The God of Ba Vi Mountain

Tan Vien Son Thanh, the Mountain God, is one of the Tu Bat Tu, the Four Immortals of Vietnamese folk religion, and is most closely associated with Ba Vi mountain, a real, physically prominent peak west of Hanoi that remains a significant site of pilgrimage and temple worship today. The best known narrative connected to him, the legend of Son Tinh and Thuy Tinh, the Mountain God and the Water God, describes a contest between the two suitors for a princess's hand, won by Son Tinh, and the water god's ongoing, unsuccessful attempts each year to flood the mountain and reclaim his lost bride, a story widely read within Vietnam as a mythic explanation for the annual flooding of the Red River delta and the perennial human struggle to control it. Beyond this flood narrative, Tan Vien Son Thanh is credited more broadly with teaching early Vietnamese communities irrigation, agriculture and other foundations of settled life, giving him a culture-hero role in addition to his identity as a nature deity governing a specific sacred mountain.