>>“Huong uoc” and the organization of village society
MA. Nguyen Viet Huong
State and Law Research Institute
1. The role of “huong uoc” village codes and laws as well as their correlation in regulating social relations in Vietnam’s traditional villages firstly originate from the rural people’s perception of the essence of laws and “huong uoc”. The perception is expressed through responses of village communities to different villages’ political-legal conditions or through statements of villagers in various forms. The perception is clearly expressed in “huong uoc”. To cite some examples:
- Phu Coc village code (under Hanoi commune, Thuong Tin district, Ha Tay Province), formulated in the 18th Chinh Hoa year (or 1967), states in its preamble: “Having heard that the country has hundreds of law provisions aimed at maintaining the socio-political order, and that villages have their conventions to make custom even better”.
- Mo Trach village code (under Tan Hong commune, Cam Giang District, Hai Duong Province), formulated in the 3rd Canh Tri year (or 1665), says in its preamble: “Having heard that the country pursuits the stabilizing policy by enactment of laws; villages promotes good behaviors by clarifying conventions. The method should be appropriate, and provisions should be clear.”
- Duong Lieu village code (under Duong Lieu commune, Hoai Duc district, Ha Tay province, formulated in the 6th Canh Tri year (or 1668), also states in its preamble “The State has its laws, villagers have their conventions. All tasks and responsibilities within the villages have so far been accomplished; now that it is desired to make the results even better, villagers gather to discuss the establishment of village convention...”
- Tra Co village convention (under Tra Co commune, Hai Ninh District, Quang Ninh Province), formulated in the 4th Bao Dai year (or 1929), begins: “Having heard that each village has its own custom, and sustaining that custom needs a strict convention. From the civilization through dynasties to this moment, our village always has its convention to promote good custom”.
- So, villagers’ perception is that, laws are “State laws” or King’s rules (in Vietnamese peasants’ minds, the country is synonymous with King); laws have their effectiveness all over the country, enforceable; laws are requisite for state administration, existed in parallel with the existence of King and the country.
Due to conditions of relatively closed and isolated life, with little contact with laws, villagers have had inadequate and vague perception of laws. Despite that, in the broadest sense, thanks to the explanation of village’s scholars and village/commune administrations, villagers’ perception of laws, as mentioned above, is in many aspects homologous to the legal philosophy of the central government. Because of the identification of laws with “state laws” or “King’s rules” and because of the differentiation of two concepts “country” and “village”, Vietnam peasants conclude that laws have rich contents, wide application, and contain many provisions unrelated to village’s life. And here arises the need to have village’s own rule.
In villagers’ perception, laws are State laws or King’s rules, a village code constitutes the rules of a village, directly related to specific conditions of the village, established by the village itself and, of course, applicable to only members of the village.
From the preamble of the above-mentioned village codes, we can have a better understanding of villagers’ perception of a code. Tra Co village code says: “Having heard that each village has its own custom, and sustaining that good custom needs a strict convention...”; Mo Trach village code states “...villages promote good behavior by clarifying conventions...”; Phu Coc village code stipulates “...villages have their conventions to make custom even better”. There is also a short saying that has been orally spreaded around: “The country has laws, villages have their custom”. That is, each village has its own rules depicting its custom. Since each village has its own custom, it is impossible to apply one village code to the other villages. Also, according to villagers’ perception, village custom has long existed and constantly needs to be overhauled, compiled and supplemented. The highest and most appropriate form of compilation of custom is to establish a village code. So, village code is documentation of village’s adjusted custom.
