Champa

C h a m p a k a 1 3

Prof. P-B. LAFONT

The Kingdom of Champa

Geography-Population-History

Preface by

Assoc. Prof. Po Dharma

English translation by

Jay Scarborough

Sponsoring by

The Council for the Social-Cultural Development of Champa

International Office of Champa

San Jose, California, USA 2014

Status of Champaka

Champaka is a scientific research center established in 1999 in Paris, where scholars around the world contribute their research on the history and civilization of the kingdom of Champa.

Founders

Hassan Poklaun, Po Dharma

Editor in Chief Ascoc. Prof. Dr. Po Dharma (Ecole fraçaise d’Extrême-Orient)

Editorial committee

Prof. Dr. Danny Wong Tze-Ken (Univertiy of Malaya, Malaysia) Dr. Nicolas Weber (INALCO, Paris)

Dr. Shine Toshihiko (Kyoto University, Japon) Dr. Liu Zhi Qiang (Guangxi University for Nantionalities, China)

Emiko Stok (University of Nanterre, Paris) Abdul Karim (National Museum, Malaysia)

Central office 56 Square des Bauves

95140 Garges Les Gonesse, France Email: [email protected]

Web: http://www.champaka.info

Publishing House International Office of Champa (IOC-Champa)

PO Box 28024, Anaheim, CA 92809, USA

© Champaka 2014

Cover : Devi, Hương Quế, Quang Nam, 10e

century (Photo: Po Dharma)

Paris, March 22, 2013 President International Office of Champa (IOC-Champa) P.O. Box 28024, Anaheim, CA 92809, USA At the request of Dr. Po Dharma, the Editor of the academic journal Champaka on the history and civilization of Champa, I hereby grant permission to the International Office of Champa (IOC-Champa) to translate “Campa: Géographie- Population-Histoire” a historical book by Professor P-B Lafont, first published by Les Indes Savantes, Paris, 2006. The purpose of this publication is to disseminate the value of history and culture of Champa, a kingdom that attained a high level of civilization in the central part of Viet Nam. Signed : Lê Thị Ngọc Ánh Widow of P-B Lafont (1926-2008)

Table of contents Preface (9) Foreword (15) 1). Geography

The Coastal Region of Champa (18) The Champa Highlands (24)

2). Population Origins (31) Languages (33) Demography (35) Indianization (38) Social organization (40) Religious beliefs (46) Culture (55) Political organization (63) The Economy (67) Art (74)

3. History The beginnings of Champa: Linyi (87) Indianized Champa (91)

The Beginnings (91) Huan Wang (92) The Capital at Indrapura (95) The Capital at Vijaya (99) Champa confronts Angkor (103) The Second Half of the Thirteenth Century (107) The End of Indianized Champa (111) Indigenous Champa (116) The Transition Period (118) The End of the 16th and 17th Century (119) The 18th Century (127) The 19th Century (130) The End of Thuận Thành-Prangdarang (134) After Thuận Thành-Prangdarang (135)

Afterword (143) Additional Bibliography (147)

PREFACE

By Assoc. Prof. Dr. Po Dharma

Professor Pièrre-Bernard Lafont was born on February 17, 1926, in Syria. He graduated with a doctorate degree in law from the renowned Sorbonne University in 1963. With his background in politics in Paris, he was assigned to the École Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO) as a researcher for the civilizations of Southeast Asia. Prof. Lafont visited Viet Nam numerous times, beginning in 1953, to conduct research on the relationship between the Montagnards in the Central Highlands and the Cham, who live in the plains belonging to the former kingdom of Champa.

During his stay in Viet Nam, Prof. Lafont taught at Sai Gon’s Văn Khoa University. Many of his Vietnamese students went on to become distinguished researchers and scholars, among them Prof. Nghiêm Thẩm, Prof. Nguyễn Thế Anh, and Prof. Phạm Cao Dương. In addition to teaching, he also collaborated with Father Gerard Moussay (another French national) to establish the Cham Cultural Center in Phan Rang in 1969. He was a close friend of the late Lieutenant General Les Kosem, a Cambodian Cham who directed the armed struggle movement (FULRO) against Sai Gon from 1964 to 1975 in order to regain the indigenous people’s rightful status in Central Viet Nam. As a result of their friendship, Prof. Lafont sponsored a number of FULRO members for academic studies in

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France. My presence at the Sorbonne in 1972 was a part of this gesture. Prof. Lafont guided me throughout my academic career until I graduated with a doctoral degree in 1986. He he also helped me transition from a rural life in the Third World to the modern life in Paris. He taught me how to live as a citizen in a modern and democratic society, how to observe and reason matters from a scientific point of view, and helped me become a scholar of the lost kingdom of Champa. I will never forget the lessons he taught me and his guidance during my residence in France.

When referring to the study of Southeast Asia civilizations, one cannot avoid mention of this great scholar due to his years of knowledge and wide influence in French research circles. After becoming a professor in 1966, he founded the Southeast Asian History and Civilization Center in 1968 under the École Française d’Etrême-Orient and strengthened the relationship between the two. As a result of this effort, the Champa Research program was created in 1980 under my supervision under the guidance of Prof. Lafont. The program attracted a series of young graduate students who continued his research, which had been abandoned since 1945 due to the on-going warfare in the region.

In 1988, with the recommendation of Prof. Lafont, the EFEO moved the Champa Research Program from Paris to Kuala Lumpur so that it could expand its research to include the Champa and Malay-world relationship. After thirty years of research under my direction, the program has published twenty scientific articles, thereby bringing to life the history of this largely forgotten kingdom. They are:

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1). P-B. Lafont, Po Dharma & Nara Vija, Catalogue des manuscrits cam des bibliothèques Françaises. Publication de l'EFEO, CXIV, Paris, 1977.

2). CHCPI, Inventaire des archives du Panduranga. Fonds de la Société Asiatique de Paris (pièces en caractères chinois). Travaux du CHCPI, Paris, 1984.

3). Po Dharma, Le Panduranga (Campa). Ses rapports avec le Vietnam (1802-1835). Publication de l'EFEO, (2 volumes), 1987.

4). CHCPI, Actes du séminaire sur le Campa organisé à l'Université de Copenhague le 23 mai 1987. Travaux du CHCPI, Paris, 1988.

5). P-B. Lafont, Po Dharma, Bibliographie Campa et cam. L'Harmattan, Paris 1989.

6). CHCPI, Le Monde indochinois et la Péninsule malaise. Kuala Lumpur, 1990.

7). CHCPI, Le Campa et le Monde Malais. Actes de la Conférence Internationale sur le Campa et le Monde Malais à Berkeley. Travaux du CHCPI, Paris, 1991.

8). Alaudin Majid, Po Dharma (Eds.), Adat Perpatih Melayu- Campa (Régime matrilinéaire en Malaisie et au Campa). Kuala Lumpur, 1994.

9). P-B. Lafont, Ismail Hussein, Po Dharma (Eds.), Dunia Melayu dan Dunia Indocina (Monde malais-Monde indochinois). Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Kuala Lumpur, 1995.

10). Po Dharma, G. Moussay, Abd. Karim, Akayet Inra Patra (Hikayat Inra Patra = Epopée Inra Patra), Kuala Lumpur, 1997.

11). Po Dharma, G. Moussay, Abd. Karim, (Hikayat Dewa Mano = Epopée Dewa Mano). Kuala Lumpur, 1998.

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12). Adi Taha, Po Dharma (Eds.), Busana Campa, rumpun Melayu di Vietnam = Costume of Campa, the Malay Group in Vietnam. Kuala Lumpur, 1998.

13). Po Dharma, Quatre Lexiques Malais-Cam anciens rédigés au Campa. Public. de l'EFEO, Paris, 1999.

14). Po Dharma, G. Moussay, Abd. Karim, Nai Mai Mang Makah – Tuan Puteri dari Kelantan – La princesse qui venait du Kelantan. Kuala Lumpur, 2000.

15). Po Dharma, Abd. Karim, Nicolas Weber, Majid Yunos, Contes et légendes, épopées et textes versifiés. Kuala Lumpur, 2003.

16). Po Dharma, Mak Phoeun (Eds.), Péninsule indochinoise et Monde malais (Relations historiques et culturelles). Kuala Lumpur, 2003.

17). Po Dharma, Du FLM au FULRO. Une lutte des minorités du sud indochinois (1955-1975). Les Indes Savantes, Paris, 2005.

18). G. Moussay, Grammaire cham, Paris, 2006.

19). Po Dharma, Nicolas Weber, Abdullah Zakaria Bin Ghazali, Akayet Um Marup – Hikayat Um Marup – Epopée Um Marup. Kuala Lumpur, 2007.

The Kingdom of Champa, located in what is now central Viet Nam, attained a high level of civilization and played a key role in building relationships among its neighbors. Sadly, up to now, no one has produced a book that covers it completely and relates its meaningful history.

Mr. G. Maspero, one of the earliest historians of this kingdom, documented its existence from its founding in the second century CE until the fall of its capital city Vijaya in 1471 in his The Kingdom of Champa (1928). Following in

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his footsteps, the researcher G. Coedes also studied and published a book in 1964 about this kingdom. However, he presented Champa’s history in a chronological order based on the Southeast Asian kingdoms influenced by Indian civilization. Po Dharma’s Pandurang-Champa: Its Relationship with Viet Nam (1987) covered the relationship between Champa and the fifteenth-century ruler Lord Nguyen until Champa ceased to exist in 1832.

In addition to these academic publications, Vietnamese- language articles and books about Champa continue to be published; however, their content is far from scholarly and accurate as their main raison d’être is to satisfy the public’s curiosity and to prove that their own versions of Cham history are correct.

