TL;DR: In folk belief, trùng tang refers to several people in the same family line dying in quick succession, and people avoid letting the newly deceased fall into that pattern. The customs of choosing the hour for encoffining, avoiding certain burial days, and selecting burial ground were described as early as the start of the 19th century in Phạm Đình Hổ's skeptical remarks in Vũ trung tùy bút, then by late 19th and early 20th century authors such as Gustave Dumoutier (1904) and Phan Kế Bính (1915) in Bắc Kỳ. Later books on customs such as Bùi Xuân Mỹ (2001) and the compilation by Song Mai and Quỳnh Trang (2006) recount trấn trùng practices, while Đỗ Lan Hiền (2013) analyzes the religious notions behind them and why funeral reform campaigns achieved little. No quantitative survey in the verified sources treats trùng tang as a phenomenon, so this is a matter of belief, not of rule.
What trùng tang is, and why Vietnamese people choose the hour for placing the body in the coffin and avoid certain burial days: funerals seen through anthropology
Trùng tang and the hour of nhập quan: the short answer
In folk understanding, trùng tang is the phenomenon in which several people in the same clan die one after another within a short span of time, and people believe that the newly deceased can "pull" relatives along with them if no protective rite is performed, or if the right hour, the right day and the right ground for burial are not chosen. This understanding is tied to the custom of choosing the hour of nhập quan (placing the body in the coffin), to avoiding certain burial days, and to choosing a long huyệt (auspicious burial plot), practices described in considerable detail in books on the customs of Bắc Kỳ from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Contemporary anthropology and religious studies do not read these taboos as objective laws, but as the way people reduce anxiety when facing death, while at the same time re-establishing order within the family and the clan. In other words, the question is not "is trùng tang real", but "why do people believe it, and what does that belief do for the bereaved".
How did Dumoutier 1904 and Phan Kế Bính 1915 describe funerals in Bắc Kỳ?
These two texts are the most important surviving descriptive sources on Vietnamese funerals in Bắc Kỳ in the early modern period. The two authors occupied different vantage points: one was a French civil servant working in Bắc Kỳ, the other a Confucian scholar writing a customs book for Vietnamese readers, yet both recorded a fairly dense system of taboos surrounding the choice of day, hour and land.
Gustave Dumoutier, in Le rituel funéraire des Annamites published in Hà Nội in 1904, reconstructed the funeral rite system of the Annamites, with sections on choosing days and hours, choosing land, and the taboos that had to be observed. The book belongs to colonial-era ethnographic description of religion, so it proves what contemporaries observed and recorded, not that what was recorded is correct in any objective sense.
Phan Kế Bính, in Việt Nam phong tục, issued as a book in 1915 after appearing in Đông Dương tạp chí in 1913-1914, devoted the section on the clan to describing funerals and taboo customs. The digitised version used here is the Nhà sách Khai Trí reprint published in Sài Gòn in 1973. Phan Kế Bính's manner of description leans toward explaining to readers why their ancestors did these things, so it is both a descriptive source on custom and an interpretive text expounding filial duty in the Confucian spirit.
Comparing the two texts reveals a notable point: neither Dumoutier nor Phan Kế Bính presents the funeral as a fixed ritual, but as a chain of decisions depending on the age and status of the deceased and on family circumstances. That is precisely why the taboos had room to flex, and precisely why it is hard to speak of a "standard version" of the Bắc Kỳ funeral.
Đỗ Lan Hiền 2013: what notions lie behind the hour of nhập quan and trùng tang?
Đỗ Lan Hiền, in the article "Một số vấn đề trao đổi về tang lễ của người Việt hiện nay" published in Tạp chí Nghiên cứu Tôn giáo no. 8 of 2013, examined Confucian, Buddhist and Catholic philosophical doctrines along with medical, geomantic and Tử Vi (Vietnamese astrology) notions in order to clarify the meaning of several Vietnamese funeral rites. The author shows that practices such as consulting days and hours, choosing a long huyệt or reburial do not sit neatly within any one religion, but result from the layering of different traditions over many centuries.
Also according to Đỗ Lan Hiền, the campaigns for a civilised way of life in weddings, funerals and festivals launched by the state, though given concrete form in regulations, rules and village conventions at local level, achieved limited results. The author calls this phenomenon old practices that persist and seep through daily life, ready to flare up when the opportunity arises. The reason given in the article is not that people lack information, but that funeral rites carry psychological and social functions that an administrative rule can hardly replace: they help the living believe they have fulfilled their filial duty to the deceased.
