati.
When thinking about pre-modern China and Vietnam, I am leery of thinking in terms of China and Vietnam and prefer to think of "nga quoc" as perhaps meaning "my realm" but also "my court" or "I" tout court. Borders were flexible by modern standards. The capital of China was located in Nanjing by the Ming founder but moved from Nanjing to Beijing by Yunglo, pretty far north.
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From: Minh Tran
Date: Mon, May 17, 2010 at 6:40 AM
I came across a paper written by Dr. Alexander Vuving. This piece explores what Vuving called Ideational polity or polities, where it analyzes different concepts of polities found in the 11th, 15th, and 20th century. The first piece refers to Lý Thường Kiệt’s Nam quốc sơn hà nam đế cư, the second is on Nguyễn Trãi’s Bình Ngô đại cáo, and the third is on Hồ Chí Minh’s Tuyên ngôn độc lập. Vuving looks at how each piece declares a so-called ideational polity against their adversaries. These so-called declarations are crucial junctures to which Việt Nam defines its geopolitical identity. In a way, Vuving views the semiotical implications of these pieces, especially its important political declarations against their acrimonious and more dominant colonizers.
Vuving writes, “These Vietnamese states are considered (by Vietnamese state-makers) as equal components of the world, be the world made of “the North” and “the South” (as in Ly Thoung Kiet’s and Nguyen Trai’s poem) or of the modern, sovereign nation-states (as in Ho Chi Minh’s declaration and Le Duan’s report).” In a way, we (or I) can interject that this is a declaration against the enemies, and rather than regional disunity.
Vuving even posits that the Bình Ngô đại cáo as the second declaration of independence. He writes, “In 1428[or 1427], after the Ming was forced to withdraw their troops from the country, Nguyen Trai, then chief minister, in the name of Le Loi, the new emperor of Dai Viet, composed a poem in order to proclaim the pacification. This work...is now considered by many modern readers [as] “the second declaration of independence of Vietnam.” Again, this is a common theme for modern readers, then how does the people of that era, 15th century, read this?
Vuving does not mention any region implication because he "interprets" it as mentioned above. Although I have not read Vuving in totality, I make no sweeping claim. If it is OK, I have attached Vuving's article, "The References of Vietnamese States and the Mechanisms of World Formation."
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From: Ngô Thanh Nhàn
Date: 2010/5/17
Dear Minh Tran,
I would like to offer my 2-cents.
Suppose we rely on this text alone to determine 南北.
1. Suppose first we need to determine sentence/phrase boundaries.
I would not rely on the text you cite to as correct punctuation for
the quoted phrase.
2. Since we don't have original text, we accept the punctuation placement.
3. Suppose we take 南北之風俗亦異 as a sentence to analyze. It establishes
南北 as 2 nouns.
The phrase 南北之風俗 establishes 南北 as 2 nouns of location.
The two nouns of location is anaphoric without antecedents.
4. In English you can say "When he was young, John loved fish sauce",
where "he" is a masculine and human pronoun. Anaphoric resolution "catches"
"John" (human, masculine) as "antecedent" (high in the syntactic parse
tree and closest to "he"). See an article on anaphoric resolution by
Ralph Grishman and Ngo Thanh Nhan, circa 1983).
5. Take the next sentence 自趙丁李陳之肇造我國. The only geographic
noun of location is 國 nearest to 南北.
6. Thus, forgive my jargon above, the algorithm in 4. "proposes" 國 to be
the "antecedents" of 南北 because they are all names of location.
7. Of course we have other clues to qualify 南北... without a need of other
texts to establish "pragmatic" knowledge [i.e. by that time, everybody knew
that 南 referred to Vietnam and 北 referred to China].
8. Thus, we do not need to say "Then, why would Nguyen Trai includes
Han, Tang, Song, and Yuan in the sentence?” because the next sentence
與漢唐宋元而各帝一方 may have some other role intended.
There seems to be a need to study syntax of Han Viet--which may not be simply
Chinese syntax.