In response to these flaws, the Champa Research Program has worked to present the kingdom’s history objectively in light of academic findings that divide it into two distinct periods: modern Champa, focusing on the Montagnards’s struggle until the appearance of FULRO (e.g., the struggle of Southeast Asia’s minority people during 1955- 1975; published in Paris in 2005) and pre-modern Champa (from its founding to its final collapse). This task demanded the vast and intimate knowledge possessed by none other than Prof. Lafont. The Champa Research Program wholeheartedly supports the idea that led to the birth of this book.

After fifteen years of research and many difficulties and problems due to old age, Prof. Lafont was determined to finish this project before his death in 2008, after living a fruitful life of eighty-two years. Therefore, The Kingdom of Champa: Geography, People, and History is his final gift to the Cham people.

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The Kingdom of Champa: Geography, People, and History is the first history book to cover Champa’s entire history. In fact, it is classified as a summary of history rather than a history itself, because its purpose is provide the general public with accurate information about the kingdom so that any interested person or group can benefit from it. Therefore, the author organized the information according to a concise structure so the reader quickly grasp its contents.

Prof. Lafont ended his career on the high note of doing his best reconstruct Champa’s history in a fully recognized academic and objective manner. Not only did he present its geography, the people and their origin, culture, art, spiritual life, and the structure of its government and body politic, but he also analyzed its internal political dynamics as well as its political and military relationship with its neighbors in an attempt to prevent its military conquest by its northern neighbor: the Dai Viet. All in all, his aim was to reconstruct Champa’s history and restore it to its rightful place in the region. Therefore, this book should be regarded as a part of Cham culture, a rare and priceless book for those who seek to know the history of this lost kingdom.

The Kingdom of Champa: Geography, People, and History was originally written in French (Le Champa: Geographie – Population – Histoire. Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2007). It was translated into English by Jay Scarborough.

1. GEOGRAPHY

As late as the end of the twentieth centuries, scholars

believed, and wrote, that at its greatest territorial extent in

the 9th century CE, Champa extended from north to south

between the “Porte d’Annam” (Hoanh-son) and the Dinh

River, and from east to west from the South China Sea to

the foothills of what is erroneously called the Annamite

Cordillera (Truong-son). That is to say, that its territory

included only the plains and the small river deltas of the

coast of what is now Central Vietnam. However, although

its north- south limits were precisely these, we showed

more than twenty years ago that in the west, Champa’s

territory also included the mountain range and a portion,

the size of which varied over the years, of the pen plain

which lay beyond the mountains and which descends

gradually to the Mekong river basin.

Proof of this can be found in the history of Champa, in

archeological remains and in written records. The

Mahayana- based inscription at Kon Klor shows that, as

early as the year , the Kingdom of Champa included the

plateau of Kontum (C ng-tum An inscription from the

th century at M -s n, which describes the submission to

the Champa sovereign of the Vrlas and the Randaiy, whose

territories have been identified as the modern-day

ietnamese province of L m- ng, ia-lai (the Pleiku

plateau , and c-l c ( arlac , shows that these regions

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were thenceforth within the borders of Champa. A century

later, passages in the Yuan-che (CCX 55a) and in Marco

Polo’s book dealing with the Mongol expedition of 1283-

1285 against Champa show that during this period the

kingdom’s territories continued to include the plateaus of

Kontum and Pleiku (Plây-cu). This is further confirmed,

with respect to the 14th and 15th centuries, with the

establishment of religious edifices near Pleiku (at Ph -

th , in the region of Cheo-reo (Ph -b n as well as in the

river valleys of the Ia Ayun and Ba rivers, and then further

south in Darlac (at Yong Prong). Finally, various

documents in Chinese characters, in the Cham script and in

reports of Western voyages in the 17th, 18th and 19th

centuries, and the historical legends of the indigenous

population of modern day Central Vietnam and southern

Laos, also provide evidence that from the 16th century

until its final disappearance, Champa included a part of the

Annamite Cordillera and the peneplain further to the west.

In summary, Champa’s territory consisted of a coastal

region and a highlands area comprised of mountains and

plateaus.

The Coastal Region of Champa

From north to south, what was formerly the coastal

region of Champa extended, from its furthest extremities,

approximately 800 kilometers from north to south, but its

width rarely extended more than 50 kilometers. It consisted

of small plains and river deltas separated one from the

other by rocky formations, often quite high, projecting

eastward from the Annamite Cordillera all the way to the

coast ( L p, Vietnam. Données geographiques,

Hanoi, 1977). Cutting the north-south coastal areas in

numerous places, these projections divided the lowlands

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into distinct individual regions. They were barriers that for

a long period were difficult to cross, which no doubt gave

rise to the differences in the various regions of Champa,

which differences often show up in inscriptions and

manuscripts.

In the early years, in its northernmost area, Champa

included two regions which its sovereigns subsequently

ceded to the Vietnamese, one in 1069 and the other in

1306. These two regions form the present-day provinces of

u ng-b nh, u ng-tr and h a-thi n, bordered on the

north by the mountain range which is crossed at the Porte

d’Annam (Ho nh-s n , on the south by the ch-m

mountain which is crossed at the Col des Nuages ( o H i-

vân which is also a meteorological barrier), on the east by

low hills formed by the winds and ocean currents and

scattered with lagoons and which is battered in September

and October by storms and typhoons, and finally, on the

west, by a mountain range with peaks reaching a height of

to meters his particular regions includes a

number of plains ( n, ng- h i, L -th y, h a-thiên,

etc.), the width of which never exceeds twenty kilometers

and which are served by a number of waterways, but the

fertile portion of the region is quite limited.

elow the Col des Nuages, another region begins in

the area of -n ng ( ourane It extends south to Ch a

mountain and to the west to mountains over 1000 meters

high, at the base of which is a zone of foothills of various

altitude, and to the east by a number of lagoons with sand

dunes at the shore In the middle of this region, the u ng-

nam plain – named for the province in which it is located –

extends in long valleys along the rivers which irrigate it.

Very fertile, this region has at all times been an important

source of rice. Between the 7th and 13th centuries, it was

also an important political and cultural center of Champa,

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as evidenced by the archeological remains which are found

there (Trà-ki u, M -s n, ng-d ng, etc

outh of Ch a mountain is the u ng-ngãi plain. It is

irrigated by small rivers separated one from another by

spurs of granite. During the rainy season these rivers rise to

occasionally disastrous levels, but the rest of the year they

are nearly dry, which explains the origin of the irrigation

works (the vestiges of which are still visible) that were

undertaken during the period when this region, together

with the one immediately to the north, constituted the

principality of Amarâvatî.

Continuing south, the next region is blocked on the

west by the nh- nh mountains, which range from

to 1500 meters in height, at the foot of which are hills

covered with terraced fields, a technique inherited from

Champa of which this region formed, up to 1471, the

principality of Vijaya. To the south the region extends to

the mountain spur that is breached at the Cù-mông pass; to

the east it goes to the sea, the coast of which shows

evidence of coral activity and a sometimes jagged outline.

rom north to south there are a number of plains, including

those of ng-s n, Ph -m and ui-nh n, separated from

one another by low mountains. All are irrigated by

numerous waterways, which assure the fertility of the

area’s land

Next to the south, on the territory of the current

ietnamese provinces of Ph -y n and Kh nh-h a, one first

enters the region which extends from the mountain spur

traversed at the C -m ng pass to the granitic ng-phu

mountain (the Mother and Child Massif). It contains tiny

plains surrounded by the mountain, which is quite close to

the sea, which it dominates from its 1000 meter height; at

the east is a ragged coastline. The sole exception is the

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plain of Tuy- hòa, which includes the delta as well as the

lower and middle regions of the -r ng river valley o

the other side of Cap Varella one encounters isolated areas

of small mountains and a coastline with numerous bays,

sometimes quite deep, separated from the open seas by

peninsulas, such as at Cam- ranh bay, or islands, such as

those of Nha-trang. There is little room for plains, and

those that do exist, in Ninh-hòa, Nha- trang and Ba-ngòi,

are relatively small. And since the soil in these plains is

poor and the area suffers from droughts each year, they are

not economically productive. At the extreme south of this

region, which constituted the former principality of

Kauthâra, are sand dunes which extend from the mountains

to the coast.

On the other side of this natural barrier one arrives as

the coastal part of the former principality of Pânduranga,

which is now the Vietnamese provinces of Ninh-thu n and

Bình-thu n. This region, where sand dunes predominate,

consists of four economically productive zones. In the

north there is the Phan-rang plain, which to the south ends

at M i-dinh mountain and to the west is bordered by steep

mountains. The plain is dotted with little hills and is

irrigated by the Kinh-dinh river and its tributaries.

Receiving a great deal of sunshine and suffering from very

low rainfall (less than 700 millimeters per year) as a

consequence of the mountains and the orientation of the

coastline protecting the area from the winter rains, and

exposed to hot, dry winds, its climate is semi-arid, and the

land requires a considerable amount of irrigation in order to

make it productive – an art which the inhabitants of

P nduranga mastered long ago elow this plain, up to its

southern end at M i-dinh mountain, the land consists of

sand dunes and finally the salt fields of Cà-ná, which have

been exploited for centuries. Next comes the miniscule

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plain of Tuy-phong, and then the plain of Phan- rí which

(like the two preceding sub-regions and the one

immediately to the south) is bordered on the east by coastal

hills with sandy soil, and to the west by mountains he

rainfall here, which increases gradually as one proceeds

south, is somewhat greater than that of the Phan-rang plain

After crossing another region of sand dunes, one arrives in

the plain of Phan-thi t, which is the largest of the four In

spite of an annual rainfall of 1200 millimeters and

numerous small rivers, this region also requires irrigation

for productive agriculture, especially since the land, formed

from ancient sea beds, is sandy.

outh of the Phan-thi t plain one comes to an area of

sand dunes surrounding coastal hills, and sandy marshes.

This desert zone, which forms a natural dividing line

between Central and South Vietnam, was formerly the

southern border of Champa.