What did earlier writers record about the taboo on trùng tang?
The earliest recorder in this list who left a discussion is Phạm Đình Hổ, in Vũ trung tùy bút (translated by Nguyễn Hữu Tiến). According to Phạm Đình Hổ, popular tradition held that a household in mourning should avoid two days, trùng tang and trùng phục; if the deceased fell on exactly such a day, the family was liable to trùng tang and had to invite a sorcerer to make talismans at the time of encoffining. Notably, he himself did not believe it: examining the ritual canons, he found no basis for it and said in his heart he still did not consider it right. This is evidence that already in Phạm Đình Hổ's time the taboo on trùng tang existed as a folk belief, and that someone had already objected to it from the perspective of Confucian ritual studies.
This text is a primary source, so it only proves that Phạm Đình Hổ wrote as he did, not that the taboo is right or wrong. It should be added that Vũ trung tùy bút was written in the early 19th century, nearly a century earlier than the descriptions of Dumoutier and Phan Kế Bính, and that what he recorded concerns mainly the northern delta, where he lived and served as an official.
Why did the campaigns for a new way of life change funerals so little?
The short answer is: because a funeral is not merely procedure, but the place where the living process emotion and confirm their place within the clan. A regulation can shorten the mourning period, restrict drums and horns, or ban scattering real money on the funeral route, but it can hardly replace the feeling that "if I do not do enough, I have failed the deceased".
Đỗ Lan Hiền notes that alongside a trend toward reviving costly practices in food, drums and horns and offerings, there has also reappeared the consultation of days and hours, the use of talismans, đốt vàng mã (burning votive paper) and the scattering of real money, together with the phenomenon of village cemetery land being occupied for large tombs. This is a description of the situation in the early 2010s, not nationwide measurement data.
No quantitative survey in this article's source list measures the current practice of funeral taboos in Vietnam, and no study verifies trùng tang as a demographic phenomenon. What we have is only descriptive accounts of custom and interpretive analyses.
Comparison table: taboos, recorders, explanations and how to read them
| Taboo or practice | Recorder, year | Explanation given by practitioners | How researchers read it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Choosing the hour of nhập quan | Dumoutier, 1904; Phan Kế Bính, 1915 | The hour of nhập quan affects the wellbeing of the living and the dead | A rite marking a moment of transition, giving the family a point at which to act |
| Avoiding certain burial days | Dumoutier, 1904; Phan Kế Bính, 1915 | An inauspicious day can bring misfortune upon the clan | A way of reducing anxiety by following a pre-existing order |
| Choosing a long huyệt (burial ground) | Đỗ Lan Hiền, 2013; Dumoutier, 1904 | Good land benefits descendants, bad land brings lasting trouble | Geomantic notions layered onto Confucian filial duty |
| Trùng tang | Đỗ Lan Hiền, 2013 | The newly deceased can draw relatives along if no protection is performed | A belief tied to the fear of losing more relatives, with no independent verification |
| Avoiding the days of trùng tang and trùng phục | Phạm Đình Hổ, Vũ trung tùy bút (translated by Nguyễn Hữu Tiến) | If the deceased falls on such a day, the household is liable to trùng tang and must invite a sorcerer to make talismans at encoffining | The original author found no basis in the ritual canons and did not consider it right, so dissenting views existed even among the Confucian scholars of the time |
| Reburial | Đỗ Lan Hiền, 2013 | After some time the bones are washed so the deceased may rest | A rite reaffirming the relationship between the living and the dead |
| Funeral taboos in general (before 1975) | Toan Ánh, 1969 | Many different observances depending on region and clan | A descriptive source on custom by a collector of folk culture |
It should be noted that the table above is not a reference table to follow, but a comparison between what practitioners say and how researchers read it. The "how researchers read it" column reflects only what the sources in the list say, not a general conclusion for all of anthropology.
Is trùng tang a correct calculation?
No source in this list verifies trùng tang as an objective phenomenon. What we have is: (a) descriptive accounts of custom showing that Vietnamese people in some regions believe in trùng tang and have ways of warding it off; (b) Đỗ Lan Hiền's analysis of the religious and geomantic notions behind those practices; (c) no quantitative survey or epidemiological study in the list measuring the phenomenon.
Notably, even in the primary source, Phạm Đình Hổ recorded that, examining the ritual canons, he found no basis for the taboo on the days of trùng tang and trùng phục, and in his heart did not consider it right. Thus already in the early 19th century there were people who understood this custom as a folk belief, not as a calculation with a basis in ritual studies.
