Historian Keith Taylor made the comment a few decades ago in his The Birth of Vietnam that the Vietnamese “learned to articulate their non-Chinese identity in terms of China’s cultural heritage.” (xxi)
This is an interesting idea, but how is it possible? How can someone articulate a “non-X” identity in the cultural heritage of “X”?
If it is possible, then what kind of identity is it? Can an ethnic group have an identity of itself as different from an Other by expressing itself through the Other’s cultural heritage?
These questions were in my mind recently when I read some comments that Ngô Sĩ Liên made in the fifteenth century in a document that he drafted when he presented his history, the Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư, to the emperor.
This is what he wrote,
“Đại Việt is located to the south of the Five Passes, Heaven’s delineation between south and north. Its founder was one of Shen Nong’s descendents, an emperor given rise to by Heaven. This is why he was able together with the Northern Court to each empire over a separate area.”
大越居五嶺之南，乃天限南北也。其始祖出於神農氏之後，乃天啓真主也。所以能與北朝各帝一方焉。
Nước Đại Việt ở phía nam Ngũ Lĩnh, thế là trời đã phân chia giới hạn Nam – Bắc. Thủy tổ của ta là dòng dõi họ Thần Nông, thế là trời sinh chân chúa, cố thể cùng với Bắc triều mỗi bên làm đế một phương.
The Vietnamese translation here comes from an edition published by the NXB Khoa Học Xã Hội in 1998. I have some issues with it.
First of all, in the original, Đại Việt is not referred to as a “country” (nước). In translating from classical Chinese, I think it is important to attempt to not add words that are not there.
Another word that is not in the original is “our” (ta). The Vietnamese translation mentions “our founder,” whereas the original just talks about “its” founder, with “its” clearly referring to Đại Việt.
Finally, the Vietnamese translation refers to the dividing line that the Five Passes makes as one between “the South and the North” (Nam – Bắc). In Vietnamese writings since at least the 1970s, capitalizing these terms has usually indicated that the translator believes that these terms are referring to what we would today call “Vietnam” and “China,” that is, to two political entities.
However, in countless “Chinese” writings prior to the time Ngô Sĩ Liên wrote this line, the Five Passes had been seen as a natural dividing line between the more Sinicized world to the north, and the less Sinicized world to the south of the passes. What is more, Ngô Sĩ Liên never makes the claim that this line represents a political border. He never claims the territory of what is today Guangdong and Guanxi Provinces as part of Đại Việt. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense that the terms “south and north” be capitalized here.
These points might seem trivial, but I would argue that they are insidious because they place a bias in translations that are not in the originals. By adding words like “country” and “our” where they do not exist, translations reinforce a sense that there is a “we” that has existed since time immemorial that has always been thinking about a “country.”
Those are concepts that are not in the original, but which have been very central to modern Vietnamese nationalism. That is why these ideas slip into translations, and is why translations are never a substitute for original documents.
Finally there is one more issue in this translation that I would like to point out. After mentioning that Heaven created a line between south and north at the Five Passes, and after mentioning that the founder of Đại Việt was also created, if you will, by Heaven, the Vietnamese translation simply goes on to say that he was able to empire over a separate area together with the Northern Court.
This leaves out an important phrase – “this is why” (所以). It is because Heaven demarcated a divide in the world, and it is because Heaven created a descendent of Shen Nong that could establish a separate kingdom that he was able to do so.
This gets us back to the point I began this post with. Is this a case of “a non-Chinese identity” getting articulated “in terms of China’s cultural heritage”?
The evidence of “China’s cultural heritage” is ubiquitous in this passage. However, what exactly is the “non-Chinese identity” that is articulated here? Certainly there is a political statement being made here. Ngô Sĩ Liên was making a strong statement about political differences, and he was clearly employing “China’s cultural heritage” to do so.
That said, did Ngô Sĩ Liên view this cultural heritage as “China’s”? It looks to me like he simply believed that the things he wrote about were common sense.
So what kind of identity is being articulated here?
I agree with the point that no China/Vietnam as nation-states can be included in a reading of the 15th-century text.
Nhưng tôi có câu hỏi: không có “nước” (nation) nhưng có “triều”. How do you describe about what Ngo Si LIen thought when he said about “triều”? Also, if you read Nguyen Trai, for instance, he already wrote a lot of Nom stuff – that can suggest those Han writers were able to communicate in some non-Han language. How do we say about Ngo Si Lien’s concept of “Dai Viet”? Why didn’t he just say “Le trieu”?