A relief map of the coastal areas of the central and

southern areas of Central Vietnam shows how limited the

lowland portions of this region are, consisting, as we have

already seen, solely of a narrow coastal strip. This is

attributable to the proximity of the Annamite Cordillera

mountain range to the sea – which also puts a limit on how

long the lower portions of the area’s rivers can be At the

same time, the angle of descent of these same rivers in their

upper reaches, i.e. in the mountains, is often quite steep,

and their rapid currents bring gravel and sand to the

lowland areas, which – especially in the central area –

filled in the bays and dammed the lagoons, thus creating

the plains that exist today. In contrast to the situation in the

mountains, the slope of the rivers in the plains is negligible,

which explains why the rivers reach their outlets in the sea

only with difficulty – particularly, again in the central area,

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where they sometimes run a considerable distance parallel

to the sea.

The climate of the coastal areas of ancient Champa is

hot and humid. The average temperature varies from

degrees Celsius in July and degrees in January, with

extremes of between degrees and degrees (in Hu

The weather includes monsoon seasons, with the winter

monsoon winds blowing from northeast to southwest and

those of the summer monsoon from southwest to northeast.

Until the appearance of the steam engine, all navigation by

sea depended on these monsoon winds. As respects

precipitation, it varies depending on the latitude and the

orientation of the mountains and the coastline. The greatest

rainfall in the central region of Central Vietnam is from

September to January, and in the southern coastal areas

from October to December. This is a function of the winter

monsoon, a regime of barometric pressure peculiar to the

area, and to typhoons, which average nine per year and

which sweep the coast in October and November. In

contrast, summer is marked by a period of drought which is

accentuated by hot winds coming from the west, blowing

through corridors in the Annamite Cordillera. These winds

promote a high level of evaporation, thus contributing to

drought conditions.

The soil of the lowlands is normally alluvial, although

in some areas it is granitic and, more rarely, balsitic. The

former have filtering properties as they are largely sandy,

especially the further south one goes. Together with other

local ecological factors, the soils are the main determinant

of the local flora, notably cactus. In addition, in order to

make the soil suitable for agriculture, the land had to be

irrigated wherever possible. The inhabitants of the coastal

fringe were successful in these endeavors, as evidenced by

the vestiges of irrigation canals which delivered water to

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those areas subject to excessive drought (Nguyen Thieu

Lau, “Les étangs desséchés de la region de M ng-M n”

in Institut Indochinois pour l’Etude de l’Homme, Vol. 1,

1942, pp. 131-134 + 5 plates). But they were never able to

develop a level of agricultural production that would

support an increase in population.

The Champa Highlands

he area west of the coastal plains of Central ietnam

in the region north of ch-mã mountain is different from

that to the mountain’s south o the north of this massif,

sub- ranges of the Annamite Cordillera, granitic in

composition, have a northwest-to-southeast orientation

( oi-m p mountain, ng-ngai mountain o the south,

one first encounters a zone of mountain ranges – mountains

of u ng-ng i (Ch a mountain , of Kontum (C ng-tum

mountain , of nh- nh ( mountain – which contain a

row of peaks that drop sharply to the lowlands and which

are oriented north-south o the west of these ranges are a

series of high plateaus Next, from ng-phu mountain all

the way to Cap Varella, transversal spurs jutting out from

the mountains of upper Kh nh-h a (Chu ang, i-dup , of

L m- ng (Langbian , and of upper inh-thu n (Brah-

yang, Yung mountain), one after the other, extend down

into the lowlands, and – as we have already seen – divide

the lowlands into distinct departments.

Although it is not truly a cordillera, but rather the edge

of high plateaus which face towards Laos, and although

with its greatest elevation at 2610 meters it is not

particularly high, this line of mountain crests, which

extends from the Ataouat Massif (2500 meters) on the th

parallel to ng-phu mountain, is a climatic barrier

between the coastal fringe of Central Vietnam, with a

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climate regulated by the monsoons and typhoons, and

Laos, whose climate is seasonal and is characterized by a

distinct winter season.

eyond the peaks, beginning with ch-mã mountain,

which tower over the coastal regions are a series of high

plateaus which descend in gradual steps to the Mekong

River.

The first of these is the plateau of Kontum (Công-

tum), the southern part of which extends beyond Pleiku;

between 1950 and 1960 its average rainfall was 2500

millimeters. This plateau, which never exceeds 800 meters

in altitude, shows classic volcanic activity, as seen in the

mountain cones like that of Chu Hodrung, crater lakes like

the Tonueng, and soil suitable for agriculture. The latter

were once covered by forests; these have been partially

destroyed by human activity and, by 1950, had been

replaced in many localities, such as the plateau of Pleiku

(Gia-lai), by growths of bamboo. To the east of this

plateau, one step down toward the coastal plain, is the

region of An-khê, with an altitude of approximately 400

meters, a well-watered region whose pass of the same

name brought it into contact with the coast (at the same

latitude as present-day ui-nh n outh of the plateau of

An-kh is the valley of Cheo eo (Ph -b n , which follows

the course of the two tributaries (the a Ayun and the a

river of -r ng river, which debouches in the sea near

Tuy- hòa.

Next to the south after the Kontum plateau is the

plateau of arlac ( c-l c , which during the period -

1960 received an average annual rainfall of 1500

millimeters. With an altitude that varies between 600 and

700 meters, it is a balsatic flatland lying between Cheo eo

and u n Ma huot, with very few irregularities in its

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topology he soil here is quite fertile and is irrigated by

the upper part of the repoc ( r -p c river, a tributary of

the Mekong, which is broken up by large waterfalls such as

that of ray Hlinh arther south, large valleys alternate

with zones of varying hydrographic characteristics, with

lakes (such as the Lak , ponds and swampland o the east

of this plateau, a step down towards the lowlands, is the

Kh nh-d ng (M’ rak depression, a pen plain of

crystalline and balsatic soils which opens onto the region of

Ninh-h a through the ok Kao (Ph ng-hòang) pass.

Besides the areas given over to agricultural production, the

lands of this region, only a century ago, consisted of forest

clearings, savannah and meadows in the north and beautiful

forests in the south.

South of the Darlac plateau, a number of mountain

peaks, some of which, such as the Chu Yang, reach an

altitude of 2400 meters, rise above yet another plateau, that

of Langbian, the average altitude of which is 1500 meters.

Formed by volcanic activity, this plateau, which is called

by some the Dalat plateau, is rugged and permeated with

valleys, with lakes (such as the Mê-linh) and with

waterfalls (such as those of Cam-ly ince long ago it has

been covered with abundant vegetation – pine forests,

pastures and cultivated crops o the southeast this plateau

descends in steps – the best-known is the ran ( n-

d ng region – to the sea, while in other directions the

plateau terminates in fairly steep declivities.

To the west of the Langbian plateau lies the Trois

rontieres ( ak-nông) plateau. Also known as the plateau

of the upper Chhlong river, it is an extension of the Darlac

plateau to the south-southwest and presents a landscape of

hills covered with grasses. With an average altitude of

1000 meters, it is sliced by deep valleys with steep slopes.

The soil is composed of sandstone, schist and sometimes

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basalt, and its fertility is low. Furthermore, its numerous

hills are guttered during the rainy season while it suffers

from a lack of water during the dry season.

To the south of the Langbian, the Djiring (Di-linh)

plateau is a step downward from the former. With an

altitude varying between 1000 and 80 meters, this

peneplain of sandstone and basalt is divided up by the

waters of the upper onnai ( ng-nai) river and its

tributaries, the valleys of which contain rich soil. Very well

irrigated, with an average annual rainfall of 2115

millimeters, this plateau was formerly covered by virgin

forest, which still can be found in the higher regions but

which elsewhere have been severely degraded due to

human activity.

There are differences in the climates of the various

highland regions, but in general, from May to September,

the weather is wet, with low clouds and fog, while the

period from October to March is dry, and can be cool in the

higher areas (the temperature often goes below 10 degrees

Celsius in February in the Langbian plateau). The average

annual temperature in each region is a function of its

altitude and latitude, being +20C/-2C in the north of the

Kontum plateau and +24C/+6C overall, with temperatures

8 degrees Celsius higher in the middle of the Langbian

plateau.

Until the 20th century this plateaus were covered with

forests of varying composition. The products of some of

these forests, such as eagle wood, sandalwood and bois

d’aloes, were in former times highly prized by consumers

in the area ranging from the Arab world all the way to

Japan. The forests were inhabited by large herds of wild

animals: elephants in the plateaus of Darlac, Trois

Frontieres and Djiring, from which ivory was harvested

Geography

28

and exported all over Asia; gaurs and bantengs in the

plateaus of Kontum, An Khê and Langbian; deer in the

peneplains various felines, the skins of which show up in

the manifests of vessels plying their trade between the

Champa ports of ourane ( -n ng and Malithit (Phan-

thi t and rhinoceroses, the horns of which (and the rest of

the animal as well) were the subject of a profitable

commerce.

Until the middle of the 20th century, the population of

upper Kontum, and of the plateaus of Pleiku, Darlac,

Djiring and Langbian, was made up entirely of proto-

Indochinese peoples. Because their agricultural practices

consisted exclusively of dry farming, with each season of

cultivation followed by a long fallow period (see J.

Boulbet, « Le Miir, culture itinérante sur brûlis avec

jachère forestière en pays Maa », in Bulletin de l'Ecole

Française d'Extrême-Orient LIII- 1, 1966, pp. 77-98), their

numbers remained low, and living conditions were

primitive.

*

As we have seen, the coastal regions of Champa were

restricted in area, and as a consequence were capable of

only limited, and practically stagnant, agricultural

production. This meant in turn that the population could

not grow, unless it found new lands to cultivate. However,

because of their religious beliefs, they could not extend the

borders of the country beyond those regions where the

genies and divinities of Champa were thought to reside.