So when someone says "this family is suffering trùng tang", that is one way of interpreting events, not the result of a verified calculation. This article does not calculate trùng tang hours, does not confirm and does not deny that calculation; it only records that the calculation exists in daily life and has been described by researchers.
Why can belief still change behaviour?
One point needs to be made clear, because it is often misunderstood from both sides. Belief in trùng tang or in the hour of nhập quan can produce real effects, but those effects come from the behaviour the belief prompts, not from the belief correctly predicting a law. A family that believes a protective rite must be performed will organise the funeral more carefully, call all relatives home, and spend more time caring for one another. Such behaviour can ease grief and strengthen family ties. That is a social effect, not evidence for a law of trùng tang.
In other words, we can acknowledge that the belief is useful to the bereaved without asserting that it is correct in demographic terms. This reading matches the direction of Đỗ Lan Hiền's analysis when the author emphasises the function of ritual in preserving order and meaning for the family.
Folk notions about the hour of death and warding off trùng
According to Bùi Xuân Mỹ (2001), in Tục thờ cúng của người Việt, those watching over the sick need to remember precisely the moment the patient breathes their last. This remembering serves two purposes: preserving memory, and, according to some beliefs, inviting a master to consult days and fix hours, in order to determine whether the deceased departed in a good hour or fell on a trùng tang day when quỷ tỉnh (awakened ghosts) could cause harm. When the day and hour turn out bad, the relatives must ask the master to make talismans or use magic to expel the trùng spirit and drive off the quỷ tỉnh; the talisman is pasted on the coffin and also placed inside snails buried on the four sides of the grave. This is a retelling of a custom of the Kinh people, mainly in the north, not an assertion that trùng spirits or quỷ tỉnh are real.
Song Mai and Quỳnh Trang, compilers (2006), in Phong tục thờ cúng của người Việt, also record the custom holding that when the deceased falls into a "bad hour clashing with their age" there will be trùng; the dead person is interrogated by trùng and led home to seize close relatives, so a làm chay ceremony must be held to expel the trùng. The book describes the làm chay ceremony, sometimes with an altar set up at home, sometimes held at a pagoda, with an altar to the Buddha at the top, the Ten Courts of Diêm Vương below, and then the deities. It should be stated clearly that the three books Bùi Xuân Mỹ (2001), Song Mai and Quỳnh Trang, compilers (2006), and Toan Ánh (2001) copy many passages from one another, so these are multiple records of the same custom, not multiple independent sources confirming it.
Where the sources disagree
The sources in the list do not agree on several points. First, Dumoutier describes the funeral as an ordered system of rites, while Phan Kế Bính emphasises the filial duty and responsibility of descendants. The two descriptions do not contradict each other, but they lead to two different readings of the role of taboos: one sees taboos as part of ritual, the other sees taboos as part of family ethics.
Second, Toan Ánh describes many funeral taboos before 1975. That means we know the book describes taboos, but we cannot cite each taboo specifically.
Third, Đỗ Lan Hiền notes that the reform campaigns achieved little, but the article provides no measurement data. This is a qualitative judgment based on the author's observation, not the result of a wide-ranging survey.
Fourth, the records differ in attitude. Phạm Đình Hổ records the taboo but states clearly that he does not believe it, whereas Bùi Xuân Mỹ (2001) and Song Mai, Quỳnh Trang, compilers (2006), retell the custom without commenting on whether it is right or wrong. This is a difference in how it is recorded, not a difference in the content of the custom.
What this article does not say, and where the discussion continues
This article does not calculate trùng tang hours, does not give a formula for choosing the hour of nhập quan, and does not advise performing or abandoning any taboo. Its purpose is to answer the question "where do these taboos come from", not "what should be done".
If you need a list of specific taboos when a death occurs in the family, the article Folk Beliefs About Taboos When a Household Has a Funeral sets them out. If you want the overall picture of the Vietnamese funeral, the article Traditional Vietnamese Funerals: Cultural Significance and Common Forms presents the forms and cultural meanings. The article you are reading answers "where does it come from"; the other two answer "what does it consist of".
Conclusion
Funeral taboos are folk notions with a long recorded history, at least from the late 19th century through the descriptions of Dumoutier and Phan Kế Bính, and further back through Phạm Đình Hổ's discussion in Vũ trung tùy bút. Contemporary anthropology and religious studies read them through their function of comforting the living and preserving order within the family and clan, not through the question of right or wrong. No source in the list verifies trùng tang as a phenomenon, and there is as yet no quantitative survey of how widely these taboos are practised in Vietnam today.
