Grand Master Lê Văn Thịnh and the stone statue of a dragon biting its body

From: Tan Pham via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2024 1:24 AM
To: Diane Fox <dnfox70@gmail.com>
Cc: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Grand Master Lê Văn Thịnh and the stone statue of a dragon biting its body

Hi Diane,

I am glad you enjoyed the story. I was amazed when I first saw the sculpture. I did not expect such creativity and expression, which was well outside the traditional images of Vietnamese art then and even now.

There are other stories and artefacts, sculptures, temples etc. which will be in my coming book, Đại Việt and Champa, Part 1 (10th to 13th centuries) which I will share with you and the VSG where appropriate.

Kind regards,

Tan Pham (NZ)

Author of a book series on Vietnamese history: A Traveller’s Story of Vietnam’s Past.

Volume One: The Bronze Drums and The Earrings. ISBN:  978-0-473-59804-4. 

Volume Two: One Thousand Years - The Stories of Giao Châu, the Kingdoms of Linyi, Funan and Zhenla. ISBN 978-0-473-63527-5.

From: Diane Fox via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2024 6:58 PM
To: Tan Pham <nxb315kio@gmail.com>
Cc: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Grand Master Lê Văn Thịnh and the stone statue of a dragon biting its body

Wonderful!! I don’t have anything to add but thanks to you for this snippet of history/lore from a part of Viet Nam dear to my heart ( the quê hương of a good friend)

I’d love to hear what others have to say. 

My friend was from a village where Ly thương kiệt is said to have thundered his challenge to the once again invading Chinese:  Nam quốc Sơn hà ….etc

I hope you will keep us posted on what you learn!

Again…many thanks!!

Diane

Diane Fox, anthro PhD, retired

Living with Agent Orange—Conversations in Postwar Viet Nam. 

From: Tan Pham via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2024 4:28 PM
To: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Vsg] Grand Master Lê Văn Thịnh and the stone statue of a dragon biting its body

Dear List,

Below is another slightly off-the-wall email from me. I hope I do not ruin your weekend with a nightmarish image of a dragon/snake biting its body.

Below is a page in a draft manuscript of Volume Three of my book series, which I am writing and hope to publish this year. I would like to share it with you and ask if you have seen any sculpture like this in your travels and if you have any comments that you may have.

For those who are living in VN or visiting Hanoi, you may want to see the original sculpture in Bắc Ninh province or a copy at its museum. 

Lê Văn Thịnh and the stone statue of a dragon biting its body
Lê Văn Thịnh is a tragic character in Vietnamese history. As previously mentioned, he was the first top scholar  ̶  out of 10 successful candidates  ̶  of the Vietnamese academic examination system in 1075.  He was born in Bắc Ninh province sometime in 1038 or 1050, so he would have been in his late twenties or late thirties when he gained his top honour.  Lê Văn Thịnh then joined the king's household to help the king with his studies and within a year, in 1076, he became the Minister of Defense (Binh Bộ thị lang) which suggests that he was likely to be in his late thirties.  For the next two years, Đại Việt was at war with Song, and in 1084, the king sent him to negotiate with Song for the return of the border area that Song had occupied during the war. He was successful in getting six provinces returned.  

In 1085, he rose to become the Grand Master (Thái Sư), one of the most senior roles at the court of Lý Càn Đức. However, a decade later, in 1096, he was stripped of his title and sent to exile. What happened? According to VSL, the king was fishing in a boat on present-day West Lake, when the sky suddenly darkened, and a mist appeared. The king heard the noise of someone rowing from the mist; fearing for his life, he threw a spear at the fog and cleared it. Out of the mist, Lê Văn Thịnh appeared armed with murder weapons, and the king ordered his guards to disarm and arrest the man. Lê Văn Thịnh was charged with treason, but considering his contributions to the kingdom, the king sent him to exile instead of executing him.
In a later work, SKTT, the boat that emerged from the fog, carried a tiger, which was caught by a fishnet thrown by one of the guards and transformed into Lê Văn Thịnh.  While they tell slightly different stories, both sources mention one of Lê Văn Thịnh's servants who knew about magic which explains the fog and the metamorphosis from the tiger. In any event, his case has been the subject of many debates over the centuries as to whether he was innocent and was framed by his enemies at court or if he was a victim of the rivalry between the Buddhist faction led by the Empress Dowager Ỷ Lan and the Confucian camp of the civil service mandarins.  

Whatever the case, he died in destitution, possibly in 1096, and his people erected a temple in his hometown of Bảo Tháp in honour of him. In 1991, almost nine centuries after his death, the entrance next to the temple's entrance collapsed and revealed a dragon-scale stone slab. On the slab is a strange sculpture of a dragon biting his trunk and tearing at his body in a very horrific manner as shown in Figures 31 and 32. The entire piece was carved from a single, roughly three-ton solid block.  

The sculpture is reportedly carved many years after Lê Văn Thịnh's death during the Later Lê dynasty (15th to 18th centuries). Certain writers have interpreted the sculptor wanted to illustrate a historical injustice by showing the guilt of the king, Lý Càn Đức, tearing himself apart over the treason charge and the exile punishment that he handed out to the innocent Lê Văn Thịnh, his teacher and Grand Master. Today, one can view the sculpture at Grand Master Lê Văn Thịnh Temple in Bảo Tháp hamlet or its copy at the Bắc Ninh Museum in Bắc Ninh province.  

Figure 31 - The stone dragon (original).   Figure 32 - The stone dragon (copy).
The sculpture has two sections. In the first section, the head and two short legs with sharp claws join the truncated round body from the left. This section resembles a dragon. The head, without the ears, and the feet resemble a Komodo dragon. With its two feet' sharp claws grasping it, the enormous head bends down and bites into the second section. Unlike a Lý dynasty period dragon, there is no chin beard, mane, or two long sharp teeth associated with the head.  

  
The second section is from the right and features a truncated, snake-like body with a spirally coiled tail. The bodies of both sections are covered in fish scales. The dragon has large, projecting eyes, two noses that sit slightly above its massive mouth, and small, distinct ears that resemble bear ears. The right ear is closed, while the left has a deep hole. While it is tempting to believe the two sections belong to two different animals, the scales and the ridges on the body confirm that the two sections are of one mythical snake/dragon species. The artist most likely purposefully truncated the sections because it is easy to imagine that the two sections join together by a missing curled body. 

Kind regards,

Tan Pham (NZ)

Author of a book series on Vietnamese history: A Traveller’s Story of Vietnam’s Past.

Volume One: The Bronze Drums and The Earrings. ISBN:  978-0-473-59804-4. 

Volume Two: One Thousand Years - The Stories of Giao Châu, the Kingdoms of Linyi, Funan and Zhenla. ISBN 978-0-473-63527-5.