Mariamman Temple Saigon

On Trương Định Street, in the middle of Saigon, a family stops walking. Ahead of them rises a tower of many tiers, painted blue, yellow, red and pink, and crowded with carved human figures. The grandchildren stare. Their grandmother smiles and takes each one by the hand.

This is not a strange place, she tells them. It is the house of a friend.

Past the gate, warm incense meets them. Somewhere a bell rings, clear and light. Sunshine falls across the tiers, and the carved gods, goddesses, birds and beasts seem to stir among all those colors. This is the temple of the goddess Mariamman, which the people of Saigon fondly call Chùa Bà Ấn.

The grandmother sits down beside the children and speaks softly. The one honored here is Mariamman, she says. The Tamil people of southern India call her the Heavenly Mother. In Hindu Tamil belief, the goddess stands for the strength that protects the harvest, brings gentle rain and good weather, and heals illness. For people far from their homeland, she is a spiritual refuge, a mother who always watches over them.

Who brought her here, a grandchild asks. The grandmother nods. It is a long story, more than a hundred years old. According to the Vietnam National Authority of Tourism, the French recorded a Tamil Nagartar community in Saigon from the late nineteenth century. They were merchants, and they brought their trades, their customs and their faith. In a city far from home, they built this temple to worship and to keep the identity of their homeland alive.

She points up at the tower above the entrance. It has a name of its own, the Gopuram. The temple is built in the Dravidian style of southern India, with a Gopuram of many tiers. Hundreds of gods, goddesses, birds and beasts are carved on it with great care and painted in those same four colors. Each tier is a small world, and the longer you look, the more you find.

Then she tells them what surprises the children most. At the beginning, the temple belonged to the Tamil people. Over the generations, though, Vietnamese people came too. So did ethnic Chinese, and visitors from far away. Why? Because a prayer needs no passport, she says. The mother here does not ask anyone's nationality.

The temple stands only a few steps from Bến Thành Market, and Indians built it more than a hundred years ago. The same authority notes that it is open to everyone. People come to pray for health, for peace, for a happy family and for work that goes smoothly.

The grandmother shows each child how to press their palms together. The family lights a stick of incense and offers a few fresh flowers. Each of them makes a small, silent wish. One child prays for the grandparents to stay well. Another prays for peace for the parents. The incense smoke curls up, thin and fragrant, and mingles with the soft ring of the bell.

The grandmother looks at the children, and her heart is warm. The temple is still a living place of worship today, and it is ranked as a City-level monument of architecture and art. It is not an object in a glass case. It is a place still warm with people, still echoing with prayer every day.

As the family walks out through the gate, the grandmother looks back one more time. The Gopuram still stands there, glowing in the afternoon light, with its hundreds of stone gods watching quietly over them. These gods of the distant Tamil land are sheltering a family that knows not one word of Sanskrit and not one word of Tamil. But deep in their hearts they understand what it means to join palms and ask for protection. And perhaps the mother high above understands that too.