Person
Than Nong
The god-king of Chinese myth credited with teaching agriculture and tasting a hundred herbs; the old Vietnamese histories traced Vietnamese ancestry back to him.
At a glance
- Also known as
- Viem De — the genealogy in De vuong the ky calls his line the line of Viem De Than Nong1
- Role
- The man who taught the people to sow the five grains and to see which soil suited which plant, then tasted for himself the flavours of a hundred herbs and of the spring waters so that the people would know what to avoid; Hoai Nam tu adds a line worth remembering: on some days he was poisoned seventy times2
- Family
- The genealogy in De vuong the ky gives the line of Viem De Than Nong eight generations in succession: De Thua, De Lam, De Minh, De Truc, De Lai, De Ai, De Du Vong. The old Vietnamese histories join Vietnamese ancestry to him through De Minh, a third-generation descendant, who fathered Kinh Duong Vuong13
- Earliest record
- Hoai Nam tu, a work compiled under the Western Han and presented to the emperor around 139 BC, records the tasting of a hundred herbs in Chinese characters in a Chinese book, before any Vietnamese history existed2
Life
The old chronicles say
Hoai Nam tu, a work compiled under the Western Han and presented to the emperor around 139 BC, tells how in ancient times the people ate grasses and drank water, picked fruit from the trees and ate the flesh of snails and clams, and so suffered much sickness and poisoning. Than Nong then taught them to sow the five grains, to see which soil suited which plant, and he tasted for himself the flavours of a hundred herbs and of the spring waters, so that the people would know what to avoid. The book adds a line worth remembering: on some days he was poisoned seventy times. That is the root of the tale of Than Nong tasting a hundred herbs that Vietnamese still repeat today, written in Chinese characters, in a Chinese book, before any Vietnamese history existed.2
The old Vietnamese histories record him as a distant ancestor of the Vietnamese, joined through De Minh, a third-generation descendant who toured the south and fathered Kinh Duong Vuong. The genealogy of the line of Viem De Than Nong comes from De vuong the ky, a Chinese work of the Jin dynasty whose original is lost but whose genealogical passage survives quoted in Thai Binh ngu lam, book 78: after Viem De came eight generations in succession, De Thua, De Lam, De Minh, De Truc, De Lai, De Ai, De Du Vong. The old histories took names that really do occur in that list and refitted them into a different family structure, skipping the man in the middle and adding a new one.13
Legend has it
The distance from him down to the figures of the Hung kings’ age does not even agree within a single book. Linh Nam chich quai records Tien Dung, daughter of the third Hung king, as a tenth-generation descendant of Than Nong; in the Son Tinh tale in that same collection, the Hung king’s daughter My Nuong is recorded as a descendant of the twenty-seventh generation. Two daughters of Hung kings, two different distances to the same ancestor, in the same book. The compiler neither explains it nor deletes one to make them fit — which is how this book works: it sets down what it heard, even when the pieces do not sit together.4
Mentioned in
- Episode 2Kinh Duong Vuong and the Line of Than Nong10 min
- Episode 11Chu Dong Tu and Mai An Tiem14 min
Sources for this page
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