The perception of the essence of a village code is exposed more in statements of village communities during the application of the convention. Ordinarily, every village states that its code embodies the will of all villagers, agreed upon by all and applicable to all. To cite some examples: Duong Lieu village code (Ha Tay), formulated in the 8th Canh Tri year (or 1670), begins: “Officials of Duong Lieu village and commune, Dan Phuong District, Quoc Oai province, including Phi Dang Nham, Nguyen Hien Tai, Nguyen Tien Dung... and village people of all ages gather together to establish this code.” Also in this code, Article 3 specifies: “If any one violates the code, villagers or any one should denounce. The violator will be fined, and the denouncer is unaffected”. Similarly, Mau Luong (Ha Tay) village code, formulated in 7th Minh Menh year (or 1826), in its preamble, also emphasizes: “...The fact is that the village has long had its written rules which have been tattered because of time. Moreover, holy worship, musical performances, and funerals in the village become increasingly luxurious and expensive, and this phenomenon should be overhauled. Therefore, villagers have gathered in the village common house to make certain supplements to and deletions of luxurious provisions from the old code. In general, the aim is to sustain and keep good custom unviolated”. It appears that in villagers’ perception, “huong uoc” is a “code” of village.
2. As a village’s code, “huong uoc” plays a special and practical role in organizing and regulating daily life in Vietnam’s traditional villages. That role is abridged in the saying “Village rules prevail King’s rules”, meaning that village rules have a greater role in regulating social relations within villages than King’s rules. The role of “huong uoc” can be seen in the following aspects:
Firstly, the existence of “huong uoc” in the village’s political-legal life is virtually natural and necessary. We have in our hands a list of “huong uoc” and based on that we can predict that most villages have their own “huong uoc” which are different from those of neighboring villages in terms of name, number of provisions, structural order and contents. From the middle of the 15th century, despite of deep intervention by the central government into each village life (it prohibited the formation of village codes), villages still compiled their “huong uoc”, thereby retaining their own governing tool.
Secondly, all “huong uoc” have rich contents, regulating almost all aspects and relations within village communities. Based on “huong uoc” kept at research institutes and in communities, many researchers content that, though contents of “huong uoc” depend largely on specific geographical, historical, economic, social conditions of each village, “huong uoc” generally contains the following components:
l Provisions on the village boundaries
l Provisions on agricultural production and environmental protection
l Provisions on organizational structure and social relations within the village. This is the major content of “huong uoc”.
l Provisions on maintaining security and protecting the communities
l Provisions on assuring the spiritual life of villagers, especially the organization of holy worship, festivities.
l Provisions on fulfillment of tax and military-service obligations towards the feudal state.
The above-mentioned provisions are usually accompanied by provisions on awards and sanctions. Major forms of award and punishment applicable in villages are:
l Fines, with fining level dependent on the seriousness of the offense.
l Material fines (cattle, poultry dependent on the seriousness of the offence.
l Flogging;
l Demoting or dethroning from hierarchical positions arranged in the mid common house
l Expulsion from villages (for most serious violations)
There are other additional forms of punishment such as boycotting funerals, parties or meetings... Sometimes, violators may be subject to several forms of punishment, and the judgment by public opinion, and sanctions of organizations of which they are members. Villages not only apply sanctions to the violators, but also to their relatives, or even organizations of which violators are members.
- With the above-noted provisions, “huong uoc” are regarded as a thread tying individuals and organizations within a village to village’s common obligations and interests, a tool to regulate villages, and a source of folk knowledge in respect of regulating communities.
Thirdly, provisions in “huong uoc” may differ from those of laws. “Huong uoc” generally contain, certain law provisions. Nonetheless, these provisions, when being put into “huong uoc”, generally are adjusted to suit specific conditions of each village, and consequently are only a vague picture of the original provisions. Ethnologists argue that to have their role in “huong uoc”, state laws must have certain “refraction”. This can be clearly seen in provisions on division of public land - a very burning issue for both the State and villages. By the mid 15th century, the Le dynasty promulgated a policy on public land to regulate the division of land owned by the State but situated at villages. However, each village has its own way of dividing land stated in its “huong uoc”, based on the residual public land, class division within communities, characteristics of organizational structure and practice of worship in the village. In reality, besides provisions on tax liabilities, military service, principles for organization and operation of local administration, the other provisions of a “huong uoc” are mostly related to different aspects of daily life of villagers. These provisions gradually become the “chronicity”, getting deeply rooted in villagers’ minds and extremely hard to change. This was the very reason of the failure of the French, efforts to reform countryside custom in the early 20th century. In the reformed “huong uoc” model, authorities did not include any detailed provisions on marriage, funeral, social order, holy worship..., but only stated general provisions based on which “district officials should make guidelines for reform by villages”.
