Domesticating External Legitimacy: The Deification of a Principle Graduate of the Two Kingdoms in Vietnam

• In Event: 3449 - Historicizing Concepts: Cosmopolitanism, Legitimacy, and Intellectual Property

Abstract

When elites must draw on external sources to buttress the legitimacy of their rule, how do they absorb and transform these factors to strengthen their power, and how do the ruled respond? Are the masses alienated, or do they cooperate with the elites in localizing the outside legitimacy, and through what ways? What kinds of relationships are formed between the elites and the outside sources from which they derive their authority? This project seeks to answer the above questions by analyzing the cult of Tống Trân, a fictional figure who is remembered by Vietnamese as one of their proud five “principal graduates of the two kingdoms,” with the two kingdoms referring to the Southern Kingdom (i.e., Vietnam) and the Northern Kingdom (i.e., China), respectively. It is supposed to be an honorary title conferred by the Chinese Son of Heaven on the envoys from the South who exhibited exceptional literary talent, but there exist no corroborating Chinese documents verifying the existence of such a title. Similar title is also unheard of in Korea, which, together with Vietnam, were among the most important vassal states in the Sinocentric tianxia All-Under-Heaven no later than the fifteenth century. Analyzing the evolution of the cult of Tống Trân from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, I propose that folk religions in historical Vietnam, where the state regulated popular pantheons and the masses in return sought state’s recognitions for deities’ efficacy, was a mechanism through which the legitimacy from Chinese

Author

• Yufen Chang, Academia Sinica