Âu Cơ
Âu Cơ ( chữ Hán : 嫗 姬) is a female fairy and mountain deity in Vietnamese mythology. Through her marriage to the dragon ruler Lạc Long Quân , she becomes the ancestral mother of the Vietnamese .
The Vietnamese myth of origin - that is, the legend about Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ - can be found for the first time in writing in two main sources from the 14th and 15th centuries: the collection of stories Lĩnh Nam chích quái and the historical work Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư des Ngô Sĩ Liên .
According to the former, older version, Âu Cơ had already been married to the northern (Chinese) ruler Đế Lai , which did not prevent Lạc Long Quân from marrying her. In the somewhat newer version of Ngô Sĩ Liên, on the other hand, she is the daughter of the northern ruler in order to avoid the morally questionable topics of bride robbery and adultery.
The couple lived on Mount Tản Viên . Soon after the marriage, Âu Cơ gave birth to an egg sac, from whose eggs a hundred children hatched. Depending on the version of the legend, these were either fifty boys and fifty girls or a hundred sons. These children are considered to be the first Vietnamese.
After a while it turned out that the mountain fairy Âu Cơ and the water dragon descendant L Wasserc Long Quân were too different to be able to live together in the long term. The couple separated, but continued to promise each other mutual support. Fifty children followed their father to the coast, where they became the ancestors of the lowland Vietnamese. The other fifty children followed their mother into the mountains, where they became the ancestors of the highland Vietnamese (possibly the Mường or the Âu Việt, depending on the interpretation ).
Âu Cơ taught the children who had followed her how to survive in the jungle and mountains, how to grow fruit, how to raise animals, and how to build houses on stilts.
The eldest of the couple's sons - who, according to many versions of the legend, had initially followed their mother - eventually succeeded the father and ruled the kingdom of Văn Lang ( Hồng-Bàng period ) as the first Hùng king . The mountain deity Sơn Tinh , one of the four immortals , is also a child of the couple in some stories.
The equal distribution of the sons to both parents is seen by some scholars as a sign of equal rights for patriarchal and matriarchal societies in the early Vietnamese period.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Keith Weller Taylor: The Birth of Vietnam , University of California Press, 1976, pp. 303-305 (Appendix A)
- ↑ Vietnam.com: Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ - Legende des alten Vietnam (a variant of the story in German, accessed in August 2017)
- ↑ Alice M. Terada: Under the Starfruit Tree: Folktales from Vietnam , University of Hawaii Press, 1993, p. 53
- ↑ Van Hanh Thi Do, Marie Brennan: Complexities of Vietnamese Femininities: A Resource for Rethinking Women's University Leadership Practices , In: Gender and Education , Vol. 27, No. 3, 2015, p. 275
- ↑ Brajendra Kumar (Ed.): Encyclopaedia of Southeast Asia , Volume 2: History, Society & Culture , Akansha Publishing House, New Delhi, 2006, p. 195