베트남 北南朝의 科試 一考察

Abstract

Compared to the Northern dynasty, holding 22 times of Confucian exams in 65 years of its era, the Southern dynasty was only able to have 7 Confucian exams in 60 years of its period. The most distinctive feature of the Northern dynasty’s Confucian exam is that it precisely carried out the exams every 3 years despite having sharp conflicts with the South. However, the conflict between the two dynasties resulted in poor education systems and also weakened the exam’s purpose which was to select outstanding individuals. In a situation where the North and the South were fighting over their existence, they were also pitting against each other on which dynasty has more legitimacy. Meanwhile, they both inherited the system of the early Le dynasty. Therefore, the regulations of the Confucian exams in both dynasties were exactly the same as those of the early Le dynasty. The Jin-Sa stele, a stele which recorded the names of graduates in the Confucian exam, could not be put up at that time because of the small space of the Confucian shrine and Guk-ja–gam (Vietnam’s first university) in Thang Long. The long term conflict between the two dynasties was also one of the reasons why the stele could not be put up at a proper time and gave credibility to the argument that the United Southern dynasty damaged some of the Northern steles later on. Since the Northern dynasty was established after the downfall of the later Le dynasty, its legitimacy was evidently not firm enough. To overcome this disadvantage, the Northern dynasty used Ha Noi’s political, economical, social, cultural, educational and geographical merits to their advantage and achieved a great improvement in the Confucian exam system. On the other hand, the southern dynasty surely was more superior in its legitimacy by restoring the later Le dynasty. However, its Confucian exam system could not develop as fully as the North because it was a local government lacking in many aspects. The superiority of the Confucian exam system of the North did not lead to its triumph over the South. Yet, we cannot affirm that the Confucian exam system is related to the North’s downfall. The reason why the North collapsed despite having a lot of good traits and conditions of its own was because the leader was careless about governing, indulged in sensual pleasures and luxurious parties.