Sơn Tinh and Thủy Tinh: the mountain god and the water god
By jimwest405.comSơn Tinh and Thủy Tinh is a Vietnamese legend about a mountain god and a water god who both want to marry a king's daughter. When the mountain god wins, the water god sends floods in revenge, and the story is told as the reason the rivers rise every year.
The names
- Sơn Tinh (shun teeng): the spirit of the mountain. Sơn means mountain.
- Thủy Tinh (thwee teeng): the spirit of the water. Thủy means water.
- Tinh here means a spirit or deity.
Sơn Tinh is usually linked to Tản Viên mountain (núi Tản Viên, also called Ba Vì), west of Hanoi. He's also known as Tản Viên Sơn Thánh.
The princess and the suitors
The story is set during the time of the Hùng Kings. The eighteenth Hùng King has a beautiful daughter, Mị Nương (mee nuhng). He wants to find her an excellent husband.
Two suitors arrive at the same time, both powerful:
- Sơn Tinh, who can move mountains and raise hills with a wave of his hand.
- Thủy Tinh, who can call up wind and rain and command the waters.
The king can't decide between them. So he sets a challenge: whoever brings the wedding gifts first the next morning will marry the princess.
The impossible wedding gifts
The king asks for extraordinary gifts. In the best-known version, they include:
- a hundred dishes of sticky rice
- a hundred square rice cakes (bánh chưng)
- an elephant with nine tusks (voi chín ngà)
- a rooster with nine spurs (gà chín cựa)
- a horse with nine red manes (ngựa chín hồng mao)
The details vary between tellings, but the nine-tusked elephant, nine-spurred rooster and nine-maned horse are the famous trio.
These are gifts from the land and the mountains, which many retellings note gives Sơn Tinh an advantage.
The race and the battle
Sơn Tinh arrives first at dawn with every gift and takes Mị Nương back to his mountain. Thủy Tinh arrives too late.
Furious, Thủy Tinh summons storms and sends rising floodwaters to chase them. Rain pours, rivers swell and the water climbs higher and higher.
But Sơn Tinh is calm. Each time the water rises, he lifts the mountains and hills higher, keeping his home above the flood. After a long battle, Thủy Tinh exhausts himself and has to pull back.
Why the floods return every year
The legend ends with a grudge. Thủy Tinh never forgets his loss, and every year he gathers his waters and tries again. Every year, Sơn Tinh pushes back.
This is the story's explanation for the annual rainy season floods in northern Vietnam, especially along the Red River. It turns a natural cycle into a rivalry between gods, and it honors the people who build dikes and defend their fields against the water.
What the story means
People read several ideas in this legend:
- Explaining nature: the yearly floods and the struggle to control them.
- Resilience: like Sơn Tinh, people can stand firm against disaster.
- Preparation: the winner is the one who's ready first.
- Land and water: the same mountain-and-sea pairing seen in the story of Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ.
It's taught widely in Vietnamese schools and remains one of the most familiar folk tales in the country.
The phrase you'll hear
Vietnamese people sometimes refer to a long-running feud or rivalry as being like Sơn Tinh and Thủy Tinh. And during storm season, the old names come back into conversation as a way of talking about the floods.
A good story for kids
Children love this one: two magical rivals, a race against dawn, impossible animals and a giant battle of floods and mountains. It's great for asking kids to draw the nine-tusked elephant. For more family-friendly stories, see Vietnamese folk tales to read with kids and the story of Thánh Gióng.
Key words
- núi (noo-ee): mountain
- nước (nuhk): water
- lũ lụt (loo loot): flood
- lễ vật (leh vut): offerings or ceremonial gifts
- công chúa (kohng choo-uh): princess
When you hear about floods along the Red River, you'll know the old story people still use to explain them.