An Dương Vương

His antecedents are "cloudy" since the only information provided by written accounts is that his family name was Thục, and his personal name was Phán, which appears to associate him with the ancient state of Shu in what is now Sichuan, conquered by Qin dynasty in 316 BCE.[3][4] This was also the traditional view of Chinese and Vietnamese historians. Many chronicles including Records of the Outer Territories of the Jiao province,[5] Đại Việt sử lược, Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư stated that he was a son of King Thục, but they were unable to describe precisely his origin. Later historians had a more nuanced view. In Khâm định Việt sử Thông giám cương mục, the writters expressed doubts about King An Dương Vương's origin, claiming it was impossible for a Shu prince to cross thousands of miles, through forests, many states to invade Văn Lang.[6] In 1963, an oral tradition of Tày people in Cao Bằng titled "Cẩu chủa cheng vùa" was recorded. [3][7] According to this account, at the end of Hồng Bàng dynasty, there was a kingdom called Nam Cương (lit. “southern border), comprising portions of modern-day Cao Bằng and Guangxi.[3] It consisted of 10 regions, in which the King resided in the central one (present-day Cao Bằng Province).The other nine regions were under the control of nine lords.[8] While King An Dương Vương's father (Thục Chế 蜀制) died, he was still a child; yet, his intelligence enabled him to retain the throne and all the lords surrendered. Nam Cương became more and more powerful while Văn Lang became weak.[3][7] Subsequently, he invaded Văn Lang and founded the state of Âu Lạc. The tale is supported by many vestiges, relics and place names in Cao Bằng Province. The assumption about his origin as local habitant has also been reflected in various fairy tales, registers, worships and folk memories. According to historian Đào Duy Anh in Đất nước Việt Nam qua các đời: nghiên cứu địa lý học lịch sử Việt Nam, the southern part of Zuo River, the drainage basin of You River and the upstream area of Lô River, Gâm River, and Cầu River are inhabited by Âu Việt tribes with the supreme leader Thục Phán.[9]

Kinh An Dương established the capital of Âu Lạc in Tây Vu, where a fortified citadel is constructed, known to history as Cổ Loa.[10] It was the first political center of the Vietnamese civilization pre-Sinitic era,[11] with an outer embankment covering 600 hectares.[12] This name was derived from the Sino-Vietnamese 古螺, meaning "old spiral", reflecting its multi-layered structure of earthworks, moats and ditches. However, according to Dr. Lê Chí Quế, Cổ Loa is spelled of Old Vietnamese word k'la (Chinese: 雞) means chicken. It corresponds to the legend of the white chicken that stalled the construction of the citadel. Near Cổ Loa commune there is an old site that was Chicken village (Vietnamese: Thôn Kẻ La / Xóm Gà). This site coincides to the legend that belonged to one tribe's totem.

Given its relatively large size, Cổ Loa maintained its dominant presence in the northern floodplain of the Red River Delta and would have required a large amount of labour and resources to construct.[13] The events associated with the building of Cổ Loa have been remembered in the legend of the golden turtle. According to this legend, when the citadel was being built, all the work done during the day was mysteriously undone during the night by a group of spirits seeking to gain revenge for the son of the previous king.[14] The local spirits were led by a thousand-year-old white chicken perched on nearby Mount Tam Đảo. The king made a sacrifice to the gods and a golden turtle appeared, subdued the white chicken, and protected King An Dương until the citadel's compleition. When he departed, he gave one of his claws to be used as the trigger of the king’s crossbow, with the assurance that with it he could destroy any foe.

King An Dương commissioned Cao Lỗ (or Cao Thông) to construct a crossbow and christened it "Saintly Crossbow of the Supernaturally Luminous Golden Claw" (nỏ thần), which one shot could killed 300 men.[15][14] According to historian K. W. Taylor, the crossbow, along with the word for it, seems to have been introduced into China from Austroasiatic peoples in the south during the third or fourth century BCE.[14] This weapon quickly became part of the Chinese arsenal; its trigger mechanism was capable of withstanding high pressure and of releasing an arrow with more force than any other type of bow. Two bronze trigger mechanisms have been excavated in Vietnam; most mechanisms were probably made of bamboo. The turtle claw used as a trigger mechanism indicates the military nature of King An Dương’s conquest and suggests that his rule was based on force or the threat of force.[14]

In 204 BCE, in Panyu (now Guangzhou), Zhao Tuo, a native of Zhending,[16][17] in the state of Zhao (modern-day Hebei), established the kingdom of Nanyue.[18] Having mobilized his armies for war with the Han dynasty, Zhao Tuo found the conquest of Âu Lạc both "tempting and feasible".[19]

