A few days ago a reader suggested that we take a look at another map, this one being of the Mekong Delta and Cambodia. That map is also included in the collection of maps known as the Hồng Đức bản đồ. It is in a collection of maps called the Giáp ngọ niên bình nam dồ (Maps of the Pacified South from the Giáp Ngọ Year), and is attributed by some to Nguyễn Hoàng and the year 1594.
I don’t think that is accurate. These maps should be from a century later. In any case, I’m just going to present the information from the maps, and hopefully, as before, people will have comments and insights to make.
I still can’t get the Vietnamese diacritics to show up in Photoshop (even when I cut and paste), so I’ve just put numbers on the maps and will put the information below the maps.
1. where Quảng meets Chiêm Thành / Cam Tinh lodge and patrol
2. Man Lang Estuary
3. 100 Quảng troops
4. Kingdom of Chiêm Thành – Phối Niên King
5. citadel of stone, very large construction
6. the march from Chiêm Thành to Cao Miên takes 25 days
7. La Xa Cove
8. Man Lý Estuary
9. every year in the fifth lunar month groups of fish face the pagoda
10. Phố Đài Estuary – deep
11. Phố Đài market
12. a lot of people live here
13. Cạn Estuary – shallow
1. This river originates in the Inner Land’s Yunnan Province, reaches the Tây Lự/Xilu Kingdom, passes through Hưng Hóa and Ninh Biên Châu, crosses the Kingdom of Vạn Tượng [i.e., Lan Xang], and then reaches here where it is the Không River [i.e., the Mekong].
2. Chiêm Thành – Cao Miên border
3. Nặc Nộn Citadel
4. Quảng troops, 3 chích (三隻)
5. Ba Vinh Town (People from the Middle Kingdom live here) [the version of this map that was published in Saigon has “People from the Middle Kingdom’s Fujian (Province) live here]
6. temple
7. Mỹ Thu Estuary – deep and wide
8. Vua Lửa [“Fire King”]
9. On the occasion of every full moon, emissaries from Cao Miên present tribute to Quảng people.
10. This river is deep and large. Cao Miên emissaries to Quảng use barges that carry elephants.
11. This river passes through the Kingdom of Vạn Tượng.
12-13. big forests to the sea
14. Fields from here on / Đồng Nai region, Hà Tôm community – here at last we got 20 people [??]
15. Nước Lộn Estuary – big
16. Tắc Kế Estuary – shallow
17. Xích Lam Estuary – shallow
18. Pha Ly Estuary – shallow
1. Dried Sea (Hạc hải 涸海) [not sure if this is supposed to be a proper name or a description, but it must refer to the Tonle Sap]
2. Kingdom of Cao Miên (People from the Middle Kingdom’s Guangdong [Province] live here)
3. Đế Thiên Đế Thích Palace [i.e., Angkor] / sacrificial altar to the Three Realms and the Four Palaces [tam giới tứ phủ 三界四府]
4. Nặc Thu Citadel
5. temple
6. Thành Cồn xứ [“the area of Cồn Citadel”]
7. Cao Miên Estuary – deep and wide
In fact, Giap Ngo Binh Nam do was supposedly created/edited in Giap Ngo (1774) by Doan Quan cong (Bui The Dat) instead of in Giap Ngo (1594) by Nguyen Hoang.
Thanks! That makes more sense, but when did Nak Non and Nak Thu live? I think I’ve seen references to them during the late 1600s.
Man Lãng Estuary
citadel of stone, very large construction?: 石城天造
8. Vua Lửa [“Fire King”] < Hỏa [Xá] Vương
On the occasion of every full moon, emissaries from Cao Miên present tribute to Quảng people: …常劫…
14. Fields from here on / Đồng Nai region, Hà Tôm community – here at last we got 20 people [??]: 始得二十人
Yeah, perhap Giap Ngo binh nam do was edited/created basing on former maps, so it contains some information of Nak Non and Nak Thu who lived around 17th century.
or maybe the citadels there continued to be called after the first people that the Viet knew of who lived there??
You’re not going to help??? 😉
Yes, I misread 天 (I wear reading glasses now. . . have some mercy on me). Hmmm “a stone citadel divinely/naturally created?” Any suggestions?
Vua Lửa [“Fire King”] < Hỏa [Xá] Vương – I think we agree here. Oscar Salemink wrote a book in which I think he called this guy the "King of Fire" or something like that. So I put that there so that people would make that connection. I can't remember what we think the ethnicity of this person was – Jarai?
常劫 – help!! I don't understand that.
始得二十人 – I also have no idea what this is.
By now, i don’t know what “常劫” means. I’m trying to understand it. “始得二十人” maybe means “just have 20 people”.
So why would this be mentioned? Does this mean that it is one of the only Viet settlements in the area, and that it only has 20 people???
常劫 “thuong kiep” – “regularly”??
常劫 means “often robbed”.
Thanks for the suggestion, but if that’s what it means then it is a poorly written sentence. 每月夜常刼高綿使貢廣者 It already says 每 (every) so why also say 常 (often)? “Every month often robbed”?? I guess the way to have it make sense would be to add a lot of words in English and say something like “Whenever [or Any time when] there is a full moon and there are Cao Mien envoys passing by here to present tribute to Quang, it is often the case that they get robbed.”
That could make sense, but it still seems like a strange thing to say because 1) how often did Cao Mien envoys travel to present tribute? (once a year?), and 2) how often was it the case that there was a full moon when they passed by that area? (every year? once every few years?)
And what is the subject? Who 常刼?
Something is still not right about this sentence.
Actually, since this map mixes Hán and Nôm, if you read this as a mixture of Hán and Nôm and the 常刼 is Nôm – thường cướp, then the sentence makes more sense. The understood subject would be “Vua Lửa” (or his men).
