Khmer at the Mouth of the Mekong

                                                    by Jim Goodman

      

Chùa Chim, a Khmer temple in Trà Vinh

       For most of its history the Mekong Delta was the most underdeveloped, least populated part of what is today Vietnam.  When the first Vietnamese, and to a lesser extent Chinese, began moving here in the late 17^th century they discovered a land dominated by water, subject to the flooding of the main branches of the Mekong River, as well as its many tributaries.  In between these lay swamps and bogs and scattered patches of higher land, mostly covered with thick forests. 

       The indigenous population then was nearly all Khmer.  Some lived in the slightly higher plains that now border contemporary Cambodia.  But the bulk of them lived near the mouth of the Mekong, on lands straddling the Hậu River branch, what now consists of Trà Vinh and Sóc Trăng provinces.  Even today 70% of Vietnam’s Khmer minority lives in these two provinces.  Vietnamese migrants didn’t try to expel them or take over their lands.  They simply moved next door, cleared swamps, constructed canals and made new farms.  Khmer communities remained in place, governed by their own chieftains.

Angkor Era relic at Chùa Phướng

7th-8th century Lokeswar from Trà Vinh

       That autonomy lasted until Minh Mạng’s administrative reforms in the 1830s.  Vietnamese became a majority in both provinces by the 20^th century.  But Khmer culture and traditions have persisted nevertheless.  The Khmer still comprise about 30% of the population in both provinces, mainly village people, with active temples and a strong ethnic consciousness.

Ao Bà Om

       No records exist of when the Khmer first settled here, but it was perhaps not long after the collapse of the Funan state in the 6^th century, if not earlier.  A beautiful stone carving of the Mahayana Buddhist deity Lokeswar, found in Trà Vinh province and dated 7^th-8^th centuries, in the classic Khmer style, is equal to anything produced in the Cambodian heartland at that time.  It is on display in the History Museum in Hồ Chí Minh City, along with a pair of exquisite stone, life-sized devis (unfortunately missing their heads and lower arms) from the 11^th century, also from Trà Vinh.  Obviously, the Khmer cultural connection between Trà Vinh and central Cambodia goes back a long way.

Khmer devotees at Chùa Hang

       Other evidence exists of Trà Vinh’s ties with the ancient Angkor Empire.  The artificial pond Ao Bà Om, a few km from Trà Vinh city, dates its construction to over a thousand years ago and many of the temples standing today replaced earlier ones that, during Angkor times, honored Hindu or Mahayana Buddhist deities.  Chùa Phướng, on the outskirts of town, kept the ruins of one of the ancient buildings in its courtyard.  The stone staircase features railings with the original Buddhist heads in a style familiar to anyone who has visited Angkor.

       In religious matters, Khmer culture in Trà Vinh shifted to Theravada Buddhism around the same time as in the Cambodia heartland.  The first Theravada Buddhist temple in the province went up around 1450, about twenty years after the first Theravada temple in Cambodia, at Phnom Penh.  Khmer cultural development in Trà Vinh and Sọc Trăng ran parallel to that in central Cambodia, but political and administrative ties are less certain.

classical dance masks in the Khmer Cultural Museum

      The two provinces are as far downriver from Angkor, or subsequent Cambodian capitals like Udong or Phnom Penh, as one can go.  Very few settlements existed between them and eastern Cambodia.  There were no big urban centers and the economy was simple, self-sufficient agriculture.  The area was not so heavily populated to be of any crucial economic importance to Cambodian governments.  It is difficult to imagine Angkor or subsequent regimes sending tax collectors or military recruiters that far away from the capital.  The Khmer at the mouth of the Mekong enjoyed virtual autonomy from the time of their first settlement until their absorption into the Vietnamese state.  Yet this political integration and the occasional assimilation campaigns in the past have not diminished the Khmer attachment to their religion, language and culture.

       Though Trà Vinh’s growth as an urban center only commenced with the early 18^th century immigration of outsiders, the city today still exudes a strong Khmer atmosphere.  A large percentage of the schoolchildren are Khmer, as are many of the merchants in the covered market or on the street beside the river, easy to recognize by their darker skin complexion.  The town has several attractive Khmer temples and small groups of saffron-robed monks on a stroll through the city are a common sight in Trà Vinh.   

riverside market, Trà Vinh

       The Vietnamese form the majority of the city’s roughly 75.000 residents and several Mahayana Buddhist temples cater to them.  Trà Vinh also has a church for its Catholics and two temples for adherents of the Cao Dài faith.  The small but active Ông Pagoda, founded by Chinese immigrants from Fujian in the town’s commercial center in the 16^th century, serves the local Chinese business community, while a relatively new temple on the northern side of the city to the Goddess of the Sea attracts those in the fishing trade.  

