Tran Thai Tong

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Trần Thái Tông's (1218-1277) given name was Tran Canh. He was born in 1218 at the end of the Ly Dynasty. Tran Thu Do, his uncle, prepared the ground for his marriage to Queen Ly Chieu Hoang, who later abdicated to make him the founder of the Tran Dynasty in 1226. He commanded the armies and defeated the first Mongolian invasion of Vietnam in 1257. Learned in both Confucianism and Buddhism, he ruled the country wisely and authored several profound works on Buddhism, the most fomous of which is Khoa Hu Luc (Instructions on Emptiness), a Zen manual. A prodigious writer, he left behind a substantial number of works. However, only a small part of those survive.