A collection of 33 Vietnamese manuscript imperial edicts & official documents in broadside format

Various colors & sizes, ranging from ca. 475 x 1300 mm. to ca. 650 x 1550 mm. Vietnam: 1638–1944.


A set of thirty-three imperial edicts and high-level bureaucratic documents dating from the Lê (1428–1789) and Nguyễn (1802–1945) dynasties of imperial and colonial Vietnam, all handwritten in Chinese characters (chữ Nho). An itemized list, arranged chronologically, is available.


This collection of Vietnamese imperial edicts and documents, dating from across 300 years of the nation’s history, is unusually rich in its size, chronological span, and diversity of contents. The earliest documents in the collection are five (truncated) extremely rare imperial edicts from the Lê dynasty, dating respectively to Dương Hòa 4 (1638), Cảnh Hưng 4 (1743), Cảnh Hưng 44 (1783), and Chiu Thống 1 (1787). Two edicts, in fact, were issued on the same day — the 22nd day of the third month of the first year of the (short-lived) Chiu Thống reign, shortly after the young emperor’s coronation and just before the political turmoil that was to lead to his abduction to Kinh Bắc, the Qing invasion of Đại Việt (1788–89), and finally the end of three centuries of Lê rule in Vietnam.


The five Lê-era edicts, as well as nine later edicts dating from the Nguyễn dynasty (the last one dated 1933), are the most decorated documents in the collection. The paper itself is generally of the royal yellow (with the exception of the two Chiu Thống edicts, whose papers are brown and dark red) with a large dragon in the center, frequently painted with glimmering silver ink and surrounded by motifs of clouds, flaming pearls, and knots of longevity. The calligraphy in these edicts is of a noticeably higher quality than other documents in the collection, and upon their colophons are stamped the large, four-character “Sắc mệnh chi bảo” 敕命之寶 — the seal of royal ordinance of the Vietnamese emperors, first created during the Mongol invasions in the 13th century and used until the final years of the colonial period.


Through these decorated edicts, Vietnamese emperors exercised one of the most important (and to the modern eye, unusual) aspects of their rule over the nation, which was their sovereignty not over human subjects but over the gods of the land. In these 14 decorated edicts of our collection, the emperors gave names (and thereby, recognition) to deities worshipped at various provinces, communes, and villages across the country, evaluated their spiritual powers, and promoted meritorious deities to higher ranks and titles. A cursory examination of these edicts suggests that the promotion of a deity — be it a dragon king, a city god, or a queen goddess — was often the result of their protection of the country in times of war, or their nurturing of Vietnamese people in more peaceful times.


The other 19 documents in the collection, dated Minh Mạng 19 (1838) to Bảo Đại 19 (1944), shed light on the earthly politics of the Nguyễn dynasty, during much of which the country was under French colonial rule. Three imperial edicts, dated 1889, 1899, and 1944, written on dragon-decorated yellow paper, grant promotions (posthumous in one case) to military officials, while the remaining 16 documents, on plain white paper, are petitions, commands, or other communications within the Vietnamese bureaucracy, sometimes written in a cursive hand and always stamped with the seals of the offices to which they belong. For example, four documents have the seal of the ministry of personnel (Lại Bộ chi ấn吏部之印), four have the seal of the ministry of war (Binh Bộ chi ấn 兵部之印), and one has the rather uncommon seal of the royal guards (Loan giá vệ đồ ký 鑾駕衛圖記).


One more seal should be mentioned: on a document dated Bảo Đại 5 (1930) and stamped with the seal of the ministry of personnel, there are also two blue seals in the lower-left corner that state the document has been filed with the French Governor-General or Résident Supérieur, “sous le No. 339.” The seals signify approval of the document by the French colonial office, as the imperial court had lost all but its symbolic power toward the end of the colonial era. It is worth noting that by this time, the very medium of these edicts and documents — Chinese characters — had largely became obsolete in Vietnamese society and replaced by quốc ngữ, the romanized writing system still used today.


Materials such as these are very rare outside of Vietnam, especially in a large quantity like our collection. The British Library, for example, holds six comparable Vietnamese imperial scrolls, dating to 1673, 1793 (two scrolls), and the 1900s (three scrolls). In 2014, many Vietnamese manuscripts held at the Thừa Thiên Huế General Library (in Huế, Vietnam) were digitized through a collaboration with Temple University (Philadelphia), including 20 or so scrolls labelled “royal appointment” or “royal decree,” dated 1826 to 1936. A comparison between our scrolls and the digital ones reveals them to be the same type of documents.


These edicts and documents are in overall good condition, with some showing wear around the corners and edges. Some scrolls have been repaired and mounted on supporting paper. Three of the bureaucratic documents, as they are written on lower-quality paper than the imperial edicts, have more substantial damage toward the beginning of the text, and the opening lines cannot be read. Otherwise, the text portions of the documents are generally intact.


❧ Sud Chonchirdsin, Vietnam Documented: The British Library’s Vietnamese Collection (NUS: 2023). Vietnam Nôm Manuscripts Field Digitization Project (https://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16002coll24). (Inventory #: 10966)