When Did the Vietnamese Start Tattooing? Three Moments in the Records

Tattoos in Vietnam once carried a stigma, yet the historical record shows Vietnamese people tattooed themselves very early: for protection, to show resolve and to remember their roots. Here are three documented moments, with sources so you can check them yourself.

1. The Hùng kings: marking the body against water dragons

The Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư (Complete Annals of Đại Việt), in its chapter on the Hồng Bàng clan, records that people who came down from the hills to fish were often attacked by giao long, a kind of water dragon. The Hùng king told them to tattoo images of water creatures on their bodies with ink, and the attacks stopped. The chronicler adds that the Bách Việt custom of body marking began here.

It helps to read this passage for what it is. The Hùng kings only entered the official history when Ngô Sĩ Liên compiled the Toàn thư in the 15th century, drawing on legends collected in the Lĩnh Nam chích quái. It is a legend preserved by a historian, not archaeological evidence of tattoos from that era. Still, it shows that medieval Vietnamese saw tattooing as a custom with very old roots.

2. The Lý dynasty: rules about dragons on the body

According to a passage of the Toàn thư quoted by the history site Vietales, under King Lý Nhân Tông (1072–1127) household servants were forbidden to tattoo their chests and legs in the manner of the palace guard, or to tattoo dragons on their bodies; offenders were made state servants. Two things follow: the Lý palace guard wore its own tattoos, and a dragon on the body was something the court controlled.

3. The Trần dynasty: “Sát Thát” and dragons on the thigh

During the second war against the Mongol-Yuan invasion (1285), Trần soldiers tattooed the two characters “Sát Thát”, meaning kill the Mongols, on their arms. The episode appears in Vietnam's current 7th-grade history textbook. Another story tells of the envoy Đỗ Khắc Chung, questioned by a Yuan general about these tattoos. He showed his own arm and said that if the tattoos had been ordered from above, a close servant of the king like him would surely bear them too, meaning the soldiers had chosen them out of anger at the invaders.

Tattooing was also a family custom of the royal house. In 1299 the retired emperor Trần Nhân Tông wanted his son, Emperor Trần Anh Tông, to receive a dragon tattoo. He explained that their family came from the river lowlands, valued courage, and tattooed dragons on the thigh so as not to forget their origins. The tattooist was waiting at the palace gate, but Anh Tông quietly slipped away. The retired emperor had the tattoo given to the emperor's younger brother, Prince Trần Quốc Chẩn, instead. The annals note that from Anh Tông onward, the kings no longer had dragons tattooed on their thighs.

What these moments mean for a tattoo today

In the records, old Vietnamese tattoos did three jobs: protection on the water, a vow in war, and a reminder of family origins. That is why every design I make starts from sources, such as artifacts, historical texts and the Vietnamese visual vocabulary, before it turns to the story of the person who will wear it.