著者

宇野 公一郎

出版者

日本文化人類学会

雑誌

民族學研究 (ISSN:00215023)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.43, no.4, pp.333-354, 1979

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The Vietnamese seem to have had a tendency to symbolize their king and kingdom as a mountain. Kings of the Former Le (980-1009) and the Ly (1010-1225) dynasties built bamboo Nam So'n(Mountain of the South, namely of Vietnam) on their birthdays to annually revitalize their kingdom as well as themselves. And some mountains assumed the protector of the kingship and the superviser of Sino-Vietnamese moral principles. The god of Mt. Dong Co (Thanh Hoa) joined the future Ly Thai Tong in his expedition into Champa. Thai Tong also could repress rebellious princes on the advice of this god. He and his mandarins swore loyalty and filial piety annually before the god's shrine. Mt. Dong Co, however, is not near Hanoi but is situated, as is suggested in the chronicle, in the rugged terrain of the southern fringe of the Red River delta, on the line of demarcation between the delta and the less consolidated southern provinces. The Ngu Hanh So'n(Mountains of Five Elements) or Montagnes de Marbre of Quang Nam. Central Vietnam, were believed to be the protectors of the Nguyen kingdom. And this agregate of rocks is not near the capital but is in the liminal region around Da Nang, a port frequented by Europeans. According to P. Poivre, it was believed that an enemy who could capture this Protector would become master of the kingdom. And in the middle of the eighteenth century, when Poivre came into contact with this belief, Vietnam seems to have been 'en proie. . . a une crise religieuse, a une veritable fievre prophetique' (L. Cadiere) . Bonzes claimed that Heaven's anger had begun to explode because people had abandoned the cult of traditional gods and the teachings of Confucius to worship the God of the Europeans whose aim was the usurpation of the kingdom. Though it is difficult to clarify the relationship between these prophecies and the belief in the Mountains Ngu Hanh, it is important to note that it was the emperor Minh Mang, a hard-liner against western influence, who revived the old beliefs fervently and prohibited Europeans from going on an excursion from Da Nang to the Protector-Mountain. My hypothesis is that during the long history of the Vietnamese southward movement there might have existed similar masses resistantes in the frontiers, that the Protector-Mountain belief might have contributed to the maintenance of the Sino-Vietnamese cultural tradition and to the Vietnamese indefatigable southward movement, and that such mountains might have sometimes become the symbolic nuclei of the Vietnamese 'nationalism' or nativism against foreign threats or invasions. The Protector-Mountain theme was fully elaborated by the Bti'u So'n Ky Hu'o'ng (Radiant Mountain Unearthly Fragrance) sect in the last frontier, western Mekong delta. This sect emerged from the peasants who were exposed, in the reign of Thieu Tri (1841-47) , to the loss of Cambodia, a Vietnamese protecorate under the emperors Gia Long and Minh Mang, and to the Siamese invasions. The Bu'u So'n Ky Hu'o'ng believed that the Ideal King would appear from the Seven Mountains (That So'n or Bay Nui) of Chau Doc province. Some sources suggest that the Ideal King might have been an idealization of the late, the strongest emperor Minh Mang. The eschatology seems to have been widely diffused among the southerners after the establishement of French colonialism and the Seven Mountains region afforded the most important base for southern activists.