This is why the wars conducted by Champa were never

wars of conquest, and foreign lands, once conquered, were

nonetheless never annexed (see « La notion de frontière

dans la partie orientale de la péninsule indochinoise », in

Geography

29

Les frontières du Vietnam, Paris, L'Harmattan, 1989, pp.

18-19). This is also the reason why the population numbers

in the lowlands hardly changed at all over the centuries.

The high plateaus of Champa offered a large land

area, covered with forests. But the people of the highlands

did not know how to, and above all could not, exploit these

lands economically other than by slash-and-burn

agriculture, and they could not increase the cultivated areas

without shortening the periods when the land lay fallow;

otherwise they would have reduced the nutrient-containing

biomass per unit of surface which would have led to ever-

decreasing yields. Here, too, the population was

condemned to remain stagnant until such time as new

agricultural production methods should appear. But this did

not happen until the middle of the 20th century.

Finally, the geographic compartmentalization of the

coastal areas, and the slash-and-burn agricultural practices

in the highlands, prevented the creation of true cohesion

among the various population groups, which were

physically separated--in the lowlands by spurs of

mountains emanating from the Annamite Cordillera (which

could nevertheless be crossed with greater or lesser levels

of difficulty) and in the highlands by lands left fallow to

allow the soil to recover its fertility.

It is thus for reasons related to geography that the

population of Champa over the centuries remained small

and relatively unstructured. But it is due to geographical

factors, the inverse of those that impacted Champa, that the

ietnamese people, living on the other side of Champa’s

northern border and occupying a large delta which

produced two annual harvests as well as the lowland areas

of the northern part of modern-day Central Vietnam

(Thanh-hóa, etc.), was able to support a much larger

Geography

30

population and developed a much greater degree of social

cohesion due to the exigencies of the domestication of the

Red River. Consequently, when the two countries began to

confront each other, geography played a role that was

detrimental to Champa and favorable to the Vietnamese.

2. POPULATION

We saw in the previous chapter that contrary to what

has been written up to now, Champa included not only the

coastal portions of what are now the central and southern

areas of Central Vietnam but also, to the west, that part of

the Annamite Cordillera which bordered the coastal strip

and the plateaus that lay just beyond these mountains.

Accordingly, the inhabitants of Champa included not only

those who lived in the lowlands but those in the highlands

as well, the people we customarily call Montagnards or

proto-Indochinese. The kingdom thus was not, as was

thought until recently, the land of the Cham exclusively,

but rather a multiethnic country where, as we shall see,

each ethnic group played a role.

Origins

The population of the territory of what used to be

Champa at the beginnings of our era is only known in the

most general terms. For that part of the country situated

between the Porte d’Annam and the Col des Nuages,

Chinese documents, which are our only sources, make little

mention. They describe the region, which was then at

China’s southern border, as inhabited by a few Chinese

immigrants and a much larger number of natives living

both on the coast and in the mountains. They speak of the

latter as maintaining close relationships with one another:

Population

32

the Jinshu (57, 4b, translation by Paul Pelliot) states that

“friendly groups help each other out” without providing

any details. The Chinese also referred to the natives as

“barbarians” – to Chinese writers, all non- Chinese and

non-Sinicized people were barbarians – and included them

within the Qulian people, an imprecise term which implies

that the natives had brown-tinted skin There is rather more

information about the part of the country south of ch-mã

mountain. Human remains found in the highlands in the

west of the Annamite Cordillera are those of

dolichocephalic proto-Malays, with large bodies. They first

came to the area during Neolithic times and are the

ancestors of the proto-Indochinese peoples which, until the

middle of the 20th century, were the sole inhabitants of

highlands. The remains found in the coastal areas are from

a second wave of dolichocephalic proto-Malays into which

mongoloid elements were introduced by other immigrants

coming from what is now China. Also arriving in Neolithic

times, these were the people who, after having absorbed

many civilizing influences during the proto-historic era up

to the Christian era, formed the ethnic group which the

West, using Vietnamese terminology Ch m and Ch m ,

would erroneously call the Cham. They did so

notwithstanding the fact that no ethnic group of this name

exists in their own language and can be found nowhere in

inscriptions or manuscripts, where the term for the native

people is “Urang Champa” urang = person, individual

However, since this term has been used for more than a

century to designate the ethnic group that populated the

coastal region of Champa, we will continue to use it with

this precise meaning, i.e. it is restricted to the inhabitants of

the coastal areas of Champa.

Population

33

Languages

The archeological records at our disposal suggest that

all of these proto-Malay people spoke one, or perhaps

several, proto-Malayo-Polynesian languages. This

language (or languages) gave birth to its modern-day

successors: the Cham language, spoken in the lowlands;

and the related languages of the area – Jarai, Ede (Rhade),

Chru, Raglai, Hroy – spoken in the east-central region of

the peninsula.

There is evidence of the use of the Cham language

since the 3rd century CE. It was spoken from the Porte

d’Annam Ho nh-s n to the present-day region of Bình-

thu n, but today its use is limited to the Cham villages of

the Vietnamese provinces of Ninh-thu n and Bình-thu n

and in the Quatre-Bras lowlands and around Kampot in

Cambodia. The language belongs to the Austronesian

family of languages (notwithstanding an Austroasiatic

substratum). It is, however, evolved considerably over

time, notably with the appearance of pre-glottalized

consonants, as well as the borrowing of numerous words

from Sanskrit, Vietnamese and Khmer, so much so that the

language today is much less close to Malay than it was in

anient times. The first written evidence of the language

dates from the 4th century CE, in the form of a stone

inscription discovered near Trà-ki u in the modern day

province of Qu ng Nam G Coedes, “La plus ancienne

inscription en langue chame”, in New Indian Antiquary,

Extra Series I, 1939, pp. 46-49 , which is written in “old

Cham” This writing, derived from devanâgarî, was used

concurrently with Sanskrit up until the 15th century, when

inscriptions in Cham disappeared. It was later replaced by

“middle Cham”, and then by modern Cham, which uses

four writing systems: akhar rik, akhar yok, akhar tuel and

Population

34

akhar srah, the latter of which is in everyday use. They

were originally used on palm leaves, and later on paper.

(P.-B. Lafont, Po Dharma and Nara Vija, Catalogue des

manuscrits cam des bibliotheques françaises, Paris,

Publications de l’Ecole Francaise d’Extreme-Orient, vol.

CXIV, 1977, pp. 2, 6-8 and CM 23-2). In Vietnam, there

are notable differences between the written and spoken

languages. The written language shows greater proximity

to proto-Malayo-Polynesian than the spoken language, the

latter having evolved toward monosyllabism as a result of

the influence of Vietnamese, which is the lingua franca of

the Cham. In Cambodia no such distinction between

spoken and written Cham exists, but the language has been

heavily influenced by Khmer.

In the highlands, only two language groups, neither of

which have ever existed in written form, are currently used

by the proto-Indochinese peoples living there. Several of

these languages are within the Chamic group (Jarai, Ede,

Chru, Raglai, Hroy), and in addition there are a not

insignificant number of languages in the Mon-Khmer

group which belong to the Austroasiatic family. The former

have always been closely related to one another as well as

to “old Cham” They would seem to be languages

introduced by conquest, compared to the Austroasiatic

languages into whose region they appear to have been

thrust (see map). Furthermore, the inscriptions, in Sanskrit

as well as Cham, indicate that the speakers of the highland

Chamic languages had relationships, sometimes quite

close, with the ethnic Cham beginning in the 12th century.

In comparison, the oral traditions as of the middle of the

20th century of the Austroasiatic-speaking groups indicate

very weak ties historically with the Cham.

Population

35

Demography

We have seen that the coastal strip of Champa, where

the ethnic Cham resided, consisted of very little territory,

the soils of which were not particularly suitable for

farming. As a result, agricultural production was low,

which in turn prevented population growth. In order for the

population to increase, it would have been necessary to

expand cultivation to new regions. This, however, never

happened – due, as we have already seen, to religious

reasons. The religious beliefs of the Cham forbade them

from living anywhere beyond the limits of their villages

(such limits being a function of the territory in which each

village’s protective spirits resided , since had they done so

they would lose the protection of these divinities. This

meant that the borders of the villages – and by extension

the borders of the kingdom itself – were immutable. These

facts explain why the population numbers barely changed

throughout the period during which the Cham occupied the

coastal area.

We have also seen that, in contrast to the lowlands, the

surface area of the high plateaus was quite large. However,

the proto-Indochinese groups that populated these regions

did not know how, and above all could not, in these times,

exploit these territories by any other than the slash-and-

burn method, which required allowing the land to lay

fallow for some fifteen to twenty years after each period of

cultivation, generally three years, in order to allow the soil

to regenerate itself. (P-B. Lafont, « L'agriculture sur brûlis

chez les proto- indochinois des hauts plateaux du centre

Vietnam », in Les Cahiers d'Outre-Mer. Revue de

Géographie, Tome XX, 1967, pp. 37-50). Thus for the

Montagnards it was impossible to increase the area of land

Population

36

devoted to cultivation, and consequently impossible to

increase their numbers.

Although all the evidence available indicates that the

population of Champa remained constant up until the end

of the era of Indianization (we have no information

regarding the period from the 16th and 19th centuries),

there is nothing in the record that indicates what, at any

given time, what the population was. The inscriptions only

deal incidentally with matters that do not involve religion;

and when, exceptionally, a number is given, it is that of the

size of a vanquished enemy army L Finot, “Les

inscriptions de M -s n XXI A et ”, in BEFEO, V ol. IV ,

1904, p. 965), which is invariably exaggerated in order to

magnify the achievement of the victor. Also, the numbers

which appear in Vietnamese annals also deal with the size

of enemy armies and tend to use the number 100,000,

which seems excessive for the times. As regards the two

numbers that purportedly disclose the population of the

capital city Vijaya in the 15th century, they cannot be

considered informative, inasmuch as one of them speaks of

2,500 families – which would correspond to 10,000

individuals – and the other of a population of 70,000.