       Most of the town, including its temples, hotels and commercial center, lies along the west bank of the Long Bình River, a small, moderately busy tributary of the Mekong, into which it flows several km north of Trà Vinh.  Most streets in the residential neighborhoods are lined with tall, shady trees, unusual for a Mekong Delta town, which keep the temperatures bearable even on hot, sunny days.   Trà Vinh doesn’t offer much in the line of entertainment:  no discos or bars.  But there are a few places where one can enjoy cold beer and grilled seafood like scallops, oysters, sea snails and the tasty Delta specialty called ‘finger snail,’ a kind of elongated clam, baked with spices in its finger-length shell.   

'finger snail'

       While it’s a pleasant, uncongested place to stroll around, the main attractions in the town, and the province as a whole, are its Khmer temples.  Architecturally, they are noticeably different from the Mahayana temples of the Vietnamese and Chinese, as well as the Catholic and Cao Đài churches, resembling instead the Theravada temples in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, featuring tall, angled roofs that immediately mark their Khmer identity.

       No two are exactly alike, but they do share a number of common characteristics, both in structure and in decorative elements.  Except for a couple of smaller temples in the city center, Khmer temple compounds are walled, with fancy entrance gates, enclosing a spacious area with several buildings and groves of big shade trees.  The religious buildings rest on raised plinths, the main hall rectangular, with sloping, tiered roofs, supported either by the buildings’ exterior walls or a row of pillars.   Angled support struts, carved with images of mythical beings, half-woman, half-bird, are lined along the lower roof edges on both sides of the building, connected to either the walls or the pillars. 

unusual relief carving 

       The interior will feature a large seated Buddha, often with distinctly Khmer features, as well as a number of smaller, standing or seated Buddhas.  The walls inside will likely be covered with frescoes of Buddhist mythology and scenes of everyday life. 

       Variations in this basic design are legion.  It could be a single roof or double.  The walls on each of the longer sides of the building could be solid or scalloped with open areas.  The pillars could be plain or covered with painted patterns.  The buildings could be white, yellow or something else.   In the garden behind the main hall, or to the side or even in front there may be life-sized sculptures depicting famous scenes from the life of the Buddha, such as his first seven steps after birth, the Temptation of Mara, the first Sermon, etc.  There may be columns surmounted by a four-faced Bodhisattva, derived from the famous image at the Bayon in Angkor Thom.  There may be odd relief sculptures on walls inside the compound, like deities riding pigs, or statues of Khmer historical heroes.

Chùa Âng

       Certain temples in the immediate area boast of unique features.  Chùa Phướng, on the southern edge of the town, has its preserved Angkor-era relics.  Chùa Chím, in a wooded area on the western outskirts, features a miniature replica of Angkor Wat and the Bayon in the garden behind the main hall.  Chùa Âng, five km southwest of Trà Vinh and the most venerable in the province, lies beside the ancient pond Ao Bằ Om and is opposite a Khmer Cultural Museum.

        According to local legend, the creation of the pond originated with a dispute a thousand years ago over who had to pay for wedding expenses—the groom’s side or the bride’s.  So they decided on a contest to resolve the issue.  The women would build a square pond, the men an oval one, and whoever was nearest completion by daybreak would be exempt from wedding expenses. The women won by a trick.  Before dawn they lit lanterns to brighten the sky and fool the men into thinking the night was over.  They laid down their tools but the women continued.  When daybreak really did arrive it showed that they had won.  The oval pond no longer exists, but the women’s pond Ao Bà Om today is a popular retreat for city folks.  Tall trees surround the pond, many of their roots rising above the ground in weird and grotesque shapes.  The Àng Temple next door was originally a Hindu temple in the Angkor era and a Theravada temple replaced it in the late 15^th century.  It has since been restored a number of times, including fairly recently.

       The museum across from Chùa Âng has a nice display of items relevant to the religious and material life of Khmer people.  Among the exhibits are all the traditional tools and devices used in agriculture, baskets of sundry kinds, wooden containers, mortars and boxes, hunting and fishing gear, musical instruments, temple decorations and dance masks.  On one wall are the founding dates, locations and photographs of all the major temples in the province.

decorative carving, Chùa Âng

purification rite, Chùa Âng

       Most of these lie south and southeast of the city, where nearly all the villages are Khmer, their locations marked by entry gates on the main roads with very Angkor-like images.  A turn down one of these roads takes one past rice fields backed by sugar palms and eventually reaches the temple compound, walled and forested, that lies at the edge of the residential area.

