Lieu Hanh : The Mother Goddess | Vietnamese Mythology | Asian Mythology | Mythlok | Podcast

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of MythLoke with your host Nitin Nair. Now we have been exploring Southeast Asian mythology quite recently and we've gone through the Philippine mythology, Korean and even others like Malaysian and Indonesian mythology. Today we are just exploring the region a little bit more and looking into Vietnamese mythology. The whole region is a treasure trove of stories of fantastic creatures, animals, hybrids, gods, demigods etc. And one of the biggest features of this region is that there has been a lot of importance has been given to female forms or female gods and goddesses. If you look at Indian mythology there are plenty of goddesses out there who have been given the equal footing along with their male counterparts and this goes with the same with a lot of the other mythologies in the Asian realm. One such character is that of Princess Liu Han from Vietnam. Princess Liu Han is a cult figure who's worshipped by the Vietnamese people. She's believed to have been created by rice farmers who were desperate for water and land. She's considered a powerful goddess and is one of the four immortals of Vietnamese mythology. She holds a distinction of being one of the oldest recognized feminists if you go by her stories of how she has always propagated the fact that women and men are equal and how they should be equally given importance in society. Because of the fact that she became a goddess and she has been treated on equal footing with the other gods and immortals in Vietnamese mythology, it became a standard practice for people to look up to women and consider them to be equals even going far back as centuries when the rest of the world was probably still in the Dark Ages. The goddess is often depicted as a beautiful and youthful woman who's dressed in simple clothes. For ceremonies and festivals she's decked up to take on the form of the princess that she is believed to be. If you look at the family structure and also the kind of history that she is supposed to be a part of, she's believed to have been taken at least two incarnations or rebirths according to Vietnamese mythology. In the first one she's believed to have been born to a very righteous man, Lê Thái Công and his wife. Legend has it that Lê Thái Công had a vision of a young girl who broke the favorite jade cup of the Chinese god He had this vision or this dream when his wife was pregnant and he was of the strong belief that this is a sign from God and it could be that this girl who as a punishment the Emperor sent the girl who was his 13th daughter down to earth. When his wife gave birth he was sure that this was the same girl in his vision who had come down to earth to be his daughter after being punished by the Jade Emperor. He named her Jiantian who grew up to marry and have two children. She lived a happy life but suddenly died at the age of 21. The spirit of Princess Liu or Jiantian went back to a heavenly home but soon got homesick for her time on earth. She requested the Jade Emperor to let her go back resulting in her second incarnation and Princess Liu Han. She married a commoner named Daolang but she returned to heaven after a short while. As you know she's also known as Jiantian and this means descending from heaven and is not known by too many other names as she is very culturally entrenched into the Vietnamese mythology and does not technically have a counterpart in any other part of Vietnam or any of the other regions in Southeast Asia. Although she's not known to have any specific powers but she has the ability to curse or bless people based on their activities. So she is a kind of a modern-day Santa Claus where she would judge a person based on how good they've been and then choose to bless them with riches or bless them with good fortune or curse them and make them suffer for their wrongdoings. Now despite the heavy influence of communism traditional Vietnamese festivals are still celebrated around the country and people still strongly hold to the traditional beliefs. She's highly revered across the country and there are multiple temples that have been built in her honor and people still visit and pay their respects. If you notice idol worship is not something that is uncommon in the region and there have been many festivals where the whole concept is of offering her all the good things in life so that she continues to bless you as you move forward with your daily life. We will be exploring a lot more of mythology from the region and especially Southeastern Asian mythology because it has this rich element to it that ties in so many different factors that are still relevant to modern day life and that is the beauty of the mythology of the region where people have still held on to it, people still hold it in high regard and they still go about trying to make sure that the future generations also take the same amount of pride that they do in the stories of their past. Thank you very much for tuning in to another episode of Mythloke. This is your host Nitin Nair signing off by telling you once again that Mythloke is the home of mythology.