Binh Ta Relic Site

A small mound of earth in a field can keep what wide open space cannot: the layered memory of a civilization that lived here more than a thousand years ago.

The Bình Tả relic site is a group of archaeological remains from the Óc Eo and Phù Nam culture. Óc Eo was an ancient port settlement in the Mekong Delta. Phù Nam, or Funan in English, was an early kingdom of Southeast Asia, strongly influenced by Indian culture. The site lies in Bình Tả hamlet, in Đức Hòa Hạ commune. That area used to be in Long An province, and since the 2025 reorganization of administrative units it belongs to Tây Ninh province. The group has three main sites. Two are Gò Xoài and Gò Đồn. The third is Gò Năm Tước.

Vietnam's national tourism authority describes Bình Tả as a major religious center of the south, tied to Buddhist and Hindu temples from the 1st to the 7th century of the common era. The Long An newspaper added in 2021 that it was a religious center with many large temples, dated to the 7th and 8th centuries. So Bình Tả is also a story of how people long ago built places of worship, exchanged cultures and left their traces.

The French archaeologist Henri Parmentier set foot here in 1910. In 1931, J. Y. Claeys excavated a brick structure at Gò Tháp Lấp, within this same group. In 1987, the Long An Department of Culture and Information worked with the Institute of Social Sciences in Ho Chi Minh City on a much larger excavation. It opened a new chapter in what is known about Bình Tả.

The most important find of the 1987 excavation was a collection of 26 gold objects at Gò Xoài. They are now kept in the local museum. Among them was a gold leaf engraved with Sanskrit writing on a Buddhist theme. This leaf helped researchers identify Gò Xoài as a Buddhist tower from around the 8th century of the common era. Archaeologists call this kind of evidence an inscription: writing cut into a lasting material, carrying a religious message across centuries.

Besides the gold, the tourism authority records many other religious traces at Bình Tả. There are statues of the gods Shiva and Vishnu and of a guardian of the temple, along with worship objects such as the linga and the yoni of the Hindu tradition. There is also fine Óc Eo pottery, pieces of metal and gemstones. These layers of objects show that Bình Tả was not the place of worship of a single faith. It was a meeting point of many cultural currents in the ancient south.

The Long An newspaper reported in 2015 that Bình Tả is a group of 17 architectural ruins and settlement sites, surrounded by a system of ancient ponds. In 1989, the group was ranked a national relic site. In 2020, the area marked out for protection was adjusted, and the protected area now covers more than 40,000 square meters.

Before this land became a village or part of a province, people lived here. The mounds ask how they lived, whom they worshiped, and what they left behind. Their names are plain, not glamorous. Yet each one holds a part of the answer.