       Village houses generally sit on both sides of a canal or stream that bisects the settlement.  Trees and bushes obscure the banks and hide the water except at the several bridge crossings.  While they may do some fishing from the bridges, villagers don’t use boats to get around.  The unpaved roads through the village are barely wide enough for a car, but local vehicular traffic is all by bicycle or motorbike, anyway.  Small shops and refreshment stalls stand at major junctions, like the ones that turn back towards the main provincial roads. 

Khmer houses of split palm leaf, Trà Vinh province

       Throughout the residential area groves of sugar palms and other trees occupy every space not used for a house or a garden.  The houses, generally one story and resting directly on the ground, are not clustered but stand alone or in groups of two to four related families and are from twenty to fifty meters apart from the nearest neighbors.  Some of the wealthier villagers have houses of brick or cement, but most houses are simple structures employing split palm leaf for the walls and roofs. 

       Villagers’ lives revolve around the labor demands of an agricultural economy and the obligations of their religion.  Neither is very strenuous, for the work is only heavy at the time of planting or harvesting, when they do it collectively.  And while pious villagers make voluntary contributions to their local monastery, gifts that have sustained maintenance of the religious buildings, because monasteries are required to grow their own food, they do not have to get out in the morning to fill monks’ begging bowls. 

miniature Angkor Wat and the Bayon at Chùa Chim

       The principal characteristics defining Khmer culture and identity are language and religion, both of which appear to have good future prospects.  Instruction in the Khmer language was formerly only available to boys who enrolled temporarily in the monasteries. Nowadays Khmer is one of the three minority languages in Vietnam (the   others are Giarai in the Central Highlands and Hmông in the north) authorized for bi-lingual education at government-sponsored schools, abetting the language’s preservation and development

       As for Khmer Buddhism, the continuing active role of the monasteries in socio-cultural life, respect accorded to monks and the popularity of regular rituals and festivals indicates its persistent, deeply ingrained strength.  This religion has sustained the Trà Vinh Khmers throughout the vicissitudes of the past several centuries.  Neither it, nor the culture behind it, is likely to fade away anytime soon.

Khmer monks in Trà Vinh city

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              Trà Vinh is one of the stops on our cultural-historical tour of Vietnam.  For details see                                                                          http://deltatoursvietnam.com 

Châu Đốc--the Diamond of the Delta

                                          by Jim Goodman

the fish statue at Châu Đốc

    As a border town 244 km west of Hồ Chí Minh City, Châu Đốc is a convenient stopover for travel to and from Cambodia.  But in addition, from here to the sea, no other area offers so many facets of the life and culture of the Mekong Delta—its ethnic composition, typical river activities and scenic attractions, including a bird sanctuary.  Châu Đốc lies on the Hậu Giang River, one of the major components of the Delta’s system, a waterway busy with cargo boats, fishing pirogues and floating houses.  At a riverside park a tall sculpture of a fish marks local appreciation of the town’s most important resource.

fishing around the pie

    From the fish statue the tip of the long, narrow Con Tiên Island is visible.  Just downriver is a covered market.  Further on lie riverside restaurants, where one can observe the variety of boat traffic.  Small pirogues, some pulled with oars, others fitted with a motor at the back end, ferry passengers across to the island shore, lined with houses on tall stilts.  Seeing these in the dry season gives a hint of how much the river swells during the rains.  Other pirogues hold one or two fishermen, who cast nets into the river.  Some of them will row right up to the piers and riverside balconies to catch fish around the supporting posts.

early morning floating market

   Upriver from the fish statue is the scene for another distinctive feature of Mekong Delta life—the early morning floating market.  Like the one near Cần Thơ, activity starts at dawn, peaks an hour after sunrise and dies down by mid-morning.  From the top end of each boat’s mast hangs a sample of the merchandise—bananas, coconuts, etc.—for sale on board.  Smaller boats carrying customers ply around and in between the market boats, as do pirogues hawking cooked food and refreshments.
   

floating houses on the Hầu Giang Riv

    Individual fishermen can usually count on decent results from their nets and traps, but the bulk of Châu Đốc’s fish comes from catfish farms managed by families living in houses floating on empty oil drums just off the eastern shore of Con Tiên Island.  Some of these are small, comprising one big room and a porch, but they can be quite pretty, painted in bright colors and festooned with potted flowers.  Large dwellings have an attached open-air balcony, where the residents lay out the fish to dry, while they keep the live ones in cages underneath.  Small dugouts convey people around the area.  For the motorized vessels a floating petrol station lies just downriver.