Translation is a very difficult task. For instance, in your English translation you have to translate “限” as a noun but it is actually a verb in this context – I would suggest.
Vấn đề chữ viết hoa trong tiếng Việt phức tạp hơn what you reflected here. Even though I agree that người Việt ngày nay dễ nghĩ ngay Nam Bắc trong bản dịch là Việt Nam và Trung Quốc. But I would argue that capitalization không có tội lỗi gì cả. Ngày nay người ta vẫn viết Đông Tây Nam Bắc viết hoa để chỉ phương hướng, Rồi người ta viết Nam Bắc để chỉ miền Nam và miền Bắc của modern Việt Nam. Hence, không thể nói rằng người dịch viết hoa vì ông đó cho rằng nam bắc ở đây tức là Trung Quốc và Việt Nam. (Nếu chỉ căn cứ vào những thông tin trong một blog ngắn ngủi này.)
Your point of “sở dĩ” is tinh tế.
In general you have a good and interesting question, then you seem to go somewhere, then get back to your question and end up with an answer that this blog is not really written down.
One last point, if the difference (which to make identity happen) is not nam/bac, not Vietnam/China, even not Le/Ming dynastes, if there is only common sense, what made Ngo Si Lien not Wu Shi Lian? What makes Shen Nong not to be Than Nong? I wish you can help to explain for you seem to think a lot about this topic.
Great comments!!! Thanks!!
I think what is in the minds of people like Nguyen Trai would be something that we can think of as a “royal enterprise” (vương nghiệp 王業). I just looked up this term, and I think the definition is great: “An emperor’s business/enterprise, that is, unifying All Under Heaven [Thiên Hạ] and establishing a dynasty.” (帝王之事业。谓统一天下，建立王朝。)
What is “All Under Heaven”? Is it “the nation”? I think it’s just whatever a given dynasty succeeds in bringing under its control. Some of the borders might be clear, others not. The dynasty might have strong control over some parts, but not over others. So the dynasty does not have territory that is as clearly defined as that of modern nations, and it might not even control some of the territory it claims directly, but it has a sense of what is its territory.
In contrast to the vagueness about the territory, I think the dynasty is very clear about itself. The royal family is a major concern, as are the officials at the capital.
So I think this is what “Dai Viet” meant to someone like Nguyen Trai. It meant a ruling family and officials in a capital, and it meant a claim to territory. Does this make sense? It is different from a nation with clear borders and citizens who are all considered to be equal members of the nation, etc. It is a more elite view of what was important to the ruling elite.
Why say Đại Việt and not Lê triều? First of all, I don’t think Lê triều is a term that someone in the dynasty would use to refer to the dynasty. It is what the Nguyễn can look back and use. When you are in a dynasty, I think you use terms like bản triều (本朝) or thánh triều (聖朝). Theoretically, I think he could have used such terms, but I acknowledge that he was using Đại Việt there because it included a sense of territory as well as the dynasty.
Here is the problem: when you add “nước” (country) to Đại Việt, you make Đại Việt familiar. We live in “nước” today, so when we read that Đại Việt was a “nước” then we don’t get a sense of difference. It was different, and the things that people like Nguyen Trai saw as important were different from those that we today see as important. Most places today are not run by royal families and their officials, and most places today do have clearly defined territory.
If someone wanted to add “vương quốc” (kingdom), I would feel better, as that at least would keep the ideas historical. For instance, people don’t write about Charlemagne’s country or the Roman country. Charlemagne had a kingdom, and the Romans had an empire.
As for Nom, yea I should look through that stuff to see if nước is used there, and if so how, etc.
Yes, you are right 限 is a verb there. What is difficult is that the phrase it is in (乃天限南北也) is parallel with the later one (乃天啓真主也) where I have translated the verb, “given rise to.” What is difficult is that 真主 is an understandable noun but what would the noun be for 南北? A “South-North”? One solution would be to add a word: “a North-South [divide] delineated by Heaven” or something like that.
As for capitalization, yea people keep telling me that I read too much into that. Your point about the four directions being capitalized – North, South, East, West – is a good one. So I agree, that is what the translator could have meant here, in which case I agree with the translation. That said, I still think that in an environment like the present, it would be easy for many people today to read that in another way.
