Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 12 (Egyptian and Indo-Chinese).djvu/378

312 shrine was built indeed, but the builders reflected that no promise had been given as to how large it was to be, and so they worked off their spite by making it as small as they possibly could. Singularly enough, the fury does not seem to have resented it, but the Annamese still stand in great dread of her and maintain that it is absolutely fatal to pronounce her name. There is no imaginable misfortune that may not befall the man reckless enough to do this. Therefore, the better to safeguard themselves and others, they have proceeded to forget her name, and this really seems to be a fact and not a mere pretence.

Not far from Linh-lanh is the village of Kè-buoi, which the French call Village du Papier, and here a temple has been erected in honour of a fisherman who captured a tiger in his cast net at the very moment when the beast was making an attack on the King as he was sailing on the Great Lake at Hanoi. The King conferred upon his defender all the lands round the lake and had this temple built to commemorate the fisherman when he died. The shrine is still preserved, though the King was the fourth of the Tran Dynasty and reigned from 1293 to 1314, and it was in his reign that the old custom began of tatuing the figure of a dragon on the thighs of the Princes of the Royal house, this being done to show their noble origin and to suggest their heroic virtues. The name of the gallant fisherman is therefore preserved and held in honour where that of the unclean spirit is rigidly suppressed. Muc-thai-uy is held up as an example for all men to copy, and the villagers are enjoined to keep his shrine and memory to the end of time.

There are others who are deified in this way, the most notable being two sisters who are commemorated in the Temple of Chua-hai-ba. From 111 till 38, during the Han Dynasty, Chinese governors ruled Tongking, and the last of these, To-dinh, is remembered as the worst of all for his tyranny and his cruelty. These two sisters, the elder named Trung-trac and the younger Trung-nhi, were noted for their virtues and for their learning. They were descended from the royal family