The architectural scale is very modest. These are mainly temples that were rebuilt by the people on the old foundation or based on historical documents to restore them as places of worship for the people. However, some relics themselves have very high documentary value such as the temple of Truong Loi and Truong Chien in Tinh Gia, which still preserves the royal decrees bestowed by the Le So dynasty. Or the Chieu Anh temple is associated with the worship of Mother Goddess, Buddha and historical figures. At this relic, there is an altar to the founding heroes of the Le dynasty such as Nguyen Nhu Lam, Le Dat, Le Phan, Le Bong, Nguyen Xi and especially there are 2 men on the oath-taking list, Le Van An and Le Than [PL8, photo 5, page 228].
Regarding the type of ancestral temple, through actual surveys, it is shown that, unlike the relics worshiping figures such as Le Loi, Le Lai, which are often worshiped or co-worshiped in large-scale temples such as Lam Kinh, Thai Mieu of Le Dynasty, and Tep Temple. The architecture of the ancestral temples of the characters participating in the Lung Nhai oath-taking ceremony does not have a grand, splendid architecture but is often built modestly and simply. They are built in the village, hometown and land reclaimed and settled by the descendants of the figures. These relics are generally built and protected in a fairly orderly manner with a common ground plan in the shape of the letter Nhat, consisting of only 1 main worship room. Some places also separate the forbidden palace from the outside worship place. These ancestral temples are the center of religious practice for the relatives and descendants of the figures on the occasion of the annual death anniversary and ancestral worship ceremonies, and in the ancestral temple, it is more common that the characters participating in the Lung Nhai oath-taking ceremony are not worshiped separately but are co-worshiped with many other characters in the family and clan.
The Le Duy family temple in Kim Dinh village, Hoang Tien commune (Hoang Hoa district) is a branch of the Le Lai family lineage. This is a family temple that has a close relationship with the An Lac temple worshiping Le Lai in Hoang Hai (Hoang Hoa). In Nong Cong, there is also a family temple worshiping Le Lai called "Le Tuong Cong family temple" in Trung Y commune, Nong Cong district. This family branch still takes the name Le Duy, perhaps this is a branch of the Le Duy family that migrated from Hoang Hoa to settle here. Currently, this family temple still preserves the royal decree, genealogy and some worship objects.
In Van Nhung village, Dong Linh commune (Thanh Hoa city) there is currently a Dam Le family temple. It is called Dam family but in fact this is the main branch of King Le Thai.
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Similarities and Differences of Worship Customs in Relation to the Worship of Other Historical Figures -
The custom of worshiping historical figures participating in the Lung Nhai oath in 1416 in Thanh Hoa - 30 -
The custom of worshiping historical figures participating in the Lung Nhai oath in 1416 in Thanh Hoa - 6 -
The custom of worshiping historical figures participating in the Lung Nhai oath in 1416 in Thanh Hoa - 24 -
The custom of worshiping historical figures participating in the Lung Nhai oath in 1416 in Thanh Hoa - 22
To. Later, fearing the Mac dynasty's extermination, they changed their name to Dam. This is a relic to worship the royal family members of the Le dynasty. According to documents, it was built in the 2nd year of Thuan Thien and then restored during the Le Trung Hung period. The current architecture has been restored quite modestly compared to before. Over time, the church still preserves many ancient artifacts of the family such as royal decrees, genealogies, and orders issued by previous kings. Surveys at the relic show that in the middle of the relic, there is an altar and a painting of Le Loi, the altars on the left and right sides worship the dukes in the family. This is a relic with a great connection with the branches of the Le Loi family in Thanh Hoa.
Some of the remaining communal houses of the Lung Nhai oath-taking characters in the province are modest in scale, such as the Le Van Linh and Le Van An communal houses in Tho Xuan, the Le Hiem communal house in Nong Cong, and the Le Lieu communal house in Hoang Hoa. Among these communal houses, the most notable is the communal house of the Khac Quoc Cong Le Van An. After many centuries of existence, the communal house still retains its original architectural appearance. What is special is that it still preserves relatively intact extremely valuable stone relics and worship objects. The communal house is in the shape of the letter Dinh, with a front hall and a back hall. The front hall is a 4-room wooden house with 3 rafters in the traditional style. The back hall has an area of 19.8m2 and is arranged into two palaces: the outer palace worships the ancestral council, the inner palace worships Khac Quoc Cong Le Van An [PL8, photo 11, page 231]. Currently, the church still preserves many extremely valuable artifacts such as: a throne, a stone altar, on which there is a Chinese inscription "Saint Le Van An", two stone lamps, three stone altars, a pair of candles, a stone tray... along with many wooden worship items such as tablets and trays.
