Strange story: Famous people's stele without words

(Baonghean.vn) - Visitors to the Ho Si Tao church in hamlet 1, Thanh Khe commune (Thanh Chuong) are surprised to see a flat stone stele. They think that time and rain have faded all the words, but in fact this is a stele without words.

Ho Si Tao (1834 - 1907) was from Lai Nha village, Thanh Khe commune, passed the exam as the first-class candidate in 1868, worked as a teacher in Nho Quan district (Ninh Binh), a district governor in Quang Trach district (Quang Binh)... was one of the talented Confucian scholars and a teacher of many scholars in Nghe An.

Mr. Ho Si Cuom (77 years old) - the 4th generation descendant of Mr. Ho Si Tao is talking about the "wordless" stele.

At the church of the former Grand Master Ho Si Tao, this “letterless” stone stele is erected in front of the yard, on the left. The stele has dimensions: 1.2m high (including the base 1.5m), 0.7m wide, and nearly 0.1m thick. The front of the stele and the surrounding frame are decorated with patterns, with no letters in the middle, only a seam where the stele was broken.

According to Mr. Ho Si Cuom (77 years old) - great-grandson of Mr. Ho Si Tao, this stele was purchased by Mr. Tao when he was still alive, but the inscription had not yet been written. After Mr. Tao passed away, his students pooled money to build a 3-room church to worship their teacher, and the brothers in the family brought this stele to erect in the church. In the years after the war, the stele had been wandering among the people for a long time, then returned to the church.

The stone stele has no words at all.

Mr. Cươm said that in the past, the stele was still intact, the base and the body of the stele were not chipped. During the resistance war against the French, when the K43 hospital - Military Region 4 evacuated to the locality, they chose the Ho Si Tao church as the operating room. The stele in the corner of the house along with a few stones became the kitchen of the military doctors, they often lit a fire to boil water. After a while, the base of the stele was cracked.

In 1978, implementing the policy of moving people to the mountains and giving up land for production, Lai Nha village near the Ro river moved to hamlet 1 as it is now. The houses were moved first, the church was moved later. When the people cooperated to move the church, they only moved the wood, tiles, and sacrificial objects, leaving behind the massive stone stele. Then the bulldozer leveled the land and broke the stele into two halves. A resident named Con in Nam Linh village brought the stele home to use as a washing table, but later felt uneasy and brought the stele to return it to the Ho family's church. After staying here for a while, Mr. Ho Le - the patriarch of the branch of the clan - brought the stele to the Tao family's church to return it.

In previous years, the stele was still erected in the church next to the left pillar. In 2015, when the descendants of the family restored the church, they built the foundation to erect this stele in the front yard as it is today.

Mr. Com said: “The stele was broken in half, we reattached it. Although the stele has no words, future generations cannot see anything on it, but this is Mr. Tao’s stele, associated with the mark of his life in the old Lai Nha village, so his descendants still kept it intact and erected it in front of the church as a souvenir.”

Because of the “white stele”, every time a guest comes to visit, the descendants of the family must both introduce the life of Mr. Tao and explain why the stele has no words. Usually, stone steles do not have words because of time, rain and sun, but the stone stele erected in front of Mr. Tao’s church does not have words because of a “special” reason.

In recent times, descendants of the Ho family, as well as tourists from all over the country, who admire the reputation of the Grand Master, have visited and offered incense to him in Thanh Khe commune. Many people have wondered about the over-100-year-old stone stele standing in front of the church yard. It seems that this "white stele" is still somewhat mysterious, like the ups and downs of the life of the famous Ho Si Tao.

Huy Thu