But if this is supposed to be all Hán, then it doesn’t make sense to me. This would make more sense: 每月夜高綿使貢廣者(常)被刼
it could also be a mistake for 搶劫 thưởng kiếp. I make mistakes when I write all the time, so we should be open to the fact that there are mistakes in historical materials as well.
Yeah, maybe. I think we should set “thuong kiep” in the whole sentence and rethink the meaning of all.
ok, so 月夜 can meet at the “full moon,” but I don’t think they were presenting tribute on the full moon of “every month.” So it must be at the full moon of every “regular period,” but I don’t know what that regular period was.
The phrase “每月夜常刼高綿使貢廣者” may be means: [Here is the place where] the robbers pillaged tribute which emissaries from Cao Miên presented to Quảng people on the occasion of each full moon”.
I’m not sure! It’s too equivocal to understand!
Le Quang Dinh mentions in his early-19th-century geography a place around here where people came to present tribute. I need to go back and check that, but my memory of having read that is what is leading me to see this as something “regular.”
From Aubaret´s “Histoire et description de la basse Cochinchine”:
“L’an Giap-dian [ca. 1674/5?], 1594e année de l’ère cambodgienne, l’armée d’Annam entra dans le Cambodge, et le roi Neac-chi perdit en même temps la vie et sa couronne. On rendit le royaume à Neac-nân et à Neac-tan; Neac-thu, dernier fils de Neac-so, fit sa soumission aux Annamites; Neac-tan, sur ces entrefaites, mourut de maladie.
L’empereur d’Annam décida que Neac-thu serait premier roi du Cambodge et Neac-nân deuxième roi. Us se partagèrent donc tous deux le gouvernement. Les opérations de guerre furent terminées en deux mois, et ce fut alors que l’empereur donnant à Neac-thu le titre de premier roi, celui-ci fixa sa résidence à Vuong-luon [Oudong]. Le deuxième roi Neac-nôn résida à Saïgon. Ils eurent tous les deux à payer le tribut à l’empereur. La surveillance des frontières fut dès lors placée entre les mains du gouverneur général de la province de Khanh-hoa.” [p. 3/4]
The settlement of the Ming loyalists is recorded for the year 1680.
“L’an Canh-ngo [1690/1?], 4e année d’Anh-ton, au 3e mois, pendant le printemps, le général en chef Hao défit les Cambodgiens, et s’étant emparé du roi Neac-ong-thu, il le fit emmener à Saïgon. Ainsi fut pacifié le Cambodge et les hostilités cessèrent. Sur ces entrefaites, le roi Neac-ong-thu mourut de maladie, ne laissant pas d’enfants après lui. Le deuxième roi Neac-ong-non ayant de son côté mis lui-même fin à ses jours, on adressa une supplique à l’empereur d’Annam afin de mettre sur le trône du Cambodge le prince Neac-iem, fils de Neac-nôn pour résider dans la citadelle de Go-bich.” [p. 8]
If the map refers to these two Cambodian princes mentioned above, then it obviously reflects the political situation around 1680-1690.
Ok, now I see. This map was drawn and presented to the throne by the “Duke of Đoan Quận.” That name applies to both Nguyễn Hoàng (1525–1613) and Bùi Thế Đạt (18th cent.). I’ve translated it as “Maps of the Pacified South from the giáp ngọ year.” The “giáp ngọ year” could be 1594, 1654, 1714 or 1774. Some of the information on the map seems to represent what the Mekong delta was like in the late 1600s. However, in 1774, Bùi Thế Đạt, having heard of the Tây Sơn Rebellion, began a campaign on the part of the Lê/Trịnh to go south and attack the Nguyễn.
So it looks to me like these maps should be called “Maps FOR PACIFYING the South in the giáp ngọ Year.” In 1774, the people at the Lê Dynasty capital probably didn’t know much about the Mekong Delta, so perhaps Bùi Thế Đạt got hold of some map from some earlier period and re-drew it and presented it to the throne (or maybe it’s based on information he got).
I don’t remember how far south the Lê/Trịnh armies went, but if they made it to the Mekong Delta, then I don’t think these maps would have been very helpful, as they don’t reflect reality in 1774.
So my sense then is that, like the Map of the Great Savage Kingdom, this is probably a map about a place that certain people “wanted to know about,” but hadn’t been there yet. I get the sense that the Map of the Great Savage Kingdom was “explained” to someone, whereas this map is based either on an earlier map or a combination of information from the past and things that people (merchants maybe?) said. The estuaries are detailed (which suggests to me that merchant sailors contributed information to the map), but the information about what is inland is not (and isn’t accurate).
One thing that I am curious about is that the soldiers/people in the south are referred to as “Quảng.” Who referred to them as “Quảng”? Did the Lê/Trịnh?
So I’m starting to think that this is more like a “spy map” than a “real map.” But the “CIA/KGB of the Lê Dynasty” (if that’s where this came from) had some outdated information in 1774.
Ok, now I will need to look at other parts of this map to try to figure this out. . .
You should look for other collection of maps which named Quảng Thuận đạo sử tập (supposedly created in 1774 – 1785) by Nguyễn Huy Quýnh (1734 – 1785). There are many similarities with Giap Ngọ bình Nam đồ in that collection. One of the most common way of creating geographical works in middle-aged Vietnam is collecting, combinating and reproducing matterials from many (former, local, personal,…) sources. For example, Le Quy Don wrote Phu Bien tap luc in which he desribed quite detailedly about Mekong delta though he had’nt been there at all. The same situation with Nguyễn Huy Quýnh,v.v…
yea, I’ve never thought about maps in this way, but it makes sense. Thanks for the comments.