Buddha or not Buddha
When the French military fought in Hanoi, they discovered the great lake north of the city. And on the edge of this lake a building, a place of worship and prayer.

Entrée du grand Bouddha

The soldiers came from the West, a Catholic region par excellence, and moreover, they came to free believers harassed and mistreated by the natives.
In this building a huge statue .... It could only be a Buddha and the building a pagoda.
The statue was very large and majestic, so it was a large Buddha.

This pagoda is actually a Taoist temple.
The French expeditionary force in 1884 discovered this temple and named the statue "Buddha" while it represents the guardian of the North, Huyen Thien Tran Vu, charged at the request of King Lý Thái Tổ in 1010 with defending the new capital Thanh Long (Hanoi).

This is not surprising: the first French settlers found it convenient to baptize the deities of any Vietnamese religious belief "Buddha".

In addition, spelling is important: it should be written Quán Thánh, with an acute accent on the a of Quán and not Quan Thánh. Quán Thánh means Taoist Temple while Quan Thánh means Mandarin Genius.

This solid bronze statue was cast on site around 1680, it is huge (four meters high, its weight is estimated at four tons). It is said that it was erected first, melted down and poured on the spot and that the constructions were made only afterwards.

Le Bouddha de la pagode du grand Bouddha

Postcards or photographs representing the statue of the "Buddha" are rare, the place is very dark and obscure. Photography was difficult at the beginning of the twentieth century in this darkness. This explains it.

The Taoist genius "Buddha", guardian of the North, is represented in the costume of a Taoist priest, his hair flowing behind the nape of his neck, his feet bare, his left hand in the position of an exorcist, his right hand resting on the hilt of a sword around which a snake is wound while the tip rests on the shell of a turtle.
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