Finally, Ngô Sĩ Liên and Wu Shilian. . . yes I’ve thought a lot about this, but I haven’t found an answer. The one point I can make is that in the English-speaking world, I think that people will have a much easier time finding additional information about Shen Nong and Ngô Sĩ Liên than they will if they try to look for Thần Nông and Wu Shilian.
In other words, given that people have already written a lot in English about Shen Nong and Ngô Sĩ Liên, we might as well make life easy for people and keep writing about them that way.
But you point to something really important – it’s difficult to convey the degree to which someone like Ngô Sĩ Liên participated in a world of “universal knowledge” because you have to make a kind of “political decision” when you write about that world of knowledge. Saying “Shen Nong” rather than “Thần Nông” makes what you are talking about “Chinese,” but I don’t think Ngô Sĩ Liên had that mental category in his brain.
Thanks for the post and the discussion. I had some thoughts that are similar to what tranthanh wrote in her/his comment, but I didn’t dare to share until I read your post a few more times, which I haven’t had time to do
One thing from your comment I’d like to ask though, would it be reasonable to say that the translator used “nước” instead of “vương quốc” was because he lived in a time when the government encouraged the use of “thuần Việt” instead of “Hán Việt”? Even the word “triều” is also of Han origin right?
By the way, I had thought hard about the capitalization of North and South, brought up the argument similar to tranthanh, but found yours is more convincing. I still haven’t drawn any conclusion though
Thanks for commenting.
Yes, it’s reasonable to say that the translator used “nước” instead of “vương quốc” was because he lived in a time when the government encouraged the use of “thuần Việt” instead of “Hán Việt.”
The other thing is that at any given point in time, when people translate they chose to use certain words (or to add certain words) that they don’t see as problematic. However, as time passes, and as people gain a more sophisticated or nuanced understanding of the past, those words which a translator felt were harmless, actually end up being a problem.
For instance, I think a lot of people who translated in the 1950s and 1960s in the English-speaking world automatically used the terms “China” or “India” or “Chinese” or “Indian” when either no such terms existed in the texts they were translating or there were terms that kind of can be translated as such, but which actually are more specific.
The result of these choices is that they produce the sense that there really is something clear and definable out there that we can call “Indian” or “Chinese.”
I think today many scholars would say that this is not the case.
So I’m not saying that there was some “evil plot” on the part of Vietnamese translators. However, I do think that at the time they (like the people in the English-speaking world who were uncritically using the terms “India” and “China”) did not have a very nuanced understanding of what a nation is, when nations were formed, how nationalism came to influence the way people in the 20th century thought, etc.
Now that (some) people do, the translations that were made 50 or so years ago become problematic.
As for the “North South debate,” tranthanh just convinced me that I’m probably exaggerating things, so you are finding my ideas convincing just as I am changing my ideas. . . but if you have other suggestions/evidence then feel free to share your ideas.
Sounds a lot of interesting things here.
(限 is a verb there. — One solution would be to add a word: “a North-South [divide] delineated by Heaven” or something like that. ) – So why did you say one needs to add “divide” because 限 is a verb, and “bac nam” is an object? Look at this example: 是身如浮雲,安可限南北。 —杜甫《別贊上人》
*王業 – I think you are raising another complex topic. How would Nguyen Trai or Ngo Si Lien think of a “royal enterprise”?
*territory – When you say about “a vague territory,” I assume you are using an imagination of a modern concept of territory to judge the past thought of territory to be “vague.” While I agree that they did not have a close-bordered map like we have today, it does not mean that they did not know where their kingdom would reach. Yet even within the “domain” that they claimed as one belonged to Dai Viet, there must be a lot of places that the central government never really knew.
*Đại Việt (I acknowledge that he was using Đại Việt there because it included a sense of territory as well as the dynasty.) vs. 本朝
This point is interesting … but then… what? If we have 本朝 or thanh trieu, so we have one royal family to be distinguished with other royal families. If we have “Dai Viet,” what was it for? to distinguish with what? or at least to claim for what? who would be the listeners of this claim?
*nước (when you add “nước” (country) to Đại Việt, you make Đại Việt familiar. We live in “nước” today, so when we read that Đại Việt was a “nước” then we don’t get a sense of difference.) & *vương quốc
I am not really convinced with this point because I am not clear about how people in the past associated Dai Viet with “nuoc”. It is hard for me not to believe that Ngo Si Lien never used a term like “nuoc” because I think Nguyen Trai had done. As for the term “vuong quoc”, be careful!
