Gia Lam Pagoda at Nga Bay

Along National Highway 1A at Ngã Bảy, in the old Hậu Giang province, now part of Cần Thơ, a pagoda rises beside the road that fits neither of the two pictures most travelers carry. It has no curved roof and red columns, as a Vietnamese pagoda does. It has no pointed spires and Naga serpent statues, as a Khmer pagoda does. This one is built in the Indian style, with domes, tall towers of many tiers, and relief patterns with real depth. In the Mekong Delta, this kind of architecture is very rare.

Most people call it the Horse Pagoda. Its official name is Già Lam Cổ Tự. In some travel writing it appears under a third name, Chùa Phật Lớn. All three names point to one place, and each carries its own story.

Già Lam is a Sanskrit word for a place of practice. Cổ Tự means an old pagoda. Together the name means an ancient place of practice. It dates from 1940, when the monk Thích Huệ Đức founded a small pagoda in Xẻo Vong C hamlet, in Hiệp Lợi commune. The pagoda was restored twice, and the large restoration came in 1967. In 1971 a dedication ceremony was held, and the pagoda was officially renamed.

Chùa Phật Lớn is a popular name that some sources give this pagoda. It is not the official one. Two other pagodas do carry that official name, one in Rạch Giá and one on Núi Cấm, and neither has anything to do with this one.

The name Horse Pagoda makes sense the moment you reach the yard. A very large horse stands there, about 3 meters tall and more than 2 meters long. It is made of colored cement over a steel-bar frame, and it was finished in one month. It represents Xích Thố, the magic horse of Quan Vân Trường. He is the best-known general in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a classic Chinese novel.

The answer to why a Chinese general's horse stands in a Buddhist pagoda lies in the folk culture of the South. There, the line between Buddhism and the worship of Chinese-influenced gods is very soft. Quan Vân Trường is also called Quan Công, and in the Chinese community, Quan Thánh Đế Quân. He stands for loyalty, courage and integrity. Vietnamese people in the South took up this belief through contact with the Chinese community, and sometimes they worship Quan Công inside a Buddhist pagoda. The horse in the yard of Già Lam Cổ Tự is one sign of that meeting of cultures.

The most striking part of the pagoda is its statues. There are 145 statues of the Buddha and of arhats, disciples of the Buddha who reached enlightenment. The pagoda has been called the one with the most statues in the Mekong Delta. At the center lies a statue of Shakyamuni Buddha entering Nirvana, 14 meters long. It stands for the Buddha leaving this world after 80 years of teaching. Beside it stands Quan Thế Âm, the bodhisattva of compassion, 12 meters tall. This bodhisattva rescues people from suffering and is the most revered in the Northern school of Buddhism.

There are also eight ceremonial platforms, several stupas, eight guardian figures called lân, and twenty-five incense burners. All of this is packed into an area of only 2,376 square meters.

Ngã Bảy, where the pagoda stands, is the place where seven canals meet. The French dug those canals at the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th, to open up land and trade. The Ngã Bảy Floating Market was once one of the liveliest in the Mekong Delta, with boats coming in along seven waterways loaded with goods from everywhere. That trade and prosperity fed the culture and beliefs of the area, including this pagoda of unusual Indian architecture.

The pagoda faces the highway, rising out of a land of rivers and canals. Past the three-entrance gate, it feels like another world. Indian towers climb into the sky of the Mekong Delta, and hundreds of statues stand quietly in the cool shade of trees. In the middle of the yard the great horse Xích Thố seems to be waiting, as if for the loyal general to return.