Vietnamese Religion
VIETNAMESE RELIGION. Like the whole complex of Vietnamese culture, Vietnamese religion has long been presented as a pure copy of the Chinese model. Trained for the most part in the discipline of Chinese studies and associating mostly with the literati class and the townspeople, scholars have been constantly confronted by their interlocutors with the Chinese ideal, notably in the domains of moral and aesthetic norms, and they have gauged the value of a rite or particular behavior according to its degree of conformity with the rules laid down by the Han Chinese texts.
Historically, the Red River Delta, cradle of Vietnamese civilization, was occupied by the Han for more than a thousand years. Moreover, the Middle Kingdom, as highly centralizing as the Roman Empire, had an especially effective organization wherein each parcel of conquered territory was put under absolute control and strict surveillance militarily, administratively, and ideologically. Chinese writing served as a unifying and assimilating instrument of the first order. Nonetheless, Dongsonian civilization, which flourished in this region before its destruction by the Han invasions, must have possessed a certain vigor, for despite the very long coercive occupation that followed it, the Vietnamese preserved their language and a part of their culture, finally succeeding in the tenth century of the common era after numerous revolts in liberating themselves from their deeply implanted Chinese occupants.
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