It is also the case that as of the end of the 20th

century, the exact number of Cham and proto-Indochinese

people is not known, the numbers provided by scholars and

by official or semi-official sources being only

approximations – sometimes manipulated to suit the

agenda of the reporter Thus, the numbers provided by

writers for the Cham population in Vietnam varies from

9 , Po harma, Paris, 99 to , Cao Xu n Ph ,

Hanoi, 1988), while to this writer the number 60,000

appears to be closer to reality. The population numbers of

the Chams of Cambodia, descendants of residents of the

coastal areas of Vietnam who, beginning with the end of

Population

37

the 15th century, fled from Vietnamese attacks in order to

avoid death or reduction into slavery, are also problematic.

In fact, Western scholars have systematically confounded

the Chams with the Malays of Cambodia, as the two ethnic

groups are physically quite similar to one another, both

practice the same orthodox Islam, and have intermarried

over a long period of time. Thus, contrary to what appears

in their publications, they have never given an exact or

even estimated number for these people separately, but

rather a single number for the two combined, whom they

refer to as either Malays or Cham depending on when they

were producing their work. This led to numbers that bear

no relation to reality. The most reliable information comes

from the census taken in Cambodia in 1998, which puts at

2 , the number of “Khmer Islam”, i.e. the Malays and

the Moslem Cham taken together. Since, contrary to what

one often reads, the number of Cham is lower than the

number of Malays, we can estimate the number of Cham –

that is, people who identify themselves as Cham and speak

Cham to a greater or lesser extent – at around 100,000.

Since the end of the second Indochinese War, one

hears reference to a Cham diaspora numbering

approximately 20,000, living mostly in Malaysia

and secondarily in the extreme west of the United

States and in France. However, the quasi-totality of

this number is accounted for by Khmer Islam

people who fled Cambodia following the seizure of

power by the Khmer Rouge in 1975. When asked,

the great majority of these people identify

themselves as being of Malay and not Cham origin;

as for the remainder, they tend to identify

themselves as Muslims rather than as Cham. Only a

miniscule fraction of the Cham diaspora comes

from central Vietnam, consisting of individuals

Population

38

who left Vietnam for fear of reprisals after the

victory of the communists, against whom they

fought.

The population numbers of the proto-Indochinese

groups who speak Austronesian languages have never been

determined, notwithstanding the fact that they are provided

in a publication dated 1991 with the title Census. This

document states the number of Rhade (Ede) to be 194,000

(although there were no more than 120,000 at a maximum),

of the Raglai at 71,696 (sic) (while the true number is

around 50,000), and of the Chru at 10,746 (sic). The Jarai

population appears to be around 150,000.

Indianization

After a remarkable Neolithic era, in the proto-

historical period bronze from China, and various influences

from ng-s n culture, made their appearance in the

central and southern portions of the coastal regions of

modern day Central Vietnam. During the same period,

there arose in this area civilizations of great vitality which,

as the beginning of the first century approached, became

the receptacle of new influences, this time coming from

India.

No contemporary documents exist relating to the

Indianization of the land which would become Champa.

We know only that at the beginning of the Christian era, an

ever- increasing number of Indian sailors and merchants

made their way to the southeast and central areas of the

Indochinese peninsula in search of gold. There, with the

approval of the local residents, they established trading

houses which, over the passage of time and accompanied

by the arrival of Brahmins and Ksatriya, became centers

for the diffusion of Indian culture to the indigenous people

Population

39

G Cœdès, Les Etats hindouisés d'Indochine et

d'Indonésie, Paris, De Boccard, 1964, pp. 44-72). We do

not know at what point these influences became dominant--

it is believed that this happened around the 4th century CE

– nor do we know if they came exclusively by sea or also,

in the south (Funan, Malay peninsula), by land. Contrary to

what is often thought, however, this process of

Indianization, wherein its protagonists openly penetrated

already established civilizations and set up new political

entities, did not affect the entirely of the indigenous

population. It really left its mark only on those elements of

the population in direct contact with the Indian immigrants

– and in particular with the upper castes – who had been

subject to their influence and adopted their way of life. As

a result, the evidence leads us to believe – and this would

be confirmed in the 15th century – that only a minority of

the Cham people were truly Indianized. As for the

majority, it continued to reflect the characteristics – no

doubt with a light Indian coating – of a civilization, itself

relatively advanced, that had existed prior to the arrival of

these foreigners. We should also look at this process of

Indianization as primarily involving an elite, which used it

to impose its authority on the rest of the society from which

it had itself sprung.

It was due to Indianization that the Cham elite was

able to create a written form of the language, based on the

devanâgarî alphabet. Indianization also brought Sanskrit,

the language of civilization, to Champa, which it used up to

2 CE And it brought its great religious belief systems –

Sivaism and uddhism – and a social organization, based

on the division of the population into four hereditary castes

L Finot, “Les inscriptions de M -s n XVI” in EFEO,

Vol. IV, 1904, p. 950), that subsisted until the 15th century.

Indianization also introduced Champa to India’s religious

Population

40

and technical writings and to its epic poems, and provided

it with its monarchic system of governance which served as

a model for Indianized Champa (and which was not totally

abandoned even when superseded by “indigenous”

Champa after the 15th century).

As far as the highlands are concerned, the written

records indicate that they were not subject to Indian

influences during the first centuries of the Christian era and

that their inhabitants remained in a backward stage of

civilization throughout this period. It was only after the

“Randaiy [Rhade], Mada, Mleccha [as well as the other

barbarians]” had been conquered by the Cham, as

referenced in the inscription of Batau Tablah from the 12th

century, that those proto-Indochinese tribes speaking

Austronesian languages appear to have subjected to the

technical and cultural influences from the Cham which

allowed them to pass from the category to Mleccha to that

of Kirâta (Montagnards). No doubt certain among them

developed the close and frequent contacts with the Cham of

which one finds traces in the inscriptions – which,

however, do not indicate if they were assimilated to the

point of being integrated into one of the castes into which

Indianized Champa was divided. Neither is there any such

evidence in any of the religious monuments found in the

high plateaus.

Social organization

The social organization of the inhabitants of Champa

during the era of Indianization differed from that which

existed after the 15th century. Furthermore, during both of

these eras, that of the lowlands differed from that of the

highlands.

Population

41

During the period of Indianization the vast majority of

the lowlands population consisted of ethnic Cham, only a

few of whom had Indian blood resulting from

intermarriage It is difficult to determine whether this

society was patrilineal or matrilineal Indeed, on a bilingual

stele found at M -s n the Sanskrit part emphasizes the

patrilineal descent of the king Harivarman IV while the

Cham part puts the accent on the female line L Finot,

“Les inscriptions de M -s n XII” in BEFEO, 1904, pp.

904, 934-935, 937-938.). Is this contradiction due to a

desire to reflect, in the Sanskrit, fidelity to Indian practice,

where royal descent is patrilineal, while the Cham version

mirrors the social organization which still exists among the

Cham in central Vietnam as of the beginning of the 21st

century? At our current state of knowledge, we have

nothing that would permit us to answer this question The

Chams were integrated into a system of four hereditary

castes, which are identified in a tombstone from M -s n

written in old Cham (BEFEO IV, 1904, pp. 948 and 950).

A minority constituted the upper castes. First came the

rahmins, of which the inscription states: “There is no

greater sin than the murder of a rahmin ” BEFEO IV,

1904, p. 925.) Next were the Ksatriya, who often formed

alliances with the Brahmins, so much so that a mixed

Brahmin- Ksatriya caste was formed (BEFEO IV, 1904,

pp. 963-964) that some have characterized as a religious

and warrior caste. These upper castes formed the ruling

class as well as the political and religious dignitaries of the

kingdom and the principalities. The inscriptions also

mention the existence of vamsa, that is, of lineages – and

not clans, as has often been erroneously stated – for the

princely families who produced the occupants of the

supreme throne (râjadhirâja). The best known are the

Nârikelavamsa (Coconut), the Kramukavamsa (Areca) and

Population

42

the Brsuvamsa lineages. But since the inscriptions make no

mention of any lineages for other social groups, we do not

know if the latter also had clearly delineated family lines

or, if so, if these had their own designations. The third

caste was the Vaisya, which included farmers, who formed

the vast majority of the population of the coastal region;

lumbermen who lived at the base of the Annamite

Cordillera, merchants; and all of those involved in

maritime activities: fishing along the coast and trading with

southern China, as well as piracy, which all seemed to have

practiced. The rest of the population belonged to the fourth

caste, the Sudra, of which we know very little inasmuch as

the inscriptions deal mostly with the two upper castes.

According to the inscriptions and manuscripts at our

disposal, the Chams were often at odds with one another

and there was rarely true unity among those living in the

southern portion of the country –particularly in Pânduranga

– and those inhabiting the northern regions, as shown in the

inscription on the Po Klong Garai temple which describes

the former as being “in constant revolt against the

sovereigns who reigned over the Kingdom of Champa” L

Finot, “P nduranga”, in BEFEO III, 1903, pp. 643 and

645). Along with the Cham, the inscriptions make mention

of the existence of hulun, a term customarily translated as

“slave” while it is better translated as “non-free” The

“Pilier de Lomngö” L Finot, BEFEO IV, 1904, p. 634)

includes among them the “Chinese”, the “Siamese” the

“Puk m” Pagan Finally, “Chamized” Montagnards lived

in the coastal regions, but we know nothing about their

status or their occupations.

