The Numismatic Chronicle 171 Offprint - Royal Numismatic Society

THE CONFUCIAN MESSAGE ON VIETNAMESE COINS 401
refl ection developed around the ethical concepts of ‘moral rectitude’ (đạo nghĩa 道
義), ‘loyalty’ (trung 忠) and of ‘fi lial piety’ (hiếu 孝). Nguyễn Binh Khiêm 阮秉謙
(1491–1585) was a striking example of a supporter of moral rectitude, a position
which guided his political choices: he denounced the moral decadence of the Lê
emperors, allied himself with the Mạc, then retired from political life. 238 But Neo-
Confucianism gave pre-eminence to the Four Books over the Five Canons, and
this inspired the Vietnamese authorities to create the status of ‘Doctor of the Five
Canons’ in order to promote specifi c study of these texts, from the concern that they
might otherwise be neglected. 239 The authorities reprinted the Five Canons and their
commentaries to meet the needs of the schools in the capital and in the provinces;
and they re-edited the versions in Vietnamese (nôm). The Book of Changes (Yijing)
was studied as a Confucian text at the Imperial College, but was also used as a
manual for divination by the Ministry of Rites. 240 At the end of the Lê dynasty, under
the infl uence of the kaozheng 考正 movement, 241 the great Neo-Confucian scholar
Lê Quý Đôn (1726–84) made a critical text of the Canons in his publications: Tales
from the Shujing (Thư kinh diễn nghĩa 書經演義) and Superfi cial remarks on the
Yijing (Dịch Kinh phu thuyết 易經膚說).
Furthermore in 1802, the new Nguyễn dynasty found itself, to a certain extent,
lacking legitimacy in its intellectual plan when compared with the scholars in the
North, those of the previous kingdom of the Lê. The principality in the South, 242 from
where the new rulers came, was not renowned in the area of canonical studies, indeed
it was better known for its Buddhist leanings. The fi rst emperors thus had a policy
to strip Thăng Long, the former capital, of its cultural and intellectual supremacy.
Fearing that the candidates from the North would be too successful, not a single
238 Nguyễn Binh Khiêm entered public service late, receiving the rank of doctor in 1535 at the age
of 45. He joined the new power of Mạc Đăng Dung (Emperor Thái Tổ of the Mạc, 1527–9, then
Thái Thượng Hoàng 太上皇, 1530–41) because of the behaviour of emperors of the Lê dynasty at the
beginning of the sixteenth century, then withdrew when the new power refused to demote the corrupt
offi cials for whom he had proof of embezzlement, see Poisson, Mandarins et subalternes, pp. 160–1.
239 One cannot help drawing a parallel with what happened under the Han dynasty Emperor Xuandi
in 51 BC, when the group known as Scholars of the Five Canons (Wujing boshi 五经博士) was set up.
On the date of the creation of this group of scholars, generally attributed to Emperor Wudi, see Kern,
‘Ritual, Text, and the formation of the Canon’, pp. 67–9.
240 Ng WM, pp. 2–3.
241 Kaozhengxue 考正學 (evidential scholarship) was an important Chinese intellectual movement,
which became widespread in the eighteenth century, and which sought to re-examine historical and
philosophical texts in the light of objective textual, philological and empirical criticism.
242 During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Vietnam was divided into two principalities.
In the north, the real power was in the hands of the ‘king’ (vương) from the Trịnh clan, which left the
emperor from the Lê family with only a fi ctive power of a religious nature; to a certain extent, the
Vietnamese vương was to the Vietnamese emperor what the shōgun was to the Japanese Tennō. In the
south, the lords of the Nguyễn clan transformed the government of Quảng Nam into an independent
principality which they ruled hereditarily; within two centuries this reached progressively towards the
south absorbing the Khmer territories. In 1774, profi ting from the Tây Sơn peasant uprising, the Trịnh
brought to an end the principality of the South. The Tây Sơn then overturned the Trịnh, unifi ed the
country and founded a new dynasty (1789–1802). In 1774, the Nguyễn princes fl ed to the extreme south
and thence to Siam.