Cheers,
Nhan
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam Ho
Date: Mon, May 17, 2010 at 7:55 AM
I would not think that guo (quoc) is necessarily a location. It is just as likely to mean "my court" The Chinese and Vietnamese equivalent of the royal "We" in English. Wouldn't the more traditional character for guo use wang instead of wo?
But whether we think of guo as referring to geography or court, the distinction remains that North and South do refer to different entities; Nguyen Trai is writing on behalf of Le Loi, not the tho ty from Thanh Hoa but the dynastic founder in charge of the realm bequeathed by the Dinh , etc... Interestingly, he does not start with Ngo Quyen but with Dinh. Ngo Quyen only called himself vuong (prince--a title putting him within the Chinese administrative structure). Dinh Bo Linh was called by his successor Tien Hoang, putting him on the same footing as Qin Shihuang and other Chinese emperors, i.e. outside of the Chinese polity.
I also think that Nguyen Trai wrote the Binh Ngo as much with the Delta elite as with the Chinese court in mind. Our customs are different but we are a civilized realm (I prefer not to think of nation in a premodern context). By civilized he meant "imbued with Chinese civilization." He ladled on the classical allusions to impress the Delta elite while reminding them that "our customs" are different.
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From: Ngô Thanh Nhàn
Date: 2010/5/17
Thank you, Prof. Hue-Tam,
I would say by the time the algorithm gets to 方 in the next
phrase 與漢唐宋元而各帝一方, 國 in the previous
parallel phrase 自趙丁李陳之肇造我國 must be a location.
-- Nhan
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From: Liam C Kelley
Date: Mon, May 17, 2010 at 12:06 PM
I don't want to turn this into an endless email fight but. . . Yes, Hue-Tam is definitely right that "quoc/guo" is not making a geographical statement. "Nga quoc" is a vague concept which refers to something more like a dynastic enterprise.
As for "civilization" and "customs," I think we need to heed Charles Wheeler's note of caution and be very careful about how we think of terms like those. They also change over time, but I would say that they were never like what those two terms mean to us today. In general, however, "van hien" was a universal standard which elite (who participated in the Sinitic intellectual/cultural world) aspired to, whereas "phong tuc" were more local, and in many instances (I'm not sure about the Binh Ngo dai cao) were considered not good by the elite. "Phong tuc" were what the elite often wanted to change so that "van hien" could prevail. Further, I think it's rare to find references to "national" "phong tuc." I think I have found some references (so that's why I take Charles Wheeler's point that we need to be careful as even the same term can be used differently at different times), but not many. That said, the Chinese would have said that An Nam has "phong tuc" because from their perspective it was an area which was not "van hien." It didn't have "van hien" it had "phong tuc." However, I don't think I've ever seen any Chinese reference to the "phong tuc" of China as a whole, because "phong tuc." Meanwhile, I know that I have seen plenty of references in the Nguyen where the court wanted to change "phong tuc" in the countryside.
Liam Kelley
University of Hawaii
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From: Minh Tran <mtran.csulb@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, May 17, 2010 at 12:11 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Structurally, the spatial relationship indeed plays a role in this poem/essay. If this is the case, then we should focus on the last two sentences, as cited by the article/blog to elucidate the relationship:
translation via O’Harrow (1979:171):
It was the Trieu, the Dinh, the Ly and Tran, who in succession built this country [quoc].
Even as the Han, the Tang, the Sung and Yuan, each was sovereign [de] in its own domain.
This references of country (quoc) and domain point to the earlier statements in the poem.
