“In the beginning of the ages when there was nothing yet in space.
Land and sky were one.
One day a wind rose and separated land and water,
molding them into mountain, sea, river, brook, and field.
The si-fruit dropped from the sky into the earth and grew into a giant tree,
which turned in place day after day.
The canopy of the tree changed into the sun and its branches into moon, stars, and villages.
All at once a powerful wind blew across the tree and felled it.
From the inside of the toppled si-tree, Da Dan was born.”

The epic The Descendant of Mon Man is based on the myths of Vietnamese peoples as well as on the subjects and motifs of their short oral epics. The writer has blended the poems, myths, legends, fairy tales, and lyric songs of different peoples into a combined story. Cultural differences are resolved by having different peoples’ main characters see the events from their own perspective.

The language of the epic is Vietnamese, the official language of the country.

The epic is in poem form. (In the oral tradition, each group’s epic is sung in its own language and meter. When translated into Vietnamese, they are in the form of free verse or prose.) The writer of the epic has shaped her material according to the Viet people’s seven-syllable poetic tradition.

The making of The Descendant of Mon Man involved processes similar to those used in creating the Kalevala. As regards the handling of source material, the Vietnamese epic is similar to the Estonian Kalevipoeg or the Mordovian Mastorava, both of which had the Kalevala for a role model. Of all the lines in the Vietnamese epic, about 20-30% are the writer’s own.

The Vietnamese epic is divided into two complete sections. It includes a mythical part, which tells of the world’s origins and the origins of certain things important to the Vietnamese, such as rice and water buffalo. The second section is a heroic epic, which tells of the descendants of mythical ancestors and relates their adventures. It also describes how the heroes, with the help of wondrous instruments, defeat the enemy that threatens their land and how they then found a common nation.

At the beginning of the mythical part we meet the first gods Mon and Man, from whom are descended human beings.

The mythical section describes the birth of the world, the birth of the human being from an egg, the flood, the mythical squash, the world-tree myth, and the creative deeds of mythical heroes. These sections describe the natural phenomena of Vietnam and the peoples’ ways of life, as well as how these things came to be. This part also includes the start of rice cultivation, the hunting of elephants, the taming of water buffalo, and the gift of fire from the gods, along with many other mythical origins and events. The gods are continually present in the mythical part. They influence the fates of human beings either deliberately or by forgetting that humans exist.

In the heroic part of the epic, the gods have faded into the background, and it is humans who are the subjects. In truth they are sometimes obliged to seek protection from the gods. The heroic part tells about three different peoples and their interactions through the adventures of the main characters. Much mythical material is also found in the heroic section, as are wedding and lyric songs. The characters do not shrink from war or from plotting and scheming. At the end of the epic, all three peoples fight a common battle against an outside enemy and afterwards live together in harmony.

Both parts of the epic feature themes found the world over: birth, death, love, and the battle between good and evil.

The main characters of The Descendant of Mon Man are men; women only have side roles and they often end up suffering. The epic has no strong female characters, but nevertheless women exert a strong influence on the epic’s plot.