Le Van Linh family temple is a newly restored relic on the foundation of the old relic. Legend has it that the ancient architecture was quite large, including a sanctuary to worship Buddha. Some artifacts that prove the age of the relic are the 15 remaining stone bases. In 1990, the temple was restored by the family members, and in the relic there are still some incense burners, bronze lamp stands, some stone incense bowls, wooden trays, betel trays, halberds, canopies, thrones and tablets [PL8, photo 10, page 230].
The communal houses of Le Lieu (Hoang Hoa) and Le Hiem (Nong Cong) have been degraded over time. These are restored relics.
In addition, the architecture is quite simple. However, in these temples, many valuable artifacts and worship objects are preserved. Especially the Le Hiem family temple, here are preserved up to 25 royal decrees of different periods conferring titles on the family and the character Le Hiem, palanquins, worship pictures painted on silk which according to many researchers date and have the value of researching the fine arts of the Le Trung Hung period.
It can be said that the family temples of historical figures participating in the Lung Nhai oath were often built by the family itself, with limited economic resources, so the architecture was often small and modest, but it was the priceless treasure of the families to commemorate their ancestors. And this was the space where the characters regularly practiced their beliefs.
In addition to the types of relics mentioned above, the communal house is considered a relatively rare type of relic in the worship of the Lung Nhai oath-taking characters in Thanh Hoa. According to the survey of the National Research Council, there are only 2 relics of the Lung Nhai oath-taking characters recorded in the communal house. At these relics, the characters participating in the oath-taking are worshiped as the village's tutelary gods. On each occasion of the village festival, a procession of the gods is often organized from the family church to the communal house for people to worship. According to the elders of Thai Son village (Tan Phuc commune, Nong Cong), in the past, the Le Hiem temple was the village communal house, but now people still often call it the communal house and the temple interchangeably. As for Phuong Chinh communal house (Dong Linh commune, Thanh Hoa city), people still call it Van Nhung communal house. According to documents, this place (Van Nhung village) was formerly a place for training soldiers, sent by two nephews of Le Loi to guard the eastern region during the Lam Son uprising. This was the place where many heroic battles of the Lam Son insurgents took place. Later, it became the land granted by King Le to the descendants of Le Thach and Le Khoi. During the Mac Dynasty, due to fear of being massacred, the Le royal family fled and changed their surname to Dam, joined forces to eliminate the Mac dynasty and re-established the dynasty. Phuong Chinh Communal House was built in the 10th year of Vinh To (1628) under King Le Than Tong. During the Nguyen Dynasty, it was located in the Van Mieu area of the commune. It was last renovated in 1936, demolished during the cooperative period, and restored in 2000. The communal house worships the tutelary gods: "Bach Ke Dai Vuong, Da Ke Dai Vuong" who helped Admiral Dam Canh Tuong conquer the southern invaders.
The civil and military admirals, dukes and princesses of the Dam family were those who contributed to the country. The temple worships the great mandarins Le Thach, Le Khoi, Le Khang and Le Thanh, and later worships King Le Thai To [PL8, photo number 7, page 229].
In general, from the types of worship relics as mentioned above, it shows that the appearance of the place of worship focusing on the historical figures of the Lung Nhai oath is very large, where it contains important values in many aspects such as more clearly identifying the careers of historical figures, the date of construction and the times of restoration and adding extremely important historical sources that the official history has the conditions to record such as the divine records, genealogies, royal decrees, parallel sentences, large characters, and steles recording the construction of the relic.
3.1.2. Altar layout
The arrangement of the shrine reflects the position of the main deity and the worshiped character. The main, secondary and positional differences in the shrine are characteristics that reflect the evolution of the worship process as well as its fluctuations in the history of the relic's existence. The worship of individuals or the worship of many deities with the characters participating in the Lung Nhai oath in many relics shows the awareness and attitude of the community towards the characters. At the same time, the survey also shows that the arrangement, order and position of superior and inferior are outstanding features in the worship of historical characters participating in the Lung Nhai oath.
Through studying the relic sites worshiping the characters participating in the Lung Nhai oath in Thanh Hoa, the researcher found that the relics have quite diverse layouts, including many different styles such as: Dinh letter (Tep temple), Cong letter (Le Thai To temple - Tho Xuan), Nhat letter (Le Van Linh ancestral hall - Tho Xuan, Phuong Chinh communal house - Thanh Hoa city, Truong Loi and Truong Chien temples - Tinh Gia, Vo Uy temple, Le Hiem family ancestral hall - Nong Cong, Le Lieu family church - Hoang Hoa; Lung Nhai temple - Thuong Xuan...) or Nhi letter style (Her Majesty's temple - Thanh Hoa city, Le Hiem temple - Nong Cong...). Tam letter style is typical as An Lac temple (Hoang Hoa). At these places of worship, in addition to Nhat letter style relics, the majority of the characters are always worshiped in the back palace, which is the most solemn and sacred place. Many Nhat letter relics even try to create an additional mallet handle to form a Dinh letter as a shrine.
