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This early photograph from Tourane (today’s Da Nang) shows three Buddhist monks at the Marble Mountains temple complex. It is a rare colonial-era view of the full hierarchy of Vietnamese Buddhist monastic dress, from a novice’s plain robe to the ceremonial vestments of a senior abbot.

Originally revered by the Cham people, the Marble Mountains, known locally as the Five Element Mountains (Ngu Hanh Son), later evolved into an important Buddhist pilgrimage center. Under imperial order, temples were built and grottoes were developed here in the 1820s.

Photographer Pierre Dieulefils produced postcards like this for French soldiers and colonial tourists, but they also preserve a rare glimpse of Vietnamese Buddhist life at the turn of the twentieth century. The cancellation stamp shows this card was mailed in 1907.

While many of Dieulefils’s postcards were issued in plain black and white, this example was hand-colored, a technique widely used by Japanese postcard publishers at the time. The crisp edges of the gradated sky reveal the use of a time-saving stencil.

The central figure is likely Lê Văn Sành, the abbot of Tam Thai Pagoda within the Marble Mountains complex. For more on the history of this remarkable site, see Albert Sallet’s Les Montagnes de Marbre (1925).

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