The Myth of One Hundred Eggs and the Ancient State Formation of the Việt People from the Perspective of Ethno-ecology

Abstract

The Myth of One Hundred Eggs (Huyền thoại trăm trứng) is one of the most famous myths in the Vietnamese folklore lexicon. It mentions the formation of the nation based on the marriage of Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ, from which a "sac of a hundred eggs" was produced that led to 100 boys who became the first Việt people. The myth is used in several historical books as fundamental evidence of the Văn Lang State. But what if the myth was a story imported from a foreign culture during the medieval period? This paper traces the foreign vestiges of the "oviparous myth" in Asian culture, then reviews the formation of a primary state of the Việt people from the perspective of ethnoecology. The research proposes a new viewpoint on the Mother Lady (Quốc Mẫu Âu Cơ) based on her marriage as an imagined factor of the Vietnamese Confucian.