The two brothers lived with their uncle in a very miserable life. Every day, they had to do everything from small to large jobs, such as going to the fields, going down to the stream to catch fish, going into the forest to pick bamboo leaves, bamboo shoots... and were often beaten and abused. After living with their uncle for a few years, the two brothers could not stand it anymore so they moved out and brought their grandmother along. The three of them moved to another village to live. Here, they built a small but sturdy hut. The two brothers were very hard-working and diligent, not afraid of hardships and difficulties, going into the forest to dig cassava, trap birds, go down to the stream to catch fish, catch crabs... to support their family.
But the three of them could not live in peace for long. After that, the people in the village hated them very much, because they thought they were not related to the same family, they found many ways to harm them, and said insulting words. The two brothers caught all the fish they caught, caught all the birds they caught, and took all the animals they caught, not giving them any. Unable to stay, they had to move to a more remote place, where there were no people to live, and after three days and three nights, they stopped next to a stream. When they arrived at this place, the two brothers also worked hard to dig for cassava, catch fish, catch crabs, and trap birds and animals. When they visited the traps, they pecked out every bird they caught to get rice seeds and seeds, and gathered them to plant when the season came.
One day, as usual, the two brothers went to the stream to catch fish. While setting up the net, N'Dung N'Don saw a dry gourd floating towards them from upstream. N'Dung N'Don immediately picked it up. The older brother said:
- Let me break it open to see if there are seeds inside. If there are, we will have seeds for planting.
Seeing the beautiful gourd, the younger brother tried to stop him:
- Don't! Don't break it, the gourd is so beautiful, it's a pity to break it, let's bring it home to grandma so she can use it as a gourd to hold water.
Hearing that, the elder brother stopped smashing the gourd. In the afternoon, like every other day, the two brothers N'Dung brought home fish, birds, vegetables, and today there was also a gourd. Grandma held the gourd in her hand and was very happy. She looked at it for a long time and then said:
-Before you take the seeds from the gourd for planting, hang it on the kitchen rack to dry. When the planting season comes, take it out, dig a hole to get the seeds to plant, and use the gourd shell to make drinking water.
Heard that the two brothers had to hang the gourd on the kitchen rack. Day after day, month after month, when the new farming season was approaching, one day the two brothers went into the forest as usual. The grandmother was home alone. At noon, when the sun was setting, she suddenly heard a rumbling sound in the house, which frightened her, not knowing if it was a human or a ghost. In the afternoon, when the two brothers returned home from the forest, she told them everything she had heard at noon. The two brothers did not believe it, and even thought that she was senile because she was old. The two brothers had dinner, then went to bed. The next day was the same, the two brothers went to the field, the grandmother was home alone, she heard the murmuring sound more clearly. She kept thinking that there was a ghost in the house. In the afternoon, she told her two grandchildren about it. The two N'Dung brothers thought that their family was poor, so how could there be a ghost coming to harm them. However, everyone in the family was suspicious and afraid, not knowing the truth.
The next morning, the two brothers went to the fields as usual, but at noon they returned to stand by the door, and when the sun was at its zenith, they heard voices inside the house. Listening carefully, they discovered that the voices were coming from the gourd they had placed on the kitchen shelf. N'Dung N'Don took the gourd down and was about to smash it when a clearer voice came from inside the gourd:
- Please don't break the gourd, if it breaks we will die, we are the children of this mother gourd, seeing the three of us living so lonely and miserable, the Sun God sent us down here to be your descendants, we will form new villages. Now please make a small hole in the stem of the gourd so we can crawl out.
Hearing that, the two brothers immediately used a knife to make a hole in the stem of the gourd, and many healthy couples came out of the gourd. The first couple to come out had dark skin due to being covered in coal dust left on the kitchen rack. They were the M'nong, then the Ede, Ba Na... and many other ethnic groups like today. The M'nong have a saying:
"It's not easy to find a place like this.
The mountain is not easy to reach.
The m'pol
"The North Pole"
(God created the earth and sky)
Divine Man's Guidance
Although different
Together in the same dry gourd)
After the Sun God sent many couples down to earth to live with the three grandmothers and grandchildren, the two N'Dung brothers were elected to be the rulers of that large village. The two N'Dung brothers organized to reclaim more land, sow crops, raise cows, hunt elephants... They lived in harmony, happily, helping each other in daily work. They organized festivals, worshiped Giàng, worshiped the gods (God of Water, God of Forest, God of Stream, God of Earth,...). During the festival, they also played gongs, sang, danced, told stories, sang epics...
Meanwhile, the uncle of the two N'Dung brothers fell into poverty and hunger. The two N'Dung brothers forgot the past and welcomed the family to live with them. They were all happy. After a few years, the grandmother grew old and passed away, and then the uncle, after many years, also grew old and passed away. The days and months gradually passed, not knowing how many moons and how many farming seasons had passed, the two N'Dung brothers also grew old and weak, they fell seriously ill and passed away on the same day, leaving behind a large, crowded village with no one to manage it.
Couples began to live separately and many people had ambitions to become the head of the village. They began to show jealousy and envy towards each other, the villagers no longer lived in harmony as before. Seeing this, the Sun God thought that it was not good for the villagers to live together like this forever, it would lead to a struggle for power and killing each other, and no one would survive.
The God advised the couples to take their children and grandchildren to follow the land that the God would divide and to keep the writing and language that I had taught them to govern and look after themselves. When people heard that, they quickly went to find objects to preserve the writing. Some people wrote on leaves, some wrote on tree bark, some wrote on rocks... Only the M'nong people wrote on buffalo skin. Therefore, other ethnic groups carved letters on leaves, tree bark, and rocks and still preserved the correct writing, but the M'nong people, because they wrote on buffalo skin, had some of them taken away by dogs. Therefore, the M'nong writing and language still exist today with some different writings and pronunciations between regions.
The story explains the birth and origin of many different ethnic groups. The story also wants to advise family members and relatives to love and protect each other. In the village, we must unite, build a prosperous life, and not be jealous or envious of each other...
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