Vietnamese students ferried across theriver

    Most of Châu Đốc’s inhabitants are Vietnamese, largely descendants of immigrants during the 18th century, with a few Chinese Hoa neighborhoods near the markets.  Khmer and Chăm people still make up part of the city’s population and have their own villages near the town as well as further out in An Giang province. 
    The Chăm also settled here rather recently, like the Vietnamese.  They migrated from the east after the annexation by Minh Mạng of Panduranga, the last Chăm state in south-central Vietnam, and an unsuccessful revolt in the mid-19th century. The towering minarets and domed roofs of mosques identify the Chăm villages that lie on both sides of the river.  Unlike

Chăm girl near Châu Đốc

most of the Muslim Chăm who remained in the original homeland, the Chăm who moved into the Mekong Delta, and further on into Cambodia, follow a more orthodox version of Islam, heavily influenced by Sunni Islamic practice in Malaysia and Indonesia.  But they are a matrilineal society and thus the women are not so secluded as in other conservative Sunni societies. They keep their hair covered, but do not wear veils and are quite active in local commercial life.
    The small boats moored near the fish statue that take visitors on tours to the floating houses usually continue to a riverside Chăm village a few kilometers further.  The houses near the river stand on stilts that are at least two meters in length and long, narrow bamboo walkways connect neighborhoods.  During the dry season the space beneath the house is usually occupied by weavers, who work on handlooms to produce the distinctive brocaded pillowcases, scarves, towels and bedcovers characteristic of the Chăm textile tradition.
    Most of the village straddles the main road to the town.  Wooden houses with tiled roofs stand on tall stilts.  New mosques in the Arabian style, one white, one light green, lie on the other side of the road.  No market places exist here, but vendors sell vegetables, fruits and spices out of curbside wagons and Chăm women make and sell snacks at roadside stalls.

Chăm weaver

    Besides its own variety of attractions, Châu Đốc is also the starting point for short excursions to other sites in An Giang province.  The nearest and most popular, particularly for religious-minded Vietnamese, is Núi Sam, a temple-studded, 300 meter-high hill just five km outside of town next to the village of Vĩnh Tế.  The road from Châu Đốc terminates at the foot of the hill and the entrance to the grandest temple at Núi Sam—Chùa Tây An.
    The main building blends Chinese and Indian architectural motifs, featuring both angled roofs with upturned corners, as well as minaret-like towers with a dome at the top.  A rich, dark orange color dominates the walls, columns and roofs, with green trimming around the roof edges.  Statues of a broad range of Buddhist deities and guardian gods stand or sit at several interior altars, all lavishly decorated.

Chùa Tây An, Nús Sam

    On the other side of the road, a little further down, stands the more austere temple to Bà Chúa Xứ, a recent structure with gray concrete walls, tiered roofs of green tile and little exterior decoration.  But more devotees come here to honor this goddess, said to be able to tell one’s fortune, who is dressed in a red gown and peacock feathers.  According to one local legend, the stone image, a Khmer sculpture from the pre-Angkor period, originally stood at the summit of Núi Sam until the late 18th century, when Thai invaders tried to take it away.  But the image is said to have grown heavier and heavier and the plunderers had to abandon their efforts halfway down the hill.
    After their retreat an apparition claiming to be the spirit of Bà Chúa Xứ appeared to villagers and told them to summon nine virgins to move the statue.  That they did, but when they reached the foot of the hill the image once again became too heavy to move.  So they built the temple on that spot and housed it there.
    The origin and even the ethnic identity of Bà Chúa Xứ are still somewhat unclear.  To some she is a form of the Chăm goddess Po Nagar.  To others she is an incarnation of the Chinese Mazu, Goddess of the Sea and protector of sailors and fishermen.  Still others claim she was originally the wife of a late 18th century Vietnamese general, or one of Nguyễn Ánh’s Thai supporters during his war with the Tây Sơn regime.  Her name means Lady of the Realm and she has been invoked as a guardian of the border since the early Nguyễn Dynasty.