Nguyễn Trãi makes a big comparison between the two worlds of “North” and “South.” The phrase văn hiến chi bang or “civilized/cultured nation” marks a comparative notion of the people of Đại Việt versus others (whoever Nguyễn Trãi is referring to). Next, sơn xuyên chi phong vực refers to the differences in territories of mountains and streams and nam bắc chi phong as differences in customs of north and south. These references (territories and customs) is, if taken the context of the Sino-Vietnamese usage of the poem as pointed out by Vuving, Nguyễn Trãi is referring to the distinctness of the south (Đại Việt) and the north (Nhà Minh). Furthermore, Vuving writes, “Here, the text is reasonably not about the south and north of Dai Viet [sic], which is already the ‘southern empire,’ but ‘south’ and ‘north’ mean the southern and the northern empire respectively.” This also reference to O’Harrow (1979:168-9)
According to Vuving, quoc refers to Đại Việt. Why did Vuving says quoc is referring to Đại Việt?
If we continue the reading on the Bình Ngô đại cáo, we find that Nguyễn Trãi is referencing some important names.
故 劉 龔 貪 功以 取 敗,
而 趙 禼 好 大 以 促 亡 。
唆 都 既 擒 於 鹹 子 關 ，
烏 馬 又 殪 於 白 藤 海 。
Cố Lưu Cung tham công dĩ thủ bại,
Nhi Triệu Tiết hiếu đại dĩ xúc vong.
Toa Đô ký cầm ư Hàm Tử quan,
Ô Mã hựu ế ư Bạch Đằng hải.
we beat the ambitious Liu Kung
and crushed Ch’ao Chie with his dream of grandeur.
There was So Tu captured at Han Tu Pass.
and Black Horse, the Mongol come to grief at Bach Dang Bay.
Are these people not the invaders from the north? Or does quoc refers to the abstract realm?
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam Ho
Date: Mon, May 17, 2010 at 1:09 PM
I have to say that I agree with Liam Kelley about the distinction between van hien and phong tuc. Phong tuc is local (and often in need of altering to make them conform to elite notion of appropriate behavior) whereas van hien is universal (in the context of Sinitic universalism).
I won't speak for either Steve O'Harrow or Alexander Vuving, but I don't think we can read present meanings into past language, especially when it comes to terms such as nation and nationalism. North and South are, of course, different geographic directions; but is the poem really discussing what we would call, after Thongchai Winichakul, the geo-body of Dai Viet or something much more fuzzy?
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From: Minh Tran
Date: Mon, May 17, 2010 at 1:26 PM
I agree with Liam Kelley in that the word(s) changed with time. Lý Thường Kiệt’s interpretation of quốc is definitely different from Nguyễn Trãi’s rendering of quốc. For the former, that particular word in Nam quốc sơn hà nam đế cư points to the supreme support of the heaven, thus a cosmical calling. For Nguyễn Trãi, quốc has a more earthly construct, one of the people, a society of people that give legitimacy to its political order, a social calling. Thus, the former looks to the cosmic relation, while the latter is legitimized via the people because it is the people that stood up against their aggressors, both the Chinese and the Mongols.
And in contemporary time, quốc means nation-state, among other meanings.
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From: Liam C. Kelley
Date: Mon, May 17, 2010 at 1:58 PM
Yes, the Nam Quoc son ha poem has different connotations to it. There is a relatively recent phd dissertation (Shu-wei Hsieh, "Writing from Heaven: Celestial Writing in Six Dynasties Daoism," Indiana University, 2005) which has a lot of information about precisely the kind of "heavenly connections" that you find with earthly domains in writings from all of the "three teachings" of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism. This is likely the type of stuff that was being alluded to in that poem.
However, "legitimization via the people" is getting into very dangerous territory. There is a ton of documentary evidence which shows that the idea of "legitimization via the people" is a Western concept which was introduced into places like China and Vietnam (via Japan) in the early 20th century. This is one of the ideas which Liang Qichao's writings were so important for introducing.
Yes, in Han writings in China and Vietnam you can find terms like "quoc nhan," but they tend to refer to "the important people in the kingdom," i.e. the royal family and their supporters. And yes, there are statements about the hardships of "the people" during times of war or unrest, which can be read to mean common people as well. But legitimacy coming from those people?? In Europe that was a modern development which only came with the overthrow of monarchies. I think you would have a very difficult time demonstrating that Vietnam was any different. Like "civilization," this is another modern (Western) concept.