Au Co and Seal Script.

#AUCO #Vietnamesemyth #kanzi #sealscript

(updated with minor errors corrected June 24 - 2020)

The Vietnamese culture has a story of a bird spirit who came from the mountains and was trapped while in bird form and rescued by a dragon prince who became her husband. Their children hatched from 100 eggs and became the ancestors of the Viet people.

Her name is Au Co in Vietnamese and is written like this in modern Chinese though the characters do have other simplified forms.

Literally in modern Chinese this is something like old woman concubine but take another look at the older seal script form of the first element in her name. It shows a woman facing an enclosure with round objects probably mouths representing people? 

Maybe the original concept was woman who protects like royalty?

In Chinese Au is Yu4 

I wonder if an entity similar to Au Co was once honored in Southern China or the Yue realms adjacent to North Vietnam?

While people think of the Chinese writing system as spreading from central china outwards and most modern characters have been standardized odd rare characters like this make me wonder if regional variants have been absorbed into the greater body of characters?

As I've written before while North and South have a yin yang relationship in Chinese culture and while the culture of the central Plains is usually dominant sometimes the South is stronger? 

Vietnamese Blue and White Ware

The #Chinese #ceramics industry was not the only one using cobalt underglaze.
Certainly they were the first to use cobalt and NOT in a lead based glaze but other nations soon adapted to using it as well.

The #Vietnamese potters tended to use a darker more indigo underglaze and smaller shapes. Its a lesser known ware possibly because the export trade peaked and then dropped off during the 16th and 17th centuries as the Vietnamese like the Japanese exploited the disruptions to trade caused by conflicts between a failing Ming dynasty and the spread southwards of the Manchus.

Plus the introduction of polychrome wares and the European ceramics industry learning to adapt white EW clays to create their own wares reduced demand.

Here's some pictures to enjoy. The underglaze pigments seem a little coarser but the brushwork is often delightly fluid.

The pieces I have shown here actually date back to the 15th century.

This final image although looking more "chinese" is indeed Vietnamese!

Some sites  use the word Annamese rather than Vietnamese.

YUE beyond the south

YUE - BEYOND THE SOUTH

History and language are linked and the word and name Yue proves this.

Yue as a word and character is a verb.

As a name it describes an ancient nation in what is now southern China.

The original Yue people seem to have been non Sinitic probably speaking an Austroasiatic language related to Vietnamese though the name is now used to describe a grouping of dialects that includes Cantonese.

The Yue realm was once in eastern Zhejiang south of WU then came to cover the areas that are now Guangdong and Guangxi before becoming assimilated fully into the Chinese or Sinitic culture.

Beyond is perhaps not the best translation of Yue but conisder the name of of modern Vietnam. YueNan.

I suspect Beyond the South reflects the  ancient view of Yue  and Vietnam. 

The lands that were beyond the borders of southern China.

There was a time when the Huai and then the Yangtze river was the southern border.

Yes that was thousands of years ago and its China or in the case of Vietnam Sinicized now.

Borders change though. Who knows what the few thousand years will bring to the lands beyond the south?