temple to the popular Bà Chúa Xứ

    In the popular view she is a goddess of prosperity, health, business success, fertility, domestic harmony, scholastic achievement and the secrets of the future.  Bà Chúa Xứ is the most popular goddess in the western part of the Delta, especially among female entrepreneurs, who form a large portion of the devotees who make pilgrimages to her temple.  Beginning on the 20th day of the 4th lunar month, the temple hosts a week-long festival in her honor, featuring pig sacrifices, rituals, operas, martial arts demonstrations, magic acts and stage performances, drawing hundreds of thousands of devotees and spectators.
    From her temple, continuing past smaller, rather gaudy temples, at the end of the one km-long road lies the lovely communal house Đình Vĩnh Tế, a classic Vietnamese building, with wide, tiered and tiled roofs, yellow walls and columns.  A path from here leads to the summit, passing various small temples and cave shrines on the way.  Sculptures of deities riding one sort of winged beast or another seem to dominate the sites.  At various points on the summit one can have a broad view of the plains, as well as Cambodia to the west and Núi Cấm to the south.  The latter is one of the Seven Mountains of An Giang province, the only part of the Mekong Delta between the Cambodian border and the river’s mouth that is not completely flat.

Trà Sư Bird Sanctuary

    Road 948, turning south just past Nhà Bàn village, runs past Núi Cấm, which is much higher than Núi Sam and offers a broader view.  On the way, the Trà Sư Bird Sanctuary lies a few kilometers off to the east.  A large, rectangular swamp with neat rows of tall trees, the sanctuary is dominated by egrets that cluster on the trees near the park entrance and nest deep inside the forest.  It’s possible to take a boat ride through the swamp, to view the nests high up in the trees.  Early morning and dusk are the most active times of day.
    Khmer villages also lie along the road to Núi Cấm.  They were the aboriginal inhabitants of the province, whose settlement perhaps dates back to the Funan Period, from the 3rd to 6th centuries.  The area was sparsely populated, and Châu Đốc hardly more than a small fishing village, until Vietnamese migration commenced in the early 18th century.  Cambodia was that century continuously convulsed by succession struggles among the royal family members.  Contending princes were never strong enough to win on their own, so sought outside assistance from their Thai or Vietnamese neighbors.  In the course of one such struggle, the victorious Khmer prince, to reward his Vietnamese allies, ceded Châu Đốc in 1757.  Vietnamese migrants did not displace the Khmer, but simply cleared land and established new villages in places not occupied by them.  Eventually they became the majority community and now comprise over 90% of the province’s population.

Khmer Buddhist temple near Núi Cấ

   Châu Đốc’s importance rose from 1815, when the Nguyễn Emperor Gia Long ordered the construction of a fort in the city and placed Thoại Ngọc Hầu in charge.  He oversaw the construction of the Vĩnh Tế Canal, connecting Châu Đốc with Hà Tiên on the coast.  The work took six years, employed 80,000 workers in harsh, often deadly conditions.  Upon completion the canal ran 91 km, was 25 meters wide and three meters deep.  Still in use today, it also ran right along the Vietnam-Cambodia border, fixing the frontier boundaries here once and for all.

unusual Khmer temple carving

    While few Khmer live in Châu Đốc or other provincial towns, their villages dominate the area around the Seven Mountains.  Khmer houses do not differ from those of their Vietnamese neighbors, but occasionally the village entrance features a gate in the style of the Angkor Wat monuments.  Fancy gates also stand at the entrance to the village temples, built in the Cambodian style, but differing somewhat from Khmer Theravada Buddhist temples in the coastal provinces of Trà Vinh and Sóc Trăng, the home of 70% of Vietnam’s Khmer community.  They feature taller columns around the building, supporting angled roofs with cone-shaped brick towers mounted on the top. A few ornate chedis stand in the temple courtyard.  Carved nagas—the giant serpents of Buddhist mythology—and the occasional odd image, such as a headless man with his face on his chest, adorn the compound buildings.
    Thus, in just a few days in and around Châu Đốc, a traveler can appreciate just about every facet of the Mekong Delta’s material and cultural life.  Here are floating fish farms and centuries-old rice fields, traditional religions like Buddhism, both Mahayana and Theravada, as well as Islam and Christianity, esoteric sects (Hòa Hảo, for example, has many followers in the area) and popular divinities like Bà Chúa Xứ, mountain views and flocks of birds, Vietnamese rural and river life, Khmer, Châm and Chinese communities.  No other destination in the Delta offers so much.                      

casting a net on the Hầu Giang River

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