I do not think it is a correct to say “vuong quoc” is not used because the government encourages “thuan Viet” (thuan Viet is a problematic term!!!). When people would use “vuong quoc” as “Han” it must be to say something very sophisticated, which relates to the system like “國–>野” and “王–>諸侯”. I want to know about how you explain the way of saying “[nuoc] Dai Viet” vs. “nha Le”. No one ever said “nuoc Le”, of course. So should the phrase “nuoc-nha” be considered? Don’t you say this phrase a modern one? Even though chua Nguyen once called himself “An Nam quoc vuong”, to say vuong quoc is better than “nuoc” when one needs to find a word to attach to “Dai Viet” because nuoc is closer to the modern concept is not convincing. Rather to change the term, tell people about changes of the connotations a term embraces. Plus, if the term “nuoc” survive over time, should one need to take this fact to think further?
Here’s are some things to consider – you say that “nuoc” survived over time. Take a look at the history of the meaning of English words in a good dictionary like the Oxford English Dictionary. You will find that yes words do survive over time, but their meanings don’t remain stable.
So did “nuoc” mean the same thing to Nguyen Trai that it does today? How do we know that? For Vietnamese we have nothing comparable to the etymological dictionaries for other languages (particularly Western ones).
=== *王業 – I think you are raising another complex topic. How would Nguyen Trai or Ngo Si Lien think of a “royal enterprise”?
My question to you would be how would they “not” be thinking of this? Read the introductory material to the Dai Viet su ky toan thu. Who did Ngo Si Lien think that work was for? Rulers and their officials. It was showing them the proper way to rule by letting them see good and bad examples, and he added his own comments to make sure that this was clear.
Read through virtually everything that was written prior to the 20th century and this is what the main focus is.
=== Rather to change the term, tell people about changes of the connotations a term embraces.
I agree with this, but show me a single Vietnamese translation anywhere where the translator has done this and I will give you a million dollars!! ok, maybe not a million but my point is that I NEVER see people doing this. . . Or if some people are starting to do this now (if there are they are not many), the fact remains that a century of translations exist where no one did this.
安可限南北 – yes this is north AND south. However there is a parallel structure in the passage in this text: 大越居五嶺之南，”乃天限南北也”。其始祖出於神農氏之後，”乃天啓真主也”。. If you don’t care about maintaining the parallelism in the translation, then you can translate it anyway you want. But if you want to remain faithful to the text and try to indicate to your reader the manner in which the ideas are presented, then 南北 and 真主 are parallel. 真主 does not mean “true AND lord/emperor/ruler.” It is an adjective and a noun. 南北 are two nouns. Yes, in classical Chinese one can write this way, but when you translate it into English you have to add words to maintain the parallel structure that is there in the original.
oh and by the way, here are a couple of earlier posts that deal briefly with changing ideas in the early twentieth century that relate to conceptions of the nation/nuoc/quoc/country.
http://leminhkhai.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/imprinting-the-nation-in-early-twentieth-century-vietnam/
http://leminhkhai.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/rethinking-the-past-in-early-twentieth-century-vietnam/
Finally, one more comment – my original point was that no word should be added. The text just has Dai Viet, so just put Dai Viet in the translation. There is no need to add any words.
As for “vuong quoc” – this is a problem with Vietnamese. “Kingdom” is a neutral term in English. But in the case of Vietnam, people will make connections to the tributary system and interpret this to mean that the translator does not think that there was an “emperor” there, just a “king.”
But then the term “de quoc” (empire) is really a modern term, so that doesn’t really apply.
“Nuoc quan chu” (monarchy) is maybe the most neutral and accurate, but again, one really shouldn’t add words to a text when they are not there, and adding all of this is too much.
Nonetheless, “nuoc quan chu” is a more accurate expression for what existed in the past then simply “nuoc.” I think “nuoc” is too vague, and I don’t think people like Ngo Si Lien and Nguyen Trai were vague about what they thought was important. The monarch was the most important, and “nuoc” doesn’t make that clear at all. If anything, I think it erases the monarch and calls to mind something natural that could exist without a monarch.
Could Dai Viet exist without a monarch? I don’t think so. Prior to the twentieth century, the monarch and the realm were inseparable.
Now you don’t need a monarch to have a country (nuoc). But in the past (not just in Vietnam but in every place where there was a monarchy) that was impossible.
What Louis XIV said – L’etat c’est moi (“I am the state,” or “The state, it is me.”) – was, I would argue, a universal belief around the world before the rise of nation-states in the West starting in the late eighteenth century.