«Continuation of the Complete Collection of the Historical Notes of Dai Viet» and Its Unfortunate Fate

The text of the “Continuation of the complete collection of the historical notes of Dai Viet” available for us is a fundamental source of the history of ancient and medieval Vietnam covers the events in this country from ancient times to 1675.Meanwhile the canonical text of this chronicle, distributed in the form of xylographsin the late 18 century, brought the description up to 1740.However, as a result of a significant revision of its final part carried out for political reasons under the first emperors of the Nguyen dynasty (1802-1945)the canonical text was drastically reduced, and the description of the last 65 years (1676-1740) was excluded from it altogether. At the same time, not a single complete xylograph of the original text of the chronicle, as it was formed in the 18th century, has reached our time. The article describes the history of the creation of this chronicle, its fundamental differences from Chinese sources, which certainly served as a model for it, primarily by highlighting its didactic function as the main one. As a result, this "unified history textbook" has always been an important part in the training system of Vietnam's medieval bureaucracy, its text was very stable and changed only for political reasons (during the transition to power of a new dynasty), most often due to significant reduction. This article is devoted to the questions of how is itpossible to at least partially restore the original version of the source and his lost text for the period from 1676 to 1740.

History of Vietnam in the Middle Ages and modern times, Vietnamese chronicle, The Complete collection of the historical notes of Dai Viet