Someone asked in a comment how Vietnamese in the thirteenth century viewed the Mongols. I just found this passage in the Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư (15th cent.) for the year 1257:
時元人新取雲南，遊兵略至，無攻取意。當時謂之佛賊。
“At that time the Yuan [meaning the Mongols] had just taken Yunnan. Roaming troops came raiding without the intent to conquer. At that time [people] called them the ‘Buddhist bandits.’”
This is an interesting statement. As far as I know, the only meaning for 佛 is “Buddhist.” The dynasty in Vietnam at that time, the Trần, was by all accounts very interested in Buddhism. So why would the Mongols be given this name?
I would need to do more research on this, but one issue I can think of right away is that prior to conquering Yunnan, the Mongols had been in Tibet where top Mongol commanders had interacted with Tibetan monks. Eventually Tibetan Buddhism would become very important to the Mongols, but that happened later. Nonetheless, perhaps there was some practice which they adopted already at that time, or some objects which they carried with or on themselves? There must have been something either visible, or some practice which the Mongols engaged in which people observed, for people to label them in this way. What was it? Tibetan Buddhism was distinct, so if there was something which the Mongols got or adopted from the Tibetans it probably would have struck the Vietnamese as different.
The image to the left is from the Khâm định Việt sử thông giám cương mục (19th cent.). It is the same passage as that in the Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư with the one difference that in this text the Mongols are referred to as the “Mongols” rather than as the Yuan.
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Yea the 略至 is confusing. Originally I was going to translate it as “roaming troops occasionally came.” That is different from the way in which it has been translated into Vietnamese (in at least one of the translations of the Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư):
Khi ấy, người Nguyên mới lấy được Vân Nam, bọn du binh cướp đến, không có ý đánh chiếm, nên bây giờ người ta gọi chúng là “giặc Phật.”
This Vietnamese version says that the roaming troops “came raiding” (which is how I ended up translating it, but I don’t really think this is correct) or “raided up to” (cướp đến). 略 can mean “to raid” (cướp), but it also means “cursorily” or “not intensely.” It’s modifying 至, which can mean “to arrive” or “up to.” So “raidingly arrived”?? It would make more sense if the sentence said where they raided up to, such as they “raided all the way up to our kingdom” (略至於我國), because if 至 is used in the meaning “up to,” it is usually followed by a place name. “Raid up to” (cướp đến) makes sense in modern Vietnamese, but not in classical Chinese.
“Cursorily arrived”?? If the two characters were in the reverse order (至略) then the meaning would be unambiguous, they “arrived and raided.” However, the sense here seems to be that this happened more than once (hence, the ability of people to come up with a name for these groups of roaming troops – because they came in contact with them more than once), and therefore to me “occasionally arrived” makes more sense. It’s “cursory” in the sense that it wasn’t part of a master plan to invade and conquer. These troops were just moving around the area, checking things out, perhaps in preparation for a later invasion. And yes, when they arrived they probably raided and plundered, and that is why they were called “bandits,” but that doesn’t seem to be directly stated here.
The problem with this is that the passage before this talks about a couple of battles with what looks like a single group of “bandits” and then the bandits leave. So did roaming groups of Mongols arrive a few times and at first the Vietnamese did not fight them? This isn’t clear.
The idea that the Mongols were called “Buddhist bandits” because they were as harmless as Buddhists sounds much too modern to me. Where is the evidence that people at the time saw Buddhists as harmless? That sounds like a modern interpretation of Buddhism. Also, the text doesn’t make any connection between the name and the fact that they came “without the intent to conquer.” It doesn’t say anything like “therefore” they were called Buddhist bandits. Finally, they weren’t “harmless” because they did fight with the Vietnamese at this time.
If it was something vernacular, I think there would be an explanation.
Yea there is definitely no “nên” here. The 時 and 當時 indicate to me that these are two separate comments.
As for “hiền như Bụt,” I would say that this is a modern concept. The way people in Asia today think about things like “Buddhism” and “Confucianism” has been transformed through contact with the West. Westerners understood these teachings in Western terms, and many of their ideas were subsequently adopted by people in Asia. So a book like Feng Youlan’s “History of Chinese Philosophy” was written to demonstrate that China had a philosophical tradition just like the West. This way of discussing the past was very new, and was done in this manner because of Western influence.
The same thing happened with Buddhism. The way people talk about Buddhism was totally transformed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of the Westerners who wrote about it tried to promote Buddhism as superior to Christianity. Whereas Christians had fought many wars in the name of their religion, Buddhists, it was argued, had not (which is not true – go look at the histories of the Thais, Burmese and Tibetans, for instance). About 20 years ago I heard the Dalai Lama make this point to an auditorium filled with Americans who all nodded their heads in agreement. It’s a ridiculous idea, but people today think that way. So I would not be surprised if a Vietnamese scholar were to think in this way and interpret that line with this in the back of his/her head. However, I would want to see evidence that this was a belief at that time. I don’t think it was. Such an idea is very modern.
Finally, the “mockery” idea just looks like modern Vietnamese nationalism to me. 1st, I would want to see evidence that mockery was common in the discourse of that time. I’ve never seen evidence of that. 2nd, I’d want to see evidence that people named bandits based on their behavior. I’ve never seen that either. Rebels were always named for something specific, like the clothing they wore (Red Turbans, Yellow Turbans), or the place they came from (Tay Son), etc. This argument is that they were mockingly called the “Buddhist bandits” because they didn’t fight. So why did the Vietnamese send an emergency message to the Tran court saying that the Mongols were invading if they were merely “Buddhist bandits”? (that information appears in the historical records right before this information about the Mongols being called “Buddhist bandits.”)