The details of the campaign are not authentically recorded. Zhao Tuo's early setbacks and eventual victory against King An Dương were mentioned in Records of the Outer Territories of the Jiao province.[5] Records of the Grand Historian mentioned neither King An Duong nor Zhao Tuo's military conquest of Âu Lạc; just that after Empress Lü's death (180 BCE), Zhao Tuo used his own troops to menace and used wealth to bribe the Minyue, the Western Ou, and the Luo into submission.[20] However, the compaign inspired a legend whose theme is the transfer of the turtle claw-triggered crossbow from King An Duong to Zhao Tuo. According to this legend, ownership of the crossbow conferred the political power:“He who is able to hold this crossbow rules the realm; he who is not able to hold this crossbow will perish.”[21][22][23]

Unsuccessful on the battlefield against the supernatural crossbow, Zhao Tuo asked for a truce and sent his son Zhong Shi, to submit to King An Dương to serve him.[24][22] There, he and King An Duong’s daughter, Mỵ Châu, fell in love and were married.[22][25] A vestige of the matrilocal organization demanded that the husband came to live in the residence of his wife’s family.[26] As a result, they resided at An Duong’s court until Zhong Shi managed to lay his hands upon the magic crossbow that was the source of King An Duong’s power.[26] Meanwhile, King An Duong treated Cao Lỗ disrespectfully, and he abandoned him.[27]

Zhong Shi had Mỵ Châu show him her father's sacred crossbow, at with point he secretly changed its trigger, thus neutralizing its special powers.[25] He stole the turtle claw, rendering the crossbow useless, then returned to his father, who thereupon launched new attack on Âu Lạc and this time defeated King An Dương.[26] History records that, in his defeat, the King jumped into the ocean to commit suicide. In some versions, he was told by the turtle about his daughter's betrayal and killed his own daughter before killing himself. A legend, however, discloses that a golden turtle emerged from the water and guided him into the watery realm.[22]

Zhao Tuo subsequently incorporated the regions into his Nanyue domain, but left the indigenous chiefs in control of the population with the royal court in Cổ Loa. He posted two legates to supervise the Âu Lạc lords, one in the Red River Delta, which was named Giao Chỉ, and one in the Mã and Cả River, which was named Cửu Chân.[28][29][30] For the first time, the region formed part of a polity headed by a Chinese ruler.[31]

• Watson, Burton (1961). Records Of The Grand Historian Of China. Columbia University Press.
• Buttinger, Joseph (1958). The Smaller Dragon: A Political History of Vietnam. Praeger Publishers.
• Kiernan, Ben (2019). Việt Nam: a history from earliest time to the present. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-190-05379-6.
• Taylor, Keith Weller (1983). The Birth of the Vietnam. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-07417-0.
• Taylor, Keith Weller (2013). A History of the Vietnamese. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-87586-8.
• Kelley, Liam C. (2014), "Constructing Local Narratives: Spirits, Dreams, and Prophecies in the Medieval Red River Delta", in Anderson, James A.; Whitmore, John K. (eds.), China's Encounters on the South and Southwest: Reforging the Fiery Frontier Over Two Millennia, United States: Brills, pp. 78–106, ISBN 978-9-004-28248-3
• Loewe, Michael (1986), "The Former Han dynasty", in Twitchett, Denis C.; Fairbank, John King (eds.), The Cambridge History of China: Volume 1, The Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 BC-AD 220, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 110–128, ISBN 978-0-521-24327-8
• Yu, Ying-shih (1986), "Han foreign relations", in Twitchett, Denis C.; Fairbank, John King (eds.), The Cambridge History of China: Volume 1, The Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 BC-AD 220, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 377–463
• Brindley, Erica (2015). Ancient China and the Yue: Perceptions and Identities on the Southern Frontier, C.400 BCE-50 CE. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 1107084784.
• Li, Tana (2011), "A Geopolitical Overview", in Li, Tana; Anderson, James A. (eds.), Jiaozhi (Giao Chỉ) in the Han period Tongking Gulf, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 39–52, ISBN 978-0812205022
• Higham, Charles (1996). The Bronze Age of Southeast Asia. Cambridge World Archaeology. ISBN 0-521-56505-7.
• Leeming, David (2001). A Dictionary of Asian Mythology. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195120523.
• Terry F. Kleeman (1998). Ta Chʻeng, Great Perfection – Religion and Ethnicity in a Chinese Millennial Kingdom. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1800-8.
• Jamieson, Neil L (1995). Understanding Vietnam. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520201576.
• Dutton, George; Werner, Jayne; Whitmore, John K., eds. (2012). Sources of Vietnamese Tradition. Introduction to Asian Civilizations. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-13862-8.
• Miksic, John Norman; Yian, Go Geok (2016). Ancient Southeast Asia. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 1-317-27903-4.
• Nam C. Kim (2015). The Origins of Ancient Vietnam. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199980895.
• Đào Duy Anh (2016) [First published 1964]. Đất nước Việt Nam qua các đời: nghiên cứu địa lý học lịch sử Việt Nam (in Vietnamese). Nha Nam. ISBN 978-604-94-8700-2.