We know nothing about the lives of the people in the

highlands, the Montagnards. We know that they were

divided into tribes. The inscriptions give the names of

some of them who spoke languages in the Austronesian

Population

43

family and others whose languages were part of the

Austroasiatic family; the societies of the former having a

matrilineal structure and, it would appear, those of the

latter being patrilineal. Certain of these tribes – those

whose languages were in the Chamic family – had close

relationships with the Cham. Proof of this can be found in

the active participation, during the period 1283-1285, of

certain of these tribes in the war waged by the King of

Champa – who had taken refuge with them following the

seizure of the capital Vijaya – against the Mongols, who

had invaded the coastal areas of the country. As for the

other tribes, the writings call them barbarians (Mleccha;

Mán in Sino-Vietnamese). But some are described as

having submitted to the authority of Champa – for which

there is also evidence in the oral traditions still widely

extant in the middle of the 20th century of certain tribes

speaking Austroasiatic languages – while others as said to

not have submitted. We know almost nothing else about

the Montagnards, save for the fact that the religious

foundations established at Yang Prong in arlac c-l c

in the middle of the 20th century show that a significant

number of Randaiy (Rhades) were integrated into the

society of Champa – as were no doubt other ethnic groups,

particularly during the struggle against the Mongols.

Following the collapse of Indianized Champa, i.e.

during the period from the end of the 15th century to the

beginning of the 19th century, the written record provides

greater detail. We learn that for many centuries, perhaps

even prior to the 16th century, the society of all of the

Cham living in Central Vietnam was organized under

matrilineal lines; this was of capital importance in

determining an individual’s place in the society This

system had another aspect, which subsisted up until the

victory of the Vietnamese revolutionaries in 1975: the rule

Population

44

of matrilocal residence, which meant that males were not

part of the economic unit into which they were born (P-B.,

Lafont, « Contribution à l'étude des structures sociales des

chàm du Viet Nam », in B.E.F.E.O. LII-1, 1964, pp. 157-

171). As for the Chams of Cambodia, the Islamization of

this group following their immigration into the country

resulted in the evolution of their social structure: the

abandonment of matrilineal succession in favor of the

patrilineal, and the accordance of primacy to male

members of society, in conformity with Koranic

prescriptions. Following the disappearance of castes, which

occurred the same time as the collapse of Indianized

Champa, there evolved in the coastal areas two classes of

society. The first is what were called “thar patao bamao

mâh”, which for a lack of a better term we call the

aristocracy, which included the king and his family, the

families of princes, and those of other dignitaries of high

rank. The second was comprised of the masses, “bal li-ua

hua hawei”, composed of free men and women – farmers,

paid workers, merchants and seafarers – and the non-free,

in servitude for debts both voluntary and involuntary.

These were halun (hulun) who could be sold by their

“owners”, but who could also buy their freedom

(Inventaire des archives du Panduranga du Fonds de la

Société Asiatique de Paris. Pièces en caractères chinois,

Paris, Centre d'Histoire et Civilisations de la Péninsule

Indochinoise, 1984, pp. 34, 48). The class to which one

belongs, which is determined at birth – by the class to

which the mother belongs – has, up to this day, played a

not insignificant role in the social structure of those Chams

who until very recently were referred to as “brahmanist”

(Cham Jat or Ahiér). Indeed, among the latter marriages

between people of the same class have always been

preferred, while marriages between girls of the lower class

Population

45

and boys of the aristocratic class are prohibited (pakap),

since an individual’s forebears are determined by his or her

matrilineal descent.

Recent scholarship has shown that, since the 15th

century, the proto-Indochinese have at all times been

divided into tribes, the names of which are well known (F.

M. Lebar, G. C. Hickey, J. K. Musgrave, Ethnic Groups of

Mainland Southeast Asia, New Haven, H.R.A.F. Press,

1964, pp. 135- 158, 249-255), and which are unrelated to

one another. It has also shown that until the 21st century

each of these tribes was nothing more than a collection of

villages, sometimes allied and sometimes enemies, but

most often without any contact with one another, and that

tribal unity never existed. At most there were ties between

individual villages, often limited to intermarriages and

within very small geographical areas. These ethnic groups

since the 16th century were organized either along

matrilineal (for those which spoke Austronesian languages

– Jarai, Edu, Chru, Raglai and Hroy) or patrilineal lines.

Certain of them had, and still have, family groups which

each constitute exogamous clans, each member of which

bears a clan name that is passed down on the mother’s side

for those ethnic groups organized matrilineally and on the

father’s side for those organized along patrilineal lines

Being a member of a given clan, which indicates that all

clan members share a common ancestor, means among

other things that marriage between two individuals of the

same clan is forbidden, while marriage outside the clan is

permitted. Between the 17th and 19th centuries, the

Montagnards, and especially those who spoke Austronesian

languages and whose societies are organization along

matrilineal lines, had particularly close relations with the

Cham and even intermarried with the Cham. Evidence for

this can be found in Cham manuscripts, which mention

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46

among other things that one of the wives of the king Po

Rome (1627-1651) was of Rhade origin (CM 41-4; CAM

microfilm 1-3), and that after the fall of Thu n Thành-

Prangdarang, the leaders of the anti- Vietnamese revolt

which took place chose an ethnic Raglai (CM 24-5; CM

32-6), the husband of a Cham woman i Nam Th c L c

Ch nh i n XVI, translation in qu c-ng , Hanoi, 9 2, p

197) as the king of the new Prangdarang which they hoped

to establish. Cham manuscripts dating from the 17th and

18th centuries also show that a large number of senior

dignitaries were of Montagnard origin, which demonstrates

that during this period there was a mixing of the

populations and that the Cham and proto-Indochinese – or

at least some of the latter – lived in perfect harmony and

enjoyed the same degree of social and political rights. This

symbiotic relationship existed until 1835 when Emperor

Minh Mang prohibited all interaction between the peoples

of the lowlands and those residing in the mountains, which

eventually resulted in a distancing of the groups one from

the other.

Religious beliefs

From its beginnings until its defeat by the Vietnamese

in 4 , Indianized Champa’s religious beliefs were those

borrowed from India. However, contrary to what certain

scholars have posited, these religious practices were

essentially aristocratic in nature, and were adopted only by

the upper classes of Cham society. The remainder of the

population continued to practice their indigenous religions

as they existed in pre-Indian times, although they were

influenced by, and occasionally exercised an influence on,

the religions that came from India.

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47

Through all twelve centuries of the existence of

Indianized Champa, the upper castes practiced two separate

religions, one official and one personal. The former finds

its clearest expression in the M -s n complex, which was

the religious capital of the country for everything that had

to do directly with the royalty. And during the Indianized

period, it was Shivaism that formed the basis of the royal

cults, with Shiva being throughout this time the one true

national deity. The cult of Shiva, often in conjunction with

that of its sakti, predominated over those of numerous other

Hindu divinities who had their own local cults L Finot,

“Inscription de Mi- s n”, in EFEO, Vol. II, 1902, p. 190).

This is evidence by both inscriptions and sculpture.

Throughout the Indianized period, Shiva was represented

either in human form, with a third eye on the forehead, two

or more arms with their individual attributes, and generally

with the Brahman sacred cord; or, much more frequently,

in the form of a linga – a kind of cylinder-shaped stone

with a rounded tip, phallic in appearance, either plain or

decorated, standing alone or attached to a basin for making

ablutions – the cult of which was the cult of Shiva par

excellence. Each of these linga had its own name, and

some of them, found in the sanctuaries of the M -s n

complex, played a dynastic (and even, to use a modern

term, a national) role: for example, the linga bearing the

name of the god Bhadresvara, which symbolized the king

and the country. The sakti of Shiva, which in Cham

sculpture is represented in human form either alone or

riding on the back of the bull Nandi, Shiva’s mount, was

worshipped under various names, most notably in the

southern part of the country the name Bhagavati where,

after being associated up to the tenth century with the cult

of the linga of Po Nagar in Nha Trang, the name of which

was “Lord of the Goddess”, she became the sole major

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48

divinity of the south, Yang Pu Nagara. However, she was

later absorbed into the cult of Bhadresvara, no doubt to

foster the religious unification of the country’s northern

and southern regions.

Personal religions were also practiced by the kings,

princes and high dignitaries. They were generally of lesser

importance even though they are often mentioned in the

inscriptions. One of the personal religions practiced was

the worship of Vishnu, especially in the 7th and 8th

centuries (E. Huber, « Etudes Indochinoises. IX Trois

nouvelles inscriptions du roi Prak adharma du Camp 2 -

L inscription de ng Mong , in B.E.F.E.O. 1911, p.

262) . Another was the veneration of his wife, Lakshmi,

which shows up occasionally in evidence dating from the

8th and 14th centuries. There were other cults too, but of

ancillary imporance, devoted to Brahma and to various

deities to whom the homage recorded in the inscriptions are

more literary than religious. Among the personal religions,

Buddhism played an important role during certain eras,

especially in the last quarter of the 9th century during the

reign of Indravarman II, who favored Mahâyâna Buddhism

and the Boddhisatva Avalokitesvara, who was the subject

of a great deal of devotion, with a privileged position in his

realm. It is to this king that is credited, among other things,

the construction of a large uddhist monastery, dedicated

to Lakshmindralokesvara, at ng-d ng, south of Tr -

ki u. The complex was studied, albeit incompletely, by H.

Parmentier, who published a map of the sanctuary’s

buildings as well as an inventory of the numerous

monuments and statuary discovered within its large

rectangular area in l'Inventaire archéologique de

l'Indochine. II Monuments cams de l'Annam (Paris, Leroux,

1909-1918). Mahâyâna Buddhism enjoyed its privileged

position until 914, at which time inscriptions of a Buddhist

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49

character disappeared. But this does not mean that the

religion itself disappeared: Buddhist images in bronze and

other materials that have been discovered dating from the

10th and 11th centuries are evidence of its continued

existence.

