Education at the National University prepared students for the royal examinations, the gateway to becoming a mandarin at the court or in the provinces. Those who did not pass the exams became part of the nation's educated class and often returned to their villages as schoolmasters.
Both the examinations and the honours conferred evolved over the centuries. By the fifteenth century, the multi-stage examination process could take several months. The first step, called thi hương, was a regional examination held once every three years. Those who passed the regional exam went to Ha Noi with their sleeping mats, brushes, and ink-stones to sit for the four-part thi hội. The examination may have been held on the site of what is now the national library, as suggested by some historians and by the street name, Trang Thi, or Examination Street. With anywhere from 450 to 6,000 candidates, the exam area must have been a large one.
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| The exam area |
The examination was held in four parts; a candidate had to pass each part in sequence in order to qualify for the following stage. The first stage, called Kinh nghia, was based directly on the Confucian classics. Examinees were given four subjects from the Confucian canon and told to choose one. In addition, candidates chose one out of three questions based on the five preConfucian classics. Finally, they were given two questions based on the Spring and Autumn Annals and told to synthesise them.
For the second part of the examination (chế, chiếu, biểu), a candidate wrote as if he were the king discussing matters of state. Candidates who passed the second test then wrote two different kinds of thơ and phú poems on given topics. The thơ is a poem of twenty-eight words divided into four lines of seven words each; the phú is a prose poem of eight seven-word lines.
The final part of the doctoral exam was văn sách, in which candidates commented on how to handle problems facing the country, drawing from their knowledge of the Confucian classics and the history of previous dynasties.
Those who passed all four sections received the title of Doctoral Laureate (tiến sĩ) and were invited to the palace for the thi dinh, or palace examination. During this examination, the king himself posed the questions and read the candidates' responses. He then ranked the tien si into three groups and conferred special distinction on the three most successful candidates of the highest-ranking group.
From 1076 until 1779, the date of the last royal examination held in Thang Long (Ha Noi), 2,313 examinees received the title of Doctoral Laureate. Today, 1,306 of their names remain on the eighty-two steles at the Temple of Literature. Each stele represents one examination year, starting from 1442, the first year individual names were recorded. The number of examinees awarded the tiến sĩ degree in any one year ranged from three to sixty-one, with the ages of the laureates ranging from sixteen to sixty-one. Over the centuries, thirty of the steles have disappeared.
The new mandarins were offered a cap and gown, given a banquet at the palace, and sent home to their villages in triumphal processions. There, they in turn offered a feast to the village, sometimes to their financial ruin. The scholars differed greatly in their contributions to their country. Some were more virtuous than others; some were nothing more than bureaucrats. Yet many were brilliant: mathematicians and philosophers, statesmen and finance ministers, and officials renowned for fighting corruption.
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| The new mandarins were kowtowed at the Temple of Literature (1897) |
Literature and public service were not distinct realms in traditional Viet Nam. Poets contributed to the economic life of their times by bringing high-yielding maize from China, improving techniques for silk weaving and reed mat weaving, and developing a system of irrigation canals. Many of the most brilliant statesmen and diplomats were also poets. An example is Nguyen Trai (1380¬1442), the architect of a victorious fifteenth-century insurrection against the Chinese. He is still honoured as one of Viet Nam's greatest statesmen.