Mattie Calogreedy, Anna Leonowens and Marie Vannier – Hapa Women at Mainland Southeast Asian Courts in the Nineteenth Century

The story of the overthrow of the Konbaung Dynasty by the British in the late nineteenth century is a complex one, but a simplified explanation of the events of that…

Continue ReadingMattie Calogreedy, Anna Leonowens and Marie Vannier – Hapa Women at Mainland Southeast Asian Courts in the Nineteenth Century

The Mường Story of the 100 Eggs

The story of Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ is a very famous story in Vietnam today. In this story Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ marry and Âu Cơ gives birth to 100 eggs, all of which produce boys. 50 of the boys then follow their father into the sea, and 50 follow their mother into the mountains, where one of them becomes the first ruler of a kingdom called Văn Lang.

This tale first appeared in a larger story called “The Tale of the Hồng Bàng Clan” in a fifteenth-century text called the Lĩnh Nam chích quái. There are many other parts of this larger story that clearly came from, or were inspired by, information in extant texts. However, this story about the 100 eggs does not appear to have any textual precedent.

So where did it come from? Many twentieth-century scholars argued that it comes from the oral traditions of the Việt nationality (dân tộc) and that it was passed down orally for centuries until it was recorded in the fifteenth century.

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