In addition to the ceremonies of which mention has

been made, throughout the Indianized period the Champa

sovereigns founded important religious establishments,

notably those of M -s n and Po Nagar of Nha Trang, in

honor of the divinities whom they wished to glorify and

thus from whom they solicited their blessings, and also, in

honor of their ancestors who had been deified, in order to

exalt their reigns. Like the kings, the princes and

dignitaries of the realm also built religious edifices or

installed lingas, which might be covered with gold leaf, in

the temples, in order to glorify Shiva but also, for the

princes, to show their noble descent and, for the dignitaries,

as evidence of their importance and their power. This, more

or less, is what we can divine from the inscriptions, which

also mention that the kings and nobles who set up these

foundations furnished them with land, farm animals,

slaves, rice, silver, gold, etc. (E. Huber, BEFEO XI, 1911,

pp. 19-20) in order that to maintain them, to such an extent

that they were a drain on the nation’s wealth

Hinduism, in the form of the royal cult which it took

in Champa, was a religion of the aristocracy. Thus, when

the upper castes, those in whom power was reposited,

disappeared following the attacks of the i Vi t in the

15th century, the Hindu traditions which had served as the

underpinnings of royal authority since the country’s

foundation vanished as well. As a result, in the southern

part of the country, which had not been annexed by the

Vietnamese, a new Champa made its appearance, with a

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50

new religious framework which rapidly became that of the

entire population of all classes of society.

The first religious blossoming to appear after 1471

were the cults of invisible beings called the Yang. Belief in

these spirits “which were present in all things and at all

places” emanated from the lands of Kauth ra and

Pânduranga (CM 35- 4 and also involved “a belief that

through appropriate acts one could call them forth,

propitiate them, or make them go away” These beliefs of

the “ancient occupants of Indochina” P Mus, «L Inde

vue de l'Est. Cultes indiens et indigènes au Champa », in

B.E.F .E.O. XXXIII, 1933, pp. 367, 374) already existed

prior to the arrival of religions from India and had been

practiced on a non-official basis in the countryside

throughout the Indianized period. When it was made

official by the new political and religious authorities (CAM

104-4 and 5) the spirits seems to have evolved into a

hierarchy of invisible beings (although it is also possible

that such a hierarchy pre-existed) the most important of

which were those believed to intervene directly and

fundamentally in human lives. This explains the

importance given to spirits associated with irrigation dams

and the ceremonies in their honor. Indeed, in this semi-arid

region they enjoyed, and continued to enjoy until quite

recently, a place in the highest ranks of the Yang, since the

people believed that it was thanks to them that humans

received the water which provided the harvests and thus

human existence. And as further evidence of the high

station of these genies, in addition to the regular

ceremonies involving the sacrifice of small farm animals

and fowl which occur, among other times, in the first and

seventh months of the Cham calendar, every year in Phan-

rang (CM 22-4) a buffalo is sacrificed in thanksgiving to

the spirits of the irrigation works and every seven years a

Population

51

large and solemn ceremony is held in their honor involving

the sacrifice of, among other animals, a white buffalo (Cam

30-13).

Side by side with these beliefs in supernatural beings,

which now enjoyed official status, there sprung forth,

apparently quite rapidly, new religious structures consisting

of cults revolving around statues of divinities dating from

the Indianized era which had escaped the destruction of

statuary and inscriptions by the Vietnamese. But while

prior to the 15th century each statue bore the name of the

god or goddess which it purported to represent, this was no

longer the case thereafter. The general population, which

had not been involved in the religion practiced by the

former aristocracy, honoring the trimûrti and other Hindu

divinities, were ignorant of the names and characteristics of

the gods represented by these statues. Nevertheless, they

were aware that the statues were representations of divine

beings, and they appropriated them and used them to

represent the pantheon of divinities which they had created.

They gave them names of either a genie considered locally

as being particularly important, or of a person, often

mythological but occasionally historical, of exceptional

qualities and accomplishments advancing the human race

of the highest order. Some writers of the 19th and 20th

century believed that the cults surrounding these statues

constituted a continuation in deformed version of the

religious practices of the Indianized period, which led them

to refer to the Chams who practiced it as “brahmanists”

But this is incorrect. It was not Shiva or other Hindu gods

that the people were venerating (and continue to venerate),

but rather, through the representations of these gods,

divinities that were purely Cham. A striking example is the

statue said to represent Po (Yang) Ina Nagar, of whom the

Cham manuscripts state that she was born out of the clouds

Population

52

and the foam of the sea, was the creator of land (CAM 57-

3), and who is the principal deity of the country as a whole;

in fact, it is a statue of Bhagavati dating from the 10th or

11th centuries, a fact completely unknown to the Chams

who pay homage to her. The same is true of the statue

which people identify as that of the mythical king Po

Klong Garai (CAM microfilm 15-5), who according to

Cham literary sources is said to have taught humans how to

dam the rivers (which explains why he is ranked among the

most important divinities of the nation); unbeknownst to its

worshippers, this statue is actually a mukhalinga. Then

there is the statue of Shiva, which all the Chams believe to

be a representation of king Po Rome (CAM 152-7), an

historical figure said in the manuscripts to have united a

divided Cham community, and the Shivaite idol and

washing bowl which they believe to be the image of the

deified king Po Nraup. We could add the nandin, ganesa,

makara and all of the heads of Hindu divinities that have

been unearthed, which the people have gathered up and to

which they have given the names of local spirits, since they

believe that they are representations of these spirits

produced spontaneously by the land.

Just as during the Indianized period the participation

of Brahmans was required on numerous occasions, official

ceremonies honoring the principal genies and the statues of

the Cham divinities have always required, and still do

require, the presence of Ahiér priests. These priests, the

adhia and the basaih, are assisted during these ceremonies

by the camnei (responsible for offerings), the kadhar

(singers and musicians), and other auxiliaries, each of

whom wears special vestments while performing these

rituals (this is also true of the religious dignitaries of the

Muslim Cham); reproductions of these articles of clothing

Population

53

can be seen in Busana Campa= Costumes of Campa (Kuala

Lumpur, Muzium dan Antikuiti & EFEO, 1998).

Towards the end of the 16th century, some of the

practitioners of this newly-established religion became

subject to the influence of Islam (P-Y. Manguin,

“L’introduction de l’islam au Camp ” in BEFEO LXVI,

1979, pp. 255-287) through contact with Malay and Arab

seamen who sailed along the coast of Champa. As a result

of these contacts, an Islamized Cham community came into

being in Pânduranga, and perhaps in Kauthâra as well. But

one must question how deep the Islamization went. In fact,

from the very first, the Cham seem to have assimilated and

adapted the Koran, by far the greatest part of which is

written in Cham and permeated with errors, to their

indigenous cultural roots. The question is also posed by the

fact that Allah appears most frequently not so much as the

sole deity he is supposed to be but rather as the supreme

deity of a rather well-populated pantheon. Moreover, the

sole obligatory practice that these “Muslims” observe is the

giving of alms (zakat), and this, only in a deformed sense.

They neither observe the obligation of daily prayers nor do

they fast during the month of Ramadan, which they leave

to their imams and other officials of the religion; nor do

they practice circumcision (which is replaced with a

symbolic act), or make pilgrimage to Mecca, asserting that

their presence there would result in its desacralization.

Thus, the form of Islam practiced by these individuals, who

refer to themselves as Bani (Semitic: beni = son of [the true

faith]) but which notwithstanding the tenets of the religion

continue to maintain a matrilineal and matrilocal social

structure, conforms very little with orthodox doctrine. They

even require, as a condition to conversion, that the

candidate’s mother be a Moslem; otherwise, permission to

convert will be refused (CAM microfilm 6-2). Finally, they

Population

54

maintain a close relationship with the Cham Ahiér – who

themselves have absorbed Po Uvalvah (Allah) into the field

of local divinities – and participate with them in all of the

main religious ceremonies of the Cham ethnic group. As an

example, during the rija (CM 27-30) and the ceremonies

honoring the spirits of the irrigation dams, their gru, imam,

acar and katib (scribe, preacher) celebrate – except for

participation in some of the prayers – the same rites

honoring the Cham divinities at the same time and place as

the Ahiér priests.

In contract to the Cham Bani of central Vietnam, the

Cham who emigrated to and now live in Cambodia have

become, with the exception of a few scattered villages,

orthodox Moslems. They practice the five pillars of Islam

and observe the obligations and interdictions of Sunni

tradition. This is attributable to the very close relationship

with the Malay community in Cambodia, which since the

16th century has greatly contributed to the religious

education of the Cham and encouraged them to submit to

the teachings of the ulamas of Kelantan and Terengganu

(Malaysia) through which they could restore the proper

beliefs and practices. This is why the Cambodian Cham,

for the past fifteen years, have been subject to the

propaganda and pressures of various Islamist reformist

movements operating in Southeast Asia.

In the highlands of Champa, a number of

towers/sanctuaries and statues of Hindu divinities, all

dating from the Indianized period, have been found, which

bear witness to the existence of local religious practices

identical to those of the coastal regions. But inasmuch as

the inscription of Kon Klor near Công-tum (Kontum) is

that of a person of whom we know only the name

(Mahîndravarman), and moreover because we are ignorant

of the origins of the inscriptions found in the valley of the

Population

55

Ba river (in the modern- day province of Gia-lai), we do

not know if their authors were Chamized Montagnards or

people from the coast who had settled in the highlands. In

contrast, we are better informed regarding the religious

practices of the Montagnards in the 18th, 19th and 20th

centuries. For them, the entire universe was guided by

invisible beings, genies and spirits of deceased ancestors,

whom they sought to propitiate or neutralize (see, inter alia,

J. Boulbet, Pays des Maa. Domaine des génies. Nggar

Maa. Nggar Yang, Paris, Publications de l'E.F.E.O., vol.

LXII, 1967). They believed that the best way to accomplish

this was through religious ceremonies based on sacrifice

and the recitation of prayers by one of the participants –

which is why the number of sacrifices was so prolific. This

continued until the fourth quarter of the 20th century, when

the Socialist Republic of Vietnam took a position against

these practices as a part of its fight against superstition.

Culture

Only the inscriptions in Sanskrit or “old Cham”

provide any information regarding Cham culture during the

Indianized period. And since they deal only with the

culture of the court and leadership classes, we are in the

dark as to the cultural lives of the mass of the population,

be they residents of the coast or of the highlands.

