What is The Lac Bird?

To find the meaning of the word "Lac Viet", Vietnamese researchers in the mid-20^th century looked up the word "Lac" in Chinese dictionaries and learned that one of the meanings of Lac is a bird species. They related this meaning to the birds on the Lac Viet drums, and hypothesized that the word "Lac" in "Lac Viet" possibly refers to a species of birds or a totem by the Lac Vietnamese.

First, Đào Duy Anh wrote in his book Lịch sử Việt Nam, Chapter 3 (the ethnic origin of Vietnamese, the Lac Vietnamese) " ... These points make us believe that those who cast the drums - the Lac Vietnamese – did cross the sea. The birds engraved on the drums are the totems by the drum owners, the Lac Vietnamese. Searching for the meaning of Lac or the Lac family, which is the name of the Lac Vietnamese clan, we found it is a kind of birds in Jiangnan. We learn in Sociology that ancient clans used their totems to name their society. So, Lac is the name of their totem –the bird - that appears on the Ngọc Lũ drums”.⁽⁴⁾

In similar studies, based on Chinese dictionaries, such as Kangxi, Từ hải, Từ nguyên, Văn Tân and Hà Văn Tấn described and argued about the figure of the Lac bird. Also based on Chinese dictionaries, historian Reverend Nguyễn Phương added that “... For us, nothing could prevent us from believing that the birds engraved on the ancient drums are the Lac birds. They are the kind of birds with long legs, long bill and short neck which are described in dictionaries as those that look like the “Nghich” birds but with short neck ...”.⁽⁵⁾

If the above authors speculated that the birds on the ancient drums are the Lac birds, then the Lac birds must have lived in the land of the ancient Viet, in which case, the first question to ask is: Are there Lac birds in Vietnam?

In reality, no Vietnamese living in Vietnam has ever known Lac birds; no one ever saw or heard about them. Even the authors such as Đào Duy Anh, Văn Tân, Hà Văn Tấn, and Nguyễn Phương did not really know these birds, because if they did, they would not argue about the figure of such birds.

In addition to Chinese dictionaries, why not searching for the Lac birds in Vietnamese dictionaries?

In Annamiticum-Lusitanum, et Latinum dictionary by Reverend Alexandre de Rhodes, there is no single word “Lac” but there are compounded words such as “ Lạc đàng, Chém lạc, Đi lạc, Chim lạc = Lac Bird, and other animals … (sic.)” Note that this dictionary does not explain the word “Lac”, but it starts with the compounded word “Lạc đàng”.

In Đại Nam quấc âm tự vị by Huỳnh Tịnh Paulus Của, we can find the word “Lac”, but no “Lac” words that are related to birds or animals. Từ điển tiếng Việt offers five meanings of the word "Lac" (p. 290), but none of them is related to birds or animals. Tự điển Vietnamphổ thông has a few “Lac” words, but again, none of them means anything that is related to birds or animals. In Việt ngữ chính tả tự vị the fifth meaning of the word ‘Lac” is shown as “name of animal”. Vietnamtừ điển does not include "Lac" as a name of bird or animal, either. Từ điển tiếng Việt does not include any “Lac” word that means animal or bird.

In the above references, only the dictionary by Alexandre de Rhodes provides two meanings of Lac bird: a bird and also “other animals”; and the dictionary by Lê Ngọc Trụ says “Lac” is a name of some kind of animals. Other dictionaries either do not include Lac bird, or show “Lac" as a name of animals. The dictionaries by Alexandre de Rhodes and Lê Ngọc Trụ are vague on the kind of the Lac bird, and offer another hypothesis of Lac as a name of animal. Even Văn Tân, who had eloquently debated on the figure of Lac birds, did not mention anything related to Lac bird in his Từ điển tiếng Việt that has been reprinted several times in Hanoi.

Finally, researches in Vietnamese mythical stories Việt điện u linh tập, Lĩnh Nam chích quái, Vietnamese tales, folk songs and proverbs do not turn up any clues about the Lac bird.

Hence the Lac bird under the conjecture by the above researchers is no different than the dragons in mythical stories, because no one saw a dragon, and in reality there is no dragon. If no one knows the Lac bird, then how can one guess the kind of birds that is seen on the ancient drums?

Furthermore, if the Lac bird was a totem, then how come its image was not placed at the center of the drum surface, which is its most important and focal location? Instead, the bird images were placed on the outer ring; not just one bird but many birds (in both standing and flying postures) to complete the circle, which can only be considered as decorations.

Ngọc Lũ drum surface with images of flying and standing birds in the outer ring.⁽⁶⁾

There were little changes, if any, in the agricultural civilization in Vietnam from the very start until the 19^th century. Cultivating techniques were based on the inherited guidelines: either “man puling plough”, or “water buffalo pulling plough”. Therefore, if the Lac bird was the totem of the ancient Vietnamese farmers, then how come there was no trace of it in the records of sacred items, folk legends, books, language, and customs or even in the routine life of the Vietnamese farmers? Vietnamese people call whales “sacred fish”, tigers “Mr. 30”, but absolutely no one has said anything to Lac bird.

Front view of Ngọc Lũ drum

(Figure was redrawn from http://mcel.pacificu.edu/as/students/drum/BRONZEDRUMSUSES.HTML)