Ngũ Xã Village bronze casters

June 11, 2010 11:32 AM GMT+7

VGP - Ngũ Xã now belongs to Trúc Bạch Ward in Ba Đình District, Hà Nội. In the 18th and 19th centuries bronze casters from five communes (Đông Mai, Châu Mỹ, Long Thượng, Đào Viên and Dien Tien) in Siêu Loại District (now Thuận Thành, Bắc Ninh Province) and Văn Lâm District, Hưng Yên Province came to Trúc Bạch Lake to set up business and establish the Ngũ Xã school for bronze-casting.

The entrance gate of Ngũ Xã Communal House
They opened a foundry to make houseware, urns, statues, sacred objects and bronze money for the royalty. They were very skillful and professional and bronze casting flourished here up to the 18th century. They produced valuable products favored by people all over the country, particularly statues and religious objects. If you go to Trấn Vũ Temple, you can see a skillfully crafted bronze lamp and a black bronze statue made in 1677 that is 3.72 meters high, weighs four tons, and is considered a masterpiece of 17th century bronze casting.

In later centuries, the artisans in this area created even greater masterpieces. They cast a 13-ton Buddha statue and put it in the middle of their communal house. It is highly polished with a meticulously carved lotus lamp support and was made of bronze collected by Buddhists and pilgrims. Beside this giant statue there is an incense burner in the shape of a dragon and a bronze censer almost a meter high. All these are precious items representing traditional Vietnamese popular artistry.

The founder of the bronze casting trade was Nguyễn Minh Không who became a legend related to West Lake and was called “the giant caster.” According to history, his Buddhist pseudonym was bonze Minh Không.

Once upon a time there was a giant in Việt Nam called Nguyễn Minh Không who was as tall as a mountain and had exceptional strength so no one could beat him. He was a Buddhist priest who usually leaned on a heavy iron stick and wore a sedge bag and a small conical hat. He travelled far and wide collecting bronze to cast into statues and bells and legend has it that his two pockets and his sedge bag were unusual because they could never be entirely filled.

Because of his great virtue, the Lý King allowed Minh Không to build a monastery next to Báo Thiên Pagoda (now Lý Quốc Sư Pagoda, number 50 Lý Quốc Sư Street, Hoàn Kiếm District). In 1138, Nguyễn Minh Không cured King Lý Thần Tông (1128-1138) and was conferred the title of the Prince’s Teacher of the Lý Dynasty. He was not only a good doctor, but also a good bronze caster so people in Ngũ Xá Village considered him their tutelary god. In the middle of the 18th century, Ngũ Xã Pagoda was built beside the communal house to worship saint Nguyễn Minh Không but he was worshipped in the communal house and the pagoda was only used to worship Buddha.

Beside his skill in casting statues and bronze bells, he was also famous for being a good doctor. He was highly trusted and usually treated serious diseases for the king and when the Sung prince in China contracted a supposedly incurable disease, Minh Không was invited to treat him. After the prince was cured the king allowed the giant to take as much gold as he wanted from the royal storeroom but he refused. He said:

-                      I came from the South to cure people for good luck, not for gold or silver. I only brought along this small bag. I don’t want to take any gold, but I beg the king for a bag of bronze to cast a bell, to educate people, save the good, and eliminate the bad.

The Sung king smiled and said:

-                      Oh, I see. One bag or one hundred bags is alright.

The king ordered the people to lead Minh Không to the storeroom and the guards left him to fill his bag with bronze. After putting the whole store of bronze in his bag it was still not full, so the giant hung it on one end of his stick and left turning his head and bowing to thank the king. When the guards came back there was no bronze left in the storeroom and the giant had disappeared and when they could not find him, they submitted a petition to the king. At first, the king did not believe the strange story, but when he asked the mandarin in charge of the treasury and the storeroom keeper, they said it was true; the affair was over so he did not question anybody.

Minh Không used his conical hat as a boat to cross the Changjiang River. The small hat looked as if it could not contain a bar of bronze, but strangely, when the giant, loaded with a storeroom full of bronze, sat in it it could still float and gently crossed the Changjiang River to his hometown in the south. With the bronze collected throughout the country, the giant cast four precious objects called the “Four Treasures of Buddhism.” These are a statue 60 meters high, the nine-storey Báo Thiên Tower, an incense burner, and a giant bronze bell.

After the bell was cast, he asked permission from the king to hang it and strike it and he invited the king to watch. When the bell rang to announce peace in the country, its resounded everywhere and people all over the country flocked into the streets to listen to the bell and dance. It resounded up to Changan and woke the Sung Dynasty’s golden buffalo who thought his mother was calling and ran to find her. The tributary of the Red River that flows from the mountains to Thăng Long-Hà Nội is said to be the path the buffalo took. When the bell stopped ringing, the buffalo did not know where to go. It wandered around until it saw the bell, then it lay down. It began to rain heavily, flooding the whole area, then suddenly both the bell and the buffalo were sucked into an abyss. The bell and the buffalo never returned to their home country in the north and it is said amongst the local people that if a family gives birth to ten sons, the father could pull the bell up and bring the buffalo home. Once there was a man who had ten sons and when he presented offerings, the golden buffalo came to the surface. However, he could not bring it home because only nine of his sons were his own; one was adopted.  
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