Fourthly, huong uoc’s regulating value is, in many cases, considered more important than that of the laws. Most “huong uoc” contain provisions on preventing claimants and denouncers from lodging their complaints or denunciations directly to higher levels of administration without going through villages. On the other hand, state authorities apply state laws, villages use their own rules. To accuse a villager of violating laws, the State must go through the village’s management system, and here, depending on specific conditions, the village chiefs may show their agreement or disagreement with the judgment against that violator. When a person violates both laws and village’s rule, villagers pay attention firstly to how that person shall be treated under the village rules.
Then arises a question as to why “huong uoc” have such an important role and effectiveness in regulating specific relations within Vietnamese villages. In other words, why village rules prevail King’s rules? There are several reasons explaining this situation.
- Villages are places where peasants have from generation to generation, been born and died. In the traditional society, with the self-sufficing agricultural production, peasants have had no wide and complex social relations. They work mainly within their villages for their whole life and tired with neighboring and lineage relations. Thus, they know a lot about one another from their childhood, with regard to origin, characteristics, family lineage... Living in such close ties, their relations have been often based on mutual trust. In daily life relations, or even in borrowing-lending or selling relations, they rarely need any administrative paper such as contracts. What they often need is a third person – who acts as a witness. Understandably, most disputes among them have been settled through conciliations and compromises. It is their living conditions that make the peasants in traditional villages of Vietnam tend to respect customs thus unlike to urban people who tend to respect laws.
- A “huong uoc” is a selective compilation of all customs related to the village development. These customs have been supplemented throughout the development of the villages and reflected in “huong uoc”. Which are rich in the contents covering almost every aspects of villagers’ daily life. To cite some examples: “huong uoc” established 16 times over more than 100 years, raising the number of provision from 30 to 82 after the last revision (1797). Similarly, Duong Le “huong uoc”, established in 1666, had been revised 9 times by the year 1800, raising the number of provision from 8 to 88 after the last revision. “Huong uoc” truly reflect the need for regulating villagers’ life, covering various interests of each villager, both materially and spiritually. Therefore, it is natural that villagers pay constant and direct attention to their village codes rather than state laws.
- “Huong uoc” have been formulated by all villagers. In practice, the method of formulating “huong uoc” in Vietnam’s traditional villages created conditions for every commoner to participate into the process of compiling rules. Such wide spread participation itself assure the enforcement of “huong uoc”. Additionally, as mentioned above, the effect of a “huong uoc” is guaranteed by a system of rewarding and punitive measures.
- While customs had existed early, the state laws appeared much later. Only until the Ly dynasty 1042, a penal code – the first code of Vietnam’s feudal state, was enacted. Later dynasties all had their codes together with a system of other documents, for instance the Penal Code of Tran dynasty (1266), the Kingdom Penal Code (or Hong Duc Code) of the Le dynasty (enacted around 1483)... In spite of repeated enactment, laws tend to be one-sided, impractical, almost fail to regulate specific relations in villages. Moreover, the relationship between the central government and localities was relatively loose. Such situation compelled the central government to accept village rules. Some dynasties even openly treat village rules as a source of laws, and in fact codify many village rules.
- The feudal state’s legal system not only emerged late but also failed to reach villages due to poor dissemination and propagation thereof by the feudal rulers: slow information transmission; only a few documents printed, and when printed they were often in Chinese – which only scholars understand, while most village people were illiterate and could not understand, legal documents - They only got law contents in small parts through explanation and announcements by village chiefs, students and scholars at village festivities, or through explanation of legal authorities. It can be said that, the lack of law understanding was very common in Vietnam’s feudal society. This made villagers rely more on “huong uoc” to protect their interests.
