Long Tiên Cave

COMMENTARY ON CHÙA HANG (LONG TIÊN CAVE)

Within the towering Tử Trầm mountain range there is a cave where, from very ancient times, there has been a pagoda named “Long Tiên Cave”; the cave was fashioned by Mother Nature into a masterpiece of magnificent stone formations and stalactites. Legend says that during the Lê king’s time, when he surveyed the Tử Trầm Sơn area and saw the picturesque landscape, he often returned here to rest and practice religion, and Long Tiên Cave itself was where Princess Huyền Trân practiced. This ancient pagoda has special historical value: its 48 statues were carved in stone by artisans from all over the country since the Lê king’s era, and to this day, through all the ups and downs and changes of time, they still retain an exquisite beauty that, on first contact, makes us think they have just been installed, though in fact the statues date back many hundreds of years. The story tells why the statues here were chiseled and crafted so exquisitely: at that time Long Tiên Cave was the place of practice of Princess Huyền Trân, so the king chose the most skilled artisans in the country to create statues with such soul as they have today. Long Tiên Cave not only preserves exquisite ancient statues but also, on its rock walls, preserves 17 poems in Hán and Hán Nôm characters by kings, mandarins, poets, and writers across dynasties, carved into the cliff (known as ma nhai inscriptions). This solemn place also safeguards priceless treasures, from the bronze khánh and the ancient bell “Tiên Long Động Chung,” cast in the fourth year of Tự Đức, to the ancient stone incense pillar made in the 17th year of Chính Hòa (1696), the oldest witness of time in the Trầm region. Long Tiên Cave not only preserves historical values such as ancient statues and ma nhai inscriptions but is also a “revolutionary historical relic”; on the night of December 19, 1946, through the airwaves of the Voice of Vietnam, President Hồ Chí Minh read the Call for National Resistance, a call that mobilized millions of Vietnamese people—boys and girls, young and old—to volunteer to go fight the enemy. The Call for National Resistance is also a national treasure currently being restored and displayed here.

With those historical values, very early on April 23, 1962, Long Tiên Cave was granted a certificate ranking it as a National Historical Relic by the Ministry of Culture and Information. Coming here, visitors will be amazed by a stone world shimmering with sparkling stalactites. At the towering cave ceiling, openings in the mountains look like natural “skylights,” through which misty morning sunlight filters, weaving an extremely mysterious three-dimensional space that lets people shed all worldly sorrows. Chùa Hang (Long Tiên Cave) today is both a picturesque landscape painting and a spiritual bridge connecting past and present. Visit this place once, to listen to the whisper of stone, hear the echoing bronze bell, and let your heart be warmed by the light of history, of a thousand-year source.