I haven’t had much time to post to this blog recently. I still don’t have much time, but I’m putting up this article here for anyone who is interested. It is by Nguyễn Phương and appeared in the journal Bách khoa in 1965. Nguyễn Phương is largely forgotten these days, but he wrote a lot in the South in the 1960s. His ideas were controversial, as they definitely did not fit with the nationalist views which was coming to dominate scholarship in both the North and the South.
This article is a continuation of work which he earlier published in the journal Đại học from 1960-1964, and all of these articles were combined into his book, Việt Nam thời khai sinh [Vietnam at the Time of its Birth] (Huế: Phòng Nghiên Cứu Sử, Viện Đại Học Huế, 1965).
Nguyễn Phương starts by saying that he has stated many times already that the “masters” (chủ nhân) of the Đông Sơn culture were Indonesian (Anh-đô-nê), however, he has never explained why he thinks this way. That is what he proposes to do here. (Note: “Indonesian” was the term used at that time to refer to the peoples whom we would today refer to as “Austronesian.”)
Nguyễn Phương argues that there is archaeological evidence for Indonesian peoples in the area of Vietnam from both before and after the time of the Đông Sơn culture. In particular, he notes that French scholars who study prehistory have identified two early cultures in the region, one at Bắc Sơn and another at Hòa Bình, which they associate with Indonesian peoples based on the skeletal remains that have been unearthed at these two places. Further, Nguyễn Phương argues that today there are still Indonesian peoples living in the mountains of Vietnam, namely the Mường and especially the Mọi. (Note: today we would not consider the Mường to be Austronesian, but some of the minorities in the Central Highlands, “the Mọi,” are.)
Given that there is archaeological evidence for the presence of Indonesian peoples in Vietnam prior to the time of the Đông Sơn civilization, and that Indonesian peoples are still there today, Nguyễn Phương argues that the absence of any evidence which demonstrates that Indonesian peoples left and then came back indicates that they have been present all along. What he argues in detail in a later article is that the Indonesians who once originally lived in the deltas were displaced by Chinese who migrated into the region at the end of the B.C period and in the first few centuries A.D., and moved into the mountains, where they are still found today.
Finally, Nguyễn Phương also discusses the work of scholars like Olaf Janse and Victor Goloubew who saw connections between the Mọi and other Indonesian peoples like the Dayak in Borneo, and who noted that the similar cultural practices (from material culture to religion) of these peoples are reflected in the scenes on the bronze drums.
From all of this, Nguyễn Phương concludes that the masters of the Đông Sơn culture were Indonesian.
While this might not please the Vietnamese nationalists in our midst, before we dismiss Nguyễn Phương as a misguided scholar of a bygone age, we should note that a recent monograph on the bronze drums makes a similar argument.
In her The Distribution of Bronze Drums in Early Southeast Asia (Oxford: Archeopress, 2009), Ambra Calò argues that we presently have no way of determining what the ethnicity of the people who made the Đông Sơn bronze drums was. However, the similarities in the imagery on the bronze drums with the cultural practices of Austronesian peoples, like the Dayak on Borneo, and what we know of the ancient migrations of Austronesians and the spread of their languages, all lead Calò to argue that the Đông Sơn bronze drums at least represent cultural contact with Austronesian peoples.
A lot of scholars who wrote about Vietnamese history before nationalism hijacked it in the late 1960s were on the right track. There were problems with their ideas (Nguyễn Phương overemphasized the historical role of Chinese migrants to the region, for instance), but their instincts were right and they were pushing scholarship in a positive direction.
It is still difficult to say who “the masters of Đông Sơn culture” were. However, by picking up where Nguyễn Phương left off, and by critically dismissing much of the scholarship of the 1970s-1990s, I think Ambra Calò is again moving in the right direction.
Nguyễn Phương, “Lịch sử Lạc Việt” [History of the Lạc Việt], Bách Khoa 196 (1965): 29-37.
This Post Has 5 Comments
Is it be possible that the Zhuang/Tai picked up the practice of making bronze drum from these Austronesians ?
Chamberlain in his ”the origin of the Sek: implications for Tai and Vietnamese history”, he proposes a theory that northern-Tai speaking population spread from Sino-Vietnamese border through Red river plain to present-day central Vietnam to explain the existence of the Saek. Though I’m not sure if his theory now becomes obsolete, but Is it possible that Tai-speaking inhabitants have some contact with the population of Dong Son culture ?
Just to be clear about what we are talking about, many scholars don’t really talk about “Tai-speaking” peoples until around the 9th century AD, when certain linguistic changes took place and when some people started to migrate away from the area of present-day Guangxi, etc. Prior to that time there were some kind of “proto-Tai-speakers.” Since archaeologists have found bronze drums across the entire area of what is today northern Vietnam and southwestern China, I tend to see bronze drums as a more or less “universal” ritual/prestige item. Sure, someone must have been the first to make one, just like someone was the first person to make an automobile, but they were pretty universal. I’m not sure who proto-Tai-speakers originally got them from.
As for Chamberlain and the Sek, I’m not sure if that is still up-to-date or not. I do know that he tended to use information from early Vietnamese texts as if it was “ancient fact” when I would say that it was “medieval invention,” but I can’t evaluate his linguistic evidence.
There is a 12th-century work that makes it clear (as far as I recall) that Tai-language speakers at the southwestern edge of the Chinese empire at that time used bronze drums.
http://www.amazon.com/Treatises-Supervisor-Guardian-Cinnamon-Twelfth-Century/dp/0295990791/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1434797139&sr=8-4&keywords=James+Hargett
By that time there is no evidence that I’m aware of that the people we today call the Viet used them. So if they were once used widely across the region, over time some people stopped using them.
That means that Chamberlain’s work is now showing some problems. That’s understandable since his work was published in 1998 (17 years ago). Do you know from that time, is there anyone else has step up his effort in explaining the Sek’s existence in Central Vietnam ? as a Tai speaker I would be interested in reading such work.
As you said that Proto-Tai started to split into new branches around 9th century AD. What linguistic studies provide such evidence ? I’m just a layman on all these linguistics and history fields, therefore I’m not exactly up-to-date on them right now. But I’m curious about how research studies have done on them since they are kind of related to my native tongue. I read Ph.D.dissertation by Pittayawat Pittayaporn on Proto-Tai phonology, but he does not mention when Proto-Tai started splitting at all.
Oh, actually I think Pittayawat Pittayaporn is the person who knows the most about this. Perhaps, however, he hasn’t written much about this topic yet, but he definitely knows a lot about it.
I gave a presentation at his university a few years ago, and he provided me with a lot of insights that ended up changing my ideas. I think I was originally trying to argue that there was contact between the Tai and the Viet in the BC period, but he made it clear that the terms I was referring to only appeared when new branches started to break away from proto-Tai in the 9th-10th centuries.
Thanks to him what I ended up writing was very different from what I originally was going to say, and a lot stronger. He is definitely one of my “heroes.” 🙂
https://www.academia.edu/3659357/Tai_Words_and_the_Place_of_the_Tai_in_the_Vietnamese_Past
Here I found it: http://www.manusya.journals.chula.ac.th/files/essay/Pittayawat%2047-68.pdf
He based on layers of Chinese loanwords in Proto-Southwestern Tai and other historical evidence to propose that the separation of PSWT from Proto-Tai is about 8th-10th century.
He is not a ”hero”, but a ”nerd”. 😀