Worship and incense altar. Many monuments worship individual characters, but there are also monuments that worship many characters participating in the Lung Nhai oath or the heroes of the Lung Nhai oath are worshiped together with other gods.
The relics have the worship of the Lung Nhai oath characters together, such as: Lung Nhai oath relic (Thuong Xuan) worships 19 oath heroes; Le Thai To temple (Tho Xuan district) and Thai Mieu of Hau Le dynasty (Thanh Hoa city) worship Le Loi and worship Le Lai, Nguyen Trai, now at Cham temple in Xuan Lam (Le Thai To temple) there are also additional tablets of other meritorious officials such as Le Van An, Le Van Linh.
In many relics, there is a joint worship of the Lung Nhai oath-taking character with relatives and clans: at the Dam family temple (Dong Linh commune, Thanh Hoa city), Le Loi is worshiped with the Dam Le district dukes (originally Le Khoi, Le Thach, nephews of King Le Thai To, but changed to Dam Le family in the Trinh-Mac period because of fear of revenge). In this relic, Le Loi's altar is placed in the middle, the side rooms are the descendants of the Dam Le family [PL8, photo 26, page 238]. The Thai temple in Lam Kinh or the Thai temple of the Later Le dynasty in Thanh Hoa city both have incense burners and Le Loi's statue placed in the middle room of the main hall, next to and behind are often the kings and queens of the Le dynasty. In the temple of the concubine Trinh Thi Ngoc Lu (Le Loi's first wife), the statue of King Le Thai To is solemnly placed in the middle room of the front hall, and the forbidden palace in the back palace is where the concubine is worshiped. For the relics worshiping Le Lai in Hoang Hoa, it can be seen that the worshiping with relatives takes place in a unified model in which he (Le Lai) always holds the central and highest position. For example, in the temple of Trung Tuc Vuong Le Lai (Ngoc Lac), the worshiping place for Le Lai and his wife is arranged in two separate spaces [PL8, photo 2, page 226]. The main shrine of the main temple, in the middle room worships the meritorious Le Lai, and the side room worships his wife Nuong A Thien, which is commonly known as the Mother Temple, Mother Palace. In the An Lac temple (Hoang Hoa), the relic worshiping the Le Lai clan, there are two main worshiping directions. The first direction is for the founding meritorious Le Lai clan. The second direction is for the next generations of the Le Lai clan who directly and indirectly contributed to the development of the Hoang Hai land today. The main worshiping space is in the back room. The shrine in the back room is arranged as follows: the middle room is where incense is placed
The altar, the throne, the memorial tablet of Trung Tuc Dai Vuong, on the left is the throne of Le Lam. The right side worships Le Niem and Le Khung.
These phenomena are commonly seen in most of the relics worshiping the Lung Nhai oath-taking characters. For example, at the Le Duy family temple in Kim Dinh village (Hoang Tien commune, Hoang Hoa), in the most solemn middle room, the three ancestors of the family are worshiped: Le Lai, Le Lam (son), and Le Niem (grandson). Above the incense altar, there is an ancient Chinese inscription with the embossed words "Le cong than" hanging in the middle room. This is a relic belonging to the three branches of Le Lai's descendants in Hoang Hoa district. At the Vo Uy temple relic (Tan Phuc commune, Nong Cong), the middle room is arranged with a dragon throne, a throne, and a deity of Vo Uy. The right room worships his son Vo Thoi An; the left room is an incense altar to worship other ancestors in the family.
The shrine at Trinh Kha temple in Vinh Hoa commune (Vinh Loc) is not distributed horizontally but vertically, including his father Trinh Quyen, who was honored as Thuong Dang Than, and his mother Trinh Xuan Dung, who was honored as Chinh Uyen Luong Bao Trung Hung Ton Than, and Trinh Kha, Thuong Dang Phuc Than.
The Le Cong Than family temple (also known as Le Lieu temple) in Hoang Son commune (Hoang Hoa) worships the oath-taking hero Le Lieu and his son Le Yen. The temple still has an altar and many parallel sentences praising the merits of Le Lieu, Le Yen and the Le Cong Than family line.
At Le Hiem temple (Nong Cong) and Phuong Chinh communal house (Dong Son) where Le Hiem and Le Loi are worshiped as village tutelary gods. In these places, according to village customs, every time a festival is held, the god must be brought from the family church to the temple or village communal house (Le Hiem must be brought from the Le Hiem family church to the Le Hiem temple, Le Loi must be brought from the Dam Le family church to Phuong Chinh communal house).
