Era
Nam Viet
The kingdom a Qin official founded in Lingnan after the Qin collapsed; it lasted five reigns before the Han destroyed it. Where the Vietnamese histories should place it is a question their historians argued over for seven hundred years.
At a glance
- Dates
- The Shiji puts it in one line: from the time Uy Da first became king, five reigns and ninety-three years, and then the state was gone1
- Territory
- The three commanderies the Qin had set up in Lingnan: Nam Hai, Que Lam and Tuong Quan. Da seized the latter two and set himself up; the Man Viet, Tay Au and Lac became subject to him, though the history does not record them as conquered1
- Earliest record
- The earliest is the account of Nam Viet in Sima Qian's Shiji, written less than twenty years after the kingdom fell1
Overview
The old chronicles say
This kingdom differs from every other era in the series in one respect: it has a near-contemporary history that almost no other period enjoys. Sima Qian compiled the Shiji less than twenty years after Nam Viet fell, and gave it a chapter of its own. From it we have names, letters, dates, even Trieu Da's own words defending himself to the Han emperor — none of which exists for the age of the Hung kings or for Au Lac.1
That very richness makes it the easiest period to misread. Modern printings of the Shiji set Sima Qian's own text and a Tang-dynasty scholar's notes side by side on the same page. The thing most firmly attached to Trieu Da in Vietnamese memory — that he broke An Duong Vuong — belongs to that layer of notes, not to the main text. Read without separating the layers, the two look the same age; they are about nine hundred years apart.2
Episodes
Sources for this page
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