Đăm Săn

Đăm Săn is the hero of the Ede's greatest epic (khan), a chief of superhuman vigour whose story was collected on the Darlac plateau by the French administrator Léopold Sabatier and first published in 1927. Bound by the matrilineal juê nuê custom, he is compelled to marry the two sisters Hơ Nhị and Hơ Bhị, heiresses of a powerful line. When rival chiefs, among them Mtao Grứ and the wealthy Mtao Mxây, carry off his wives, he pursues and kills them and rises to become the richest and most feared mtao of the highlands, his greatness proclaimed by resounding gong-sets. Restless and defiant, he fells the sacred smuk tree of his wives' lineage; the wives die and he climbs to the sky-lord Aê Diê to win the remedy that revives them. At last he resolves to woo the Sun-Goddess in her house in the east, but she refuses him, for were she to leave her place the world would be scorched and all living things perish. Returning home, Đăm Săn and his stallion are swallowed in the mire of the Black Mud Forest. The epic closes with his rebirth through his sister, so that the hero's line and his marriage to the two sisters begin anew.

Domains

• kingship
• war

Powers

• wages war and overthrows rival chiefs
• defies the powers of heaven and the Sun

Epithets

• Mtao Đăm Săn — Chief Đăm SănNguyễn Hữu Thấu (ed.), Sử thi Ê-đê (2003). (primary)

Relations

• spouse: Hơ NhịMarried under the juê nuê levirate obligation.Sabatier, La Chanson de Damsan (1927). (primary)
• spouse: Hơ BhịSecond sister-wife married under the same custom.Sabatier, La Chanson de Damsan (1927). (primary)
• sibling: Hơ ÂngNguyễn Hữu Thấu (ed.), Sử thi Ê-đê: Đăm Săn (2003), the reincarnation ending. (primary)
• enemy: Mtao MxâyNguyễn Hữu Thấu (ed.), Sử thi Ê-đê: Đăm Săn (2003). (primary)
• enemy: Mtao GrứSabatier, La Chanson de Damsan (1927). (primary)
• ally: Đăm Par KvâyNeighbouring chief and friend who counsels him.Sabatier, La Chanson de Damsan (1927). (primary)

Sources

• Đăm Săn is the central hero of the great Ede epic, a mtao who defeats rival chiefs, defies heaven, and dies in the Black Mud Forest returning from his suit to the Sun-Goddess.: Léopold Sabatier (coll.), La Chanson de Damsan (Paris, 1927). (primary); Nguyễn Hữu Thấu (ed.), Sử thi Ê-đê: Đăm Săn (Hà Nội, 2003). (primary); Oscar Salemink, The Ethnography of Vietnam's Central Highlanders (2003), on Sabatier's collection of the epic. (secondary)