As with all other human societies of the past, the

culture of the elite of Champa was dominated by its

religious practices. It was influenced to a great degree by

Indian culture, and from India the upper castes of Champa

borrowed their concepts of the organization of the cosmos

and drew the major part of the elements of their civilization

from Sanskrit literature.

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56

The inscriptions paint a reasonably clear picture of the

culture of the aristocracy, which was centered on a

knowledge of Sanskrit and of P nini’s grammar and the

Mahâbhâsya, which were used by the elite in the normal

course up to the 12th century, when Jaya Harivarman wrote

poetry in Sanskrit and when a Sanskrit chronicle in sloka,

known as the Arthapur nasastra, was written L Finot,

“Les inscriptions de M -s n”, in EFEO IV, 9 4, pp

963-964). Culture involved familiarity with the classic

Indian epic poems, in particular the Mahâbhârata and the

Râmâyana, which appear to have enjoyed great popularity

at the royal court, as the inscriptions, which often include

quotations from them, would seem to suggest. This is

shown in the inscription from the 7th century dedicated to

the author of the epic poem of Râma (P. Mus, «

L'inscription à Vâlmîki de Prakâçadharma (Trâ-ki u », in

B.E.F.E.O. XXVIII, 1928, pp. 147-152), whose cult

appears to have been more literary than religious. An

erudite individual would also be familiar with the

Dharmasâstra, from which the law drew its principles and

practices, as well as technical treatises and the science of

magic E Huber, “L’épigraphie de la dynastie de ng-

d ng”, in EFEO XI, 9 , pp 29 , 29 and -309).

Another important element of the culture was astronomy,

which is believed to have been the domain of specialists,

no doubt Brahmins. This was especially important

inasmuch as it was used for the measurement of timec –

Champa used the lunar/solar year and the Indian saka,

which commences in year 78 of the Christian Era, as the

starting date – and for preparing the calendar, which was

essential for magico-religious purposes since determined

the dates of all the ceremonies and the times for the

performance of all kinds of rituals and, most importantly,

determined which days were propitious, which were

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57

unlucky, and which were neutral – which in turn

determined how virtually everyone conducted his or her

daily life L Finot, “Inscriptions du Qu ng-Nam”, in

BEFEO IV, 1904, pp. 107, 109).

Alongside this high culture, which was officially the

elite culture until the 15th century, there existed a parallel

culture, that of the mass of the population of Champa,

which did not have access to the fount of knowledge of the

aristocracy. This mass culture, of which we know very

little, took its roots from the civilization of Lin-yi, which

during the 3rd and 4th centuries was enriched by

techniques originating in China with a light Indian overlay.

In the course of the centuries to follow, it absorbed

important influences brought by sailors plying their trade

along the great maritime route linking India and the Middle

East with Europe, who stopped in Champa’s coastal cities,

which lay along the route, to take on provisions. This mass

culture, which developed on the fringes of the official

Sanskrit culture, would little by little entirely replace the

latter, of which the first element to disappear – and the

most important – was the Sanskrit language. The final

Sanskrit inscription dates from 1253, after which only

inscriptions in “old Cham” can be found ut this

disaffection with Sanskrit arose much earlier: from the

beginning of the 9th century, inscriptions in this language

became less and less frequent, and less and less respectful

of proper grammar. In turn, classical literature in turn fell

into oblivion, either forgotten totally – as was the case with

the Mahâbhârata, from which no citations can be found

from the beginning of the 13th century – or partially, like

the great epic poem Râmâyana, which survived only in an

abbreviated prose version (which has come down to us in

modern times under the title Pram Dit Pram Lak). Finally,

the closer we come to the end of the 15th century and the

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collapse of Indianized Champa, the more the culture

originating in India was superseded by what I will call the

indigenous culture.

Beginning with the 16th century, when Champa found

itself reduced to the territories of Kauthâra and

Pânduranga, the cultural elements of Indian origin in their

original forms disappeared almost entirely. Practically the

sole exception, and a surprising one, was the rite of sati. It

was recorded for the first time in 1081 on the occasion of

the death of Harivarman (IV), when fourteen women of his

entourage were immolated on the funeral pyre following

the cremation of his remains L Finot, “Les inscriptions de

M -s n XIIC” in EFEO IV, 9 4, pp 9 and 9 9 , and

again by the Franciscan Odoric de Pordenone in the first

part of the 14th century; its continued existence was noted

again in the middle of the 17th century. Indeed, an

inscription engraved on a statue in the temple of Po Rome

in Phan-rang, believed to be that of this king’s first wife,

reveals that the latter had not followed her husband on the

funeral pyre, which leads one to believe that the rite was

still practiced at that time at the court of Champa. We do

not know when this practice involving human sacrifice was

abandoned; it was replaced among certain Chams Ahiér by

another form of sacrifice, that of manuscripts owned by the

deceased, which were thrown by his widow on the funeral

pyre during his cremation so as to accompany him in the

world of the beyond – a ritual which is responsible for the

disappearance of numerous major classical works of which

only the names are now known (Po Dharma, Nicolas

Weber, Abdullah Zakaria Bin Ghalizi, Akayet Um Marup,

KKKW & EFEO, 2006, p. 9). A few other cultural

elements, mostly of a juridical nature, continued to exist as

a framework for the society which replaced the Indianized

kingdom. The remaining elements did not survive. They

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59

were replaced by those which had always existed in the

popular culture, to which were incorporated the indigenous

cultural elements associated with the land of the southern

part of Champa and then by contributions from the Malay

peninsula and islands, which were all the more easily

accepted because they came from a people with whom the

coastal inhabitants of Champa had long been in contact and

with whom were anthropologically, linguistically and

culturally very close.

As we have already noted, it was above all the rituals

and religious beliefs which changed. A whole multitude of

local genies (yang) were transformed into official divinities

to whom sacrifices, normally involving the killing of

animals, were made by all levels of society. In addition,

there were important ceremonies such as kate, cambur

(CAM 125-1) and the festival of the first plowing, which

was required to desanctify the soil, which had lain follow

during the winter season, prior to planting the new crop.

This was the situation when, between the end of the

16th century and the beginning of the 17th, Moslem

travelers began converting some of the people living along

the coast. But while in principle this should have resulted

in a thorough Islamization of the converts, this is not what

happened; for while the converts adopted certain elements

of Islam, they did not totally abandon their native religious

beliefs, and what resulted was a “Moslem” culture that was

a mixture of elements adopted from Islam and traditional

local practice. At the same time, the practitioners of the

local religion – the Cham Ahiér – took personages from the

Islam religion and transformed them into local deities:

Allah became Po Uvalvah (CM 27-27) and was included

among the original kings in their historical legends, and

Mohammed became Po Rasulak (CM 39-1) and was

incorporated along with other Koranic personalities in the

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Ahiér pantheon. One is faced with a complicated system of

beliefs, and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between

them. As a result, the various observations made by

outsiders concerning the two belief systems are not always

consistent.

The coexistence of these two belief systems would

have a direct influence on various aspects of the culture of

the Cham of present-day central Vietnam. For example,

since the 17th century, the Cham Bani no longer ascribe to

the same cosmogony as the Cham Ahiér and no longer see

the creation of the world in the way they did before their

conversion (CAM 97-2 and CAM 143-2). Furthermore,

although they both calculate time using the twelve animals

and the sixty- year cycle, the Ahiér and Bani now use

calendars that have been calculated differently and are no

longer in accord with one another (CAM 138-4). It should

also be noted that the religious authorities have the habit of

moving the dates of certain important festivals observed by

both communities from the dates on which they would

normally be celebrated – for example, the rija – if the

festival were to fall within a period considered

unpropitious for festivities by the Bani (for example,

during Ramadan).

Other cultural elements took form at this time, notably

as regards the language, with “old Cham” being replaced

from the beginning of the th century by “middle Cham”

and its various forms of writing, which from then on

became the sole means of expression in writing. Because of

this, from then on all literary expression was in Cham,

whether it be of the epic themes drawn from the common

culture of the ancient Indianized states of southeast Asia,

describing the lives of various heroic characters who

undergo extraordinary adventures before returning to their

home countries and assuming the thrones of their fathers,

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of which Inra Sri Biklan (CAM microfilm 11-2) is the

archtype, or of literary works borrowed from the Malay

world, with which the indigenous culture of Champa

shared many common elements, and which upon adoption

were reworked and adapted to the mentality and to the

culture of the Cham. This adaptation was so complete that

the Cham people, which was unaware of the existence of

the Malay hikayat, had no idea that their akayet –

especially the Inra Patra and Deva Mano (Po Dharma, G.

Moussay, Abdul Karim, Akayet Dowa Mano, Kuala

Lumpur, PNM and EFEO, 1998) – were of foreign

inspiration.

The evolution described here made its mark on the

lesser arts as well. In the field of music, a number of

instruments in common use during the Indianized period,

such as the vina, the harp and the tambourine which figure

among the carved reliefs at M -s n and Phong-l ,

disappeared, to be replaced by other instruments such as

those used in the cahya orchestra – only the gong survived

the transition – many of which appear to have been

borrowed from the Malays. In addition, from the 15th

century, the art of dancing ceased to be a monopoly of the

gods. The carvings of dancing Shiva, such as those seen at

Phong-l and Kh ng-m , and the apsaras like those

carved on the pedestals of lingas at Chánh-l and Trà-ki u,

no longer appeared. Nor were dancers any longer furnished

to temples to perform rituals (BEFEO IV, 1904, pp. 942

and 943). From this time forward, dancing consisted of

rhythmic movement performed by females and

accompanied by music, such as the dance known as patra.

As regards the dances performed nowadays for visitors to

the Cham temples, these were created only during the final

third of the 20th century and solely for the purpose of

entertaining tourists.

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We know nothