A Chance Discovery at Dâu Pagoda

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a group of researchers from the Institute of Hán-Nôm Studies paid a visit to Dâu Pagoda (also known by its Sino-Vietnamese names Diên Ứng Tự, Pháp Vân Tự, or Cổ Châu Tự) in Thuận Thành, Hà Bắc (today part of Bắc Ninh Province). The trip was part of a field investigation to collect textual materials in Hán and Nôm scripts from this famous ancient pagoda of the Kinh Bắc region.

At that time, in a side chamber to the right of the ancestral hall stood a storeroom packed with all kinds of household and farming tools—winnowing baskets, trays, bamboo sieves, water scoops, and so on. Quite by chance, the researchers noticed among the clutter several engraved woodblocks belonging to the work Cổ Châu Pháp Vân Phật bản hạnh ngữ lục 古珠法雲佛本行語錄. Remarkably, the entire set of woodblocks remained complete.

This work was already known to scholars, as a printed copy had been preserved at the Institute of Hán-Nôm Studies under the reference number A.818, collected earlier by the École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO) in Hanoi. Yet, what made the discovery particularly exciting was that alongside this known text, the researchers also found two other related woodblock sets: a vernacular Nôm verse work titled Cổ Châu Phật bản hạnh 古珠佛本行 and a Hán prose ritual text titled Hiến Cổ Châu Phật tổ nghi 献古珠佛祖儀. Notably, printed copies of these two works were absent from EFEO’s collection and had never been recorded in the holdings of the Institute of Hán-Nôm Studies at that time.

Three Works, Three Genres, One Thematic Thread

The three works are closely connected in content. Both Cổ Châu Pháp Vân Phật bản hạnh ngữ lục and Cổ Châu Phật bản hạnh recount the legend of Lady A Man and the deities of the Tứ Pháp (Four Dharma Goddesses), praising their virtues and miracles. The Hiến Cổ Châu Phật tổ nghi, meanwhile, contains ritual texts—prayers and offerings—expressing reverence toward the Buddhas.

While the first two share the same narrative basis, they differ in form. The Cổ Châu Pháp Vân Phật bản hạnh ngữ lục is a bilingual Hán-Nôm prose text: the original Hán passages are followed by vernacular Nôm translations, engraved in smaller script. In contrast, Cổ Châu Phật bản hạnh is entirely written in Nôm using the popular lục bát (6–8 syllable) verse form, typical of oral Vietnamese tradition. The third, Hiến Cổ Châu Phật tổ nghi, is composed entirely in Classical Chinese prose. Within the pagoda, these were familiarly referred to as Cổ Châu lục, Cổ Châu hạnh, and Cổ Châu nghi, respectively.

Cổ Châu lục: A Unique Bilingual Text

The Hán text of Cổ Châu lục contains nearly 2,100 characters and is described as an ancient transmission of unknown authorship. Each phrase or sentence in Chinese is immediately followed by its Nôm translation, engraved at half-size—a “line-by-line translation” format characteristic of Lê–Trịnh period Hán-Nôm works. According to the colophon engraved on the blocks, the carving was completed in the autumn of the 13th year of the Cảnh Hưng era (1752, Lê dynasty). Based on textual and linguistic evidence, scholars infer that the Hán prototype may date back to the mid–late 14th century (late Trần dynasty).

The Nôm portion, totaling 2,360 characters, was rendered by a figure named Viên Thái (identity unknown). The script displays both phonetic loan characters and phono-semantic compounds, though pure phonetic loans dominate. Many words appear in archaic phonetic forms that were later replaced by phono-semantic ones—for example: ba (巴), tên (先), nay (尼).

The Nôm translation also preserves numerous archaic expressions and lexical items, such as “Hay chưng thầy thửa ở” (“to know where the master dwells”) and “Thực thời lỗi ấy chưng ai” (“Truly, whose fault was it?”), as well as ancient words like 谷 cóc ‘to know’, 沃 óc ‘to call’, 合 hợp ‘should’, and 羅𥒥 la-đá ‘stone’. Such features typify Nôm prose of the 16th–17th centuries. The word la-đá 羅𥒥, for instance, is only attested in texts predating the late 17th century, appearing no later than Alexandre de Rhodes’s Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum (1651). By Pigneau de Béhaine’s Latin–Vietnamese Dictionary (1773), only the monosyllabic đá remained.

These linguistic characteristics, together with the “line-by-line” translation format, suggest that the Nôm version of Cổ Châu lục likely dates from the late 16th to early 17th century.

Cổ Châu hạnh: A Lục-bát Nôm Poem

The Cổ Châu hạnh consists of 246 lục-bát verse pairs (about 3,450 characters). The author is unknown, but internal evidence offers clues to its dating. It references the Hồng Đức reign (1470–1497) of King Lê Thánh Tông and refers to China as “Đại Minh,” the Ming dynasty’s contemporary name (1368–1644). These clues suggest that the work was composed between 1470 and 1644, though this range is broad. Given linguistic parallels with Cổ Châu lục, it is plausible that Cổ Châu hạnh was composed contemporaneously or slightly later—again, around the late 16th to early 17th century.

Cổ Châu nghi: Ritual Texts for the Buddha

The Cổ Châu nghi comprises over 1,500 Chinese characters written in Classical prose. An inscription on its opening block states that the text was an old composition of uncertain date, newly engraved at Dâu Pagoda in the year Nhâm Tý (1792), the fifth year of Emperor Quang Trung’s reign under the Tây Sơn dynasty.

A Return from Oblivion

Although scholars had long been aware of the existence of old woodblocks at Dâu Pagoda, they remained unstudied and untouched until the Institute’s researchers rediscovered them in the late 1980s–early 1990s.

In 1995, the Cổ Châu woodblock trilogy and related texts were finally published in the volume Di văn chùa Dâu (Hán-Nôm Inscriptions of Dâu Pagoda), edited by Prof. Nguyễn Quang Hồng—marking the long-awaited return of these cultural treasures from centuries of obscurity.

(Adapted from “The Cổ Châu Woodblock Trilogy and the Hán-Nôm Heritage of Dâu Pagoda,” in Prof. Nguyễn Quang Hồng’s Ngôn ngữ. Văn tự. Ngữ văn [Language, Script, Literature]