On the other hand, the arrangement of the shrines at the relics worshiping the heroes of the Lung Nhai oath in Thanh Hoa all follow strict principles of Confucianism, order, and hierarchy, from the arrangement of incense altars, tablets, thrones, statues, etc., allowing us to think that family culture is a prominent feature that governs worship.
It is worth noting that the Four Palaces religion has penetrated into the shrines of some characters participating in the Lung Nhai oath. In the worship spaces of characters such as Le Loi, Le Lai such as the Le Thai To temple relic, Ngoc Lan princess temple (Tho Xuan), Tep temple (Ngoc Lac), An Lac temple (Hoang Hoa), Dam family temple (Dong Son), next to the main temple, there is always a Mother worshiping room. However, the combined worship does not diminish the community's awareness of honoring historical figures, national heroes, and the heroes of the Lung Nhai oath.
The practice of worshiping together has become a popular form. There are many reasons for this. Firstly, the relics worshiping the Lung Nhai oath-taking characters are mainly in clans, so in addition to worshiping them as ancestors, there are also other ancestors of the clan in many different generations. On the other hand, after the death of some Lung Nhai mandarins, there was no place to worship them, so the people combined their worship into a common relic, typically the Ngoc Lan temple relic in Tho Xuan. In many places, the relics were established by the people to commemorate the events and famous people of Le Loi, such as the temples of Le Loi in the Thai and Muong ethnic areas of Ngoc Lac, Lang Chanh, and Ba Thuoc districts. Therefore, here, the temple worshiping the king also includes the worship of other gods of the ethnic groups. This interpretation shows the flexibility in the worship consciousness of the people, and also shows that the worship of historical figures participating in the Lung Nhai oath in the process of existence and development has integrated many other forms of folk beliefs. Through that, we can see the level of integration, interweaving and harmony in the beliefs and religions of the Vietnamese people.
In the relic worshiping the Lung Nhai oath-taking character in Thanh Hoa, in addition to the interior arrangement that strongly represents the hierarchical nature, seniority, and order of many generations of the Lung Nhai oath-taking character's family on the shrine, the system of relics and worship objects associated with this worship custom that remain in the shrine to this day is also quite massive, with many different types, many of which have historical and artistic value and are respected and preserved by the clans and localities. Artifacts such as the tiger-faced stone incense burner dating from the 18th-19th century in An Lac temple (Hoang Hoa) and countless artifacts and worship objects made of stone in the Le Van An family temple in Tho Xuan show that in the relic
The religious relics of many families of the Lung Nhai Oath still preserve quite well the artifacts and worshiping objects. In this ancestral temple, artifacts such as holy tablets, lamps, incense, altars, vases, candles, trays, trays, incense bowls... are all made of stone and are hundreds of years old. Some palanquins at Le Hiem Temple (Nong Cong), Trinh Kha Temple (Vinh Loc), Lam Kinh (Tho Xuan), Phuong Chinh Communal House (Thanh Hoa City) to the thrones, thrones, and deities are splendidly painted and carved very elaborately and meticulously. Le Hiem Temple has a palanquin with the art style of the Later Le period and a worshiping painting of an undetermined age that is still quite intact along with many ceremonial costumes and many altars of the council. Le Van Linh Temple preserves quite a lot of artifacts such as drums, gongs, bronze bells, cranes and swords. In particular, worshiping statues appear quite a lot in the worshiping relics. The statues of Le Loi, Le Lai, Nguyen Trai in Lam Kinh; Thai Mieu; Le Lai statue in Tep temple and An Lac temple; Le Loi statue in Trinh Thi Ngoc Lu temple... have shown the diversity of types of worship objects. In addition, the very common worship objects found in the relics of the oath-taking characters such as the royal decree box, bells, halberds, robes, large characters, parallel sentences made of fabric, wood, stone, bronze... are still quite numerous, most of which are ancient.
In summary, looking at the arrangement of the shrines in the relics worshiping the Lung Nhai oath-taking figures in Thanh Hoa, similar characteristics emerge: although the scale of the artifacts, worship objects, arrangements or decorations are different, they always show the honor of the Lung Nhai oath-taking figures, taking the images of historical figures as the center of the shrine.
3.1.3. Festivals and worship rituals
3.1.3.1. Worship schedule
In general, at the Lung Nhai Oath worshiping relics, in addition to the regular worshiping schedule, it falls on the usual holidays of the year according to the cultural traditions of the Vietnamese people, especially at the relics that are the family's ancestral halls and temples. Whenever there is an important occasion of the family according to the family genealogy, the relatives of the family organize the ceremony at the relics. The common point that can be easily seen is that the worshiping rituals