a veneer of Buddhism and a protective paternalism". Indeed, the American press of the 1950s labelled Hòa Hảo as "a pseudo-religious sect which follows a perverted form of Buddhism", and as "a rowdy sect of dissident Buddhists" whose founder "was sent to a lunatic asylum". Despite this, other sources refer to it as a distinct syncretistic folk religion. Origins Hòa Hảo was founded by Huỳnh Phú Sổ (1919–1947), an ethnic Vietnamese born in 1919 to a Roman Catholic family of small-holders. The religious movement was found in the remote Miền Tây region of the Mekong Delta, which was known as Transbassac under French colonial rule. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Mekong Delta was a rough frontier society; the political power was shaky, social relations were tenuous, and religious currents were diverse. Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and various spirit cults all had differing impacts on the population. The ethnic Vietnamese interacted with Cambodians and Chinese, and everyone was forced to accept French colonial rule in 1867. The religion arose from a tangle of mysticism, magic, and witchcraft, which could be found in most of the region's local beliefs. Rooted in earlier Vietnamese anti-colonial religious traditions, the Hòa Hảo philosophy claims to be based on the thoughts of Phật Thầy Tây An (1807–1856), known as Đạo Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương. Tây An, in the 1830s, prophesied the collapse of the Nguyễn Vietnam at the hands of Western powers; the prophecies survived his death and spread throughout the Miền Tây, resulting in two major rebellions in 1875 and 1913 in which the region's French administration was nearly deposed. Sổ received no particular education as a child and did not associate with monks, Confucian-minded thinkers, or Westernized intelligentsia. He was afflicted by an unknown illness since he was 15, a failed candidate for the Cao Đài. This prompted him to leave his native village of Hòa Hảo in 1939 and go to the Bảy Núi range away. There, amid hermits and spiritual leaders, he obtained unorthodox Buddhist knowledge and a composite spiritual education. Sổ founded the religion on the eighteenth day of the fifth lunar month of the year kỷ mão, according to the Vietnamese lunisolar calendar, or 4 July 1939, according to the Gregorian calendar. He declared himself a prophet, and began preaching a doctrine based on faith and simplicity; he traveled throughout Vietnam practicing herbal healing and acupuncture. In the second half of