- In practice, laws were not fully complied with and their effect was constrained by corrupt officials. This made peasants have bad impressions on laws. In their eyes, laws were only a tool to protect rich and powerful people and mandarins. Because of this, people were reluctant to bring their disputes to authorities.
- Most people in traditional villages have been influenced by Confucianism, which advocate moral education, but not the use laws to govern the society, while advising people to behave according to their social status, “servant-husband-father” in fact, the ideological influence had significantly obstructed the intrusion of laws into villages where customary rules were used as a tool to regulate people’s behavior. That means prevalence of “huong uoc” over laws in villages.
3. When huong uoc’s provisions have covered most social relations within villages, and have high legal effect. However, this does not mean laws were fully negated.
First, customs, “huong uoc” and laws have shared the same objective, that was to create and maintain stability and order for each village community. The stability of each village contributes to the stability of the whole country. While the contents of “huong uoc” at some points might differ from laws, or were not prescribed by laws, but compliant with laws. It was revealed by many ethnologists, that there have been not any “huong uoc” having contents contrary to laws.
Second, village people appeared to accept without any fierce resistance to the tendency of “conventionalization of law provisions” set by the central government, and at the same time, made “huong uoc”, to some extent, specific documents guiding the implementation of state laws for each village. This can be seen through the development of many “huong uoc”: at early time most “huong uoc” contain only a few provisions pertaining the village life, and gradually expand to include provisions relating to the feudal state or the intention to control villages by the feudal state. For instance, those provisions on the election of local administration, tax payment, military service and forced labor. Later, these provisions were usually put at the beginning of “huong uoc”, under a section often entitled “General Provisions” or “Politics”. In many villages, these provisions have accounted for a large proportion in the total number of provisions, and been fully observed by villagers.
Third, though rich in contents “huong uoc” of a village could cover some aspects of the village life while others were covered by state laws. For example, cases of inheritance, land delimitation or land disputes, or disputes leading to crimes... required the intervention by laws. Moreover, villages are allowed to settle certain issues, but only to some extent, beyond which the issues had to be addressed according to laws provisions. Especially, villages themselves often limit their authority to tackling only cases such as fornication, thief, quarrel, failure to fulfill obligations towards the villages... More serious cases, cases related to the State or cases unresolved by villages would be submitted to higher authorities. Let’s cite some more cases to see how “huong uoc” prescribe the authority borderline between village rules and state laws. The cases that villages must submit to higher authorities, were prescribed in Duong Lieu village code, established in 12th Chinh Hoa year (or 1691), as follows:
Article 1: Any village official who commits harassment during tax collection periods,
Article 2: Upon the time of reallocation of village land, any one who obstructs the measurement of land under usage for the purpose of relocation to other people fined 10 “quan” (ancient currency unit), in case of resistance, that person would be tied up and submitted to higher authorities.
Article 4: Any one who fails to return the public land owned by his/her relative who has died according to the village rules would be fined 10 “quan”; if that person uses his/her power and position to resist, the case shall be submitted to the higher authorities.
Article 6: Any one who deliberately keeps land in excess of the prescribed norms , or gives his/her own land to others for cultivation, and fails to return such land to the village.
Article 9: Upon the time of relocation of the village’s public land, any one who delays the gathering of their crops on the land which needs to be cleared and returned to the village.
The above-mentioned example shows that although village rules are important, and “huong uoc” are considered as village “codes”, they are not comprehensive and thus could not be a complete and real code, but rather just “private rules” as opposed to “official rules”.
Fourth, the effect of “huong uoc” or village “code” - is again guaranteed by laws. The authority to sanction violations of “huong uoc” vests in the village chiefs, who represent the State administration, and thus also the legal representatives in the villages. The authority to adjudicate civil cases by village chiefs had been provided as early as king Le Thanh Tong’s dynasty and reconfirmed in 1653 and 1661. Village chiefs had to know disputes from the start and resolve them according to village rules.
Fifth, while recognizing the existence of “huong uoc”, the feudal state always sought ways and means to curb its development, or when failing to do so, to use “huong uoc” as a tool to introduce law provisions into villages. That constituted a process of narrowing the scope of governance by “huong uoc”, or a process of conventionalizing state laws, which increased “huong uoc” validity and created the closeness between “huong uoc” and state laws. By this way, the state laws indirectly but increasingly regulated social relations within villages. This could be seen through the fact that, the feudal state had managed to keep control over the formulation of “huong uoc” required them to be approved to be effective. Under the law of Quang Thuan 5th year (1464), King Le Thanh Tong stipulated that draftsmen of “huong uoc” had to have official class status, be literate, virtuous and old enough. Most of these people were retired, mandarins (sometimes incumbent high-ranking mandarins), or Confusion scholars - naturally, all of them have deep respect to King laws. In addition, the approval of “huong uoc” was considered a compulsory and two-step procedure. At first, the village chief put on his wooden seal. Next, “huong uoc” was submitted to the higher (district, province) mandarins for approval-who might reject clauses or articles not in compliance with laws, or the interests of the feudal state or harmful to customs.
It should also be noted that, the existence and the role of laws in the traditional villages against “huong uoc” do not stem from the villagers’ self-consciousness. On contrary, it was the result of external forces (mostly from the feudal state) in addition to the need to resort to laws for regulation of some social relations beyond the scope of regulation by “huong uoc”.
4. The role of “huong uoc” and state laws and their correlation in effectively regulating the social relations in Vietnam’s traditional villages have become food for thought. The reestablishment of “huong uoc” and later the policy of encouraging the establishment of “huong uoc” as a tool in support of the State management in the countryside are in line with the need for rural democratization at the time when rural areas are experiencing important changes after “Khoan 10” (1989). The tendency to reestablish small farming villages with distinctive customs and religious beliefs, by applying many institutional provisions of old villages, has become increasingly certain. However, the current establishment and application of “huong uoc” show certain entanglement, especially in settling the relationship between laws and “huong uoc” in their regulating scope, contents and management organization... From historical experiences, we hold that attention should be paid to finding solutions to the following issues:
- Firstly, the formulation of “huong uoc” must really stem from the need of each village; not necessarily, all villages must have their own “huong uoc”, especially in villages where old institutions and/or rules/customs had been basically demolished. The process of formulating “huong uoc” must ensure that villagers can directly and democratically participate in discussions and voting. Basically, “huong uoc” must be the product of the entire village community.
- The contents of “huong uoc” must reflect the characteristics and custom of each village, without being much dependent on any common form or model, provided that they are consistent with common morality and state laws. Therefore, the regulating scope of “huong uoc” should be limited only to social relations among individuals within villages and related to power relations. Consequently, “huong uoc” may be distinctive provisions not found in state laws, but not contradictory to laws.
- The state law must play the dominant role in its relation with “huong uoc” and in the process of regulating social relations in rural areas. This does not mean the need to “codify” all aspects of rural social life, but the ability to quantify and control “huong uoc”, to “codify” and effectively regulate the most important relations in rural areas, namely the power relation under the scope of State management.
- Lastly, the correlation between “huong uoc” and state laws and the delineation between them with respect to regulating social relations in rural areas much depend on the direction of the evolution of social relations. “Huong uoc” are the product of a small-scale and closed agricultural society with simple relations; and they appeared to be effective in that society. The spontaneous formulation of “huong uoc” over last time has also occurred under the same social conditions. However, over the past 10 years, the society has witnessed fundamental changes. In the current open economy, with the goal of “rural industrialization and modernization” is the existence of “huong uoc” only of transitional character. Thus, while maximizing the role of “huong uoc” in regulating rural society, we need to strengthen the legal system and increase the applicability of legal documents through different measures, of which raising the people’s legal consciousness is a decisive one.-