Hai Bà Trưng Temple (Đồng Nhân) Explained

The Hai Bà Trưng Temple is a place of worship in Hanoi near Hoàn Kiếm Lake.^[1] It is one of several temples to the two Trưng Sisters in Vietnam.

According to tradition it was founded by Lý Anh Tông around 1160 after he visited a shrine to the Trưng Sisters, who then appeared to him as rain spirits. Culturally, the development of the cult of the sisters at that time is in the context of assertion of independence after the end of the Third Chinese domination of Vietnam - nearly 1000 years after the Qin conquest of Jiaozhi.^[2]

The altar display at the Trưng Sisters temple shows their violent death rather than suicide.^[3]

References

21.0123°N 105.8568°W

Notes and References

1. Lonely Planet Vietnam 10 - Page 97 Nick Ray, Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, Iain Stewart - 2009 this temple (Map pp88-9; Ptho Lao) was founded in 1142. A statue shows the two Trung sisters, who lived in the first century, kneeling with their arms raised in the air, as if they are addressing a crowd.
2. Keith Weller Taylor - The Birth of Vietnam - Page 336 1991 "The Trung sisters' posthumous cult was popular in the independence period. It is recorded that, during a drought, King Ly Anh-tong (1138-75) went to the Trung sisters' ancestral temple and ordered Buddhist priests to pray for rain."
3. Philip Taylor Modernity and Re-Enchantment: Religion in Post-Revolutionary Vietnam Page 163 2007 -"Stories associating violent death with powerful female deities such as the Trưng sisters and Lady Liễu Hạnh are also known ... A description of the altar display at the Two Trưng Sisters' northern temple prompted Tạ Chí Đại Trường to suggest...