Page 285 - Trang Phục Việt Nam

hats or brown hats on sunny days. In winter, they wear circular brown woolen hats. The top of
the hat is tightened or knitted into a small knot like the knot on the head of the Buddha stature.
Female monks wear ordinary hats. The Hinayana monks in the South do not use hats. They
take yellow or black umbrellas instead.
Both male and female monks must shave their heads. Female monks can wear
headscarves.
During the chạy đàn ceremony, a monk wears a colorful lotus-shaped hat, known as thất
Phật hat. The hat has seven petals. Each petal is embroidered with the Buddha, a lotus or the
Sanskrit character. There are many other kinds of hats such as Phật quang hats, Quan âm
hats, hiệp chưởng hats which are worn on different religious occasions or ceremonies.
The Mahayana monks wear strings of beads which are called rosary. They can wear one,
two or three strings at the same time but the total number of beads should be 108,
symbolizing the 108 fruits of the Bodhi Tree. The monks count their beads in the hope of
staying away from 108 sorrows of the secular world. The monks in the South do not wear
strings of beads.

Clothes of Catholics

Nowadays, in Vietnam, the majority of religious believers belong to Catholicism and
Protestantism. The outfit of Vietnamese Protestants is very simple. Protestants believe that
their outfits should create a close bond between church dignitaries and parishioners.
Therefore, Mục sư (parsons), Giảng sư (protestant lecturers) and Chấp sự (priests) prefer to
wear everyday clothes like their followers when they conduct a ceremony. Formerly, they used
to wear a black gauze tunic under a white tunic and a turban, or wear a Western outfit.
Nowadays, they do not have to follow any particular clothing regulations but must ensure the
seriousness and the solemnity of the ceremony.
The clothes of both Catholic and Buddhist monks are simple. Their outfits are not
complicated or sophisticated. They favor dark shades of color for their clothes. Both male and
female have their hair shaved. Friars, priests and bishops all have short hair. According to the
dogma of almost all religions, most of the followers choose to live a simple life. Their belief is
evidently demonstrated in their clothes.

Remarkably, clothes of Vietnamese Buddhist monks have been significantly localized,
particularly those in the North. The short cánh shirt has buttons down the front and the tunic
has buttons under the arm. Their baggy pants are developed from traditional Vietnamese
pants. The way that Vietnamese female monks wear have their headscarves is instinct. The
brown of Vietnamese Buddhist monks’ clothes is also different from the brown worn by monks
in other countries since the color is made from a local tuber. In Catholicism, the novices wear
black robes with buttons under the arm and white traditional Vietnamese style pants. Their
soutane originally had buttons down the front but was redesigned with buttons running from
the neck to the armpit like the Vietnamese five-panel shirts. Christian parsons wear gauze
tunics and turbans.
Clothes for the Revolutionary Armed Services