The Sacred Cowshed Tree in Urban Hanoi: A Home for Unredeemed Souls
The “Cowshed Tree” (Cây đa nhà Bò), located next to a maternity hospital in urban Hanoi, has long been a destination for women and men who offer prayers to ensure a successful birth and to give thanks for a healthy baby. As the nearby hospital also performs abortions, the crown of the huge banyan tr...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2022
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| In: |
Material religion
Year: 2022, Volume: 18, Issue: 3, Pages: 311-332 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Hanoi
/ Bengalischer Banyanbaum
/ Sanctuary
/ Soul
/ Fetus
/ Abortion
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| IxTheo Classification: | AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AF Geography of religion AG Religious life; material religion BL Buddhism BM Chinese universism; Confucianism; Taoism KBM Asia KCD Hagiography; saints |
| Further subjects: | B
Vietnam
B sacred tree B Materiality B wandering souls B Colonialism B popular religious practices B Abortion B fetus spirits |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | The “Cowshed Tree” (Cây đa nhà Bò), located next to a maternity hospital in urban Hanoi, has long been a destination for women and men who offer prayers to ensure a successful birth and to give thanks for a healthy baby. As the nearby hospital also performs abortions, the crown of the huge banyan tree with its aerial roots has come to be regarded by many city residents as a home for unredeemed souls. But the history of the tree and narratives about its existence predate the construction of the hospital in the early 1960s and refer to the arrival of migrants from India in the French colonial period. In this article, I explore how the Cowshed Tree became a location where affective relations between the living and the dead are created and fostered through prayers and offerings, and hence as a site where sensations and material objects mediate between this world and other worlds. Taking the performance of popular religious practices at the Cowshed Tree as an ethnographic example, this essay aims to contribute to ongoing debates on the urban sacred in late socialist Vietnam and on unfortunate deaths and commemoration in times of rapid transformation; it also contributes to recent research on the relationship between humans, trees, and spirits in the urban environment. |
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| ISSN: | 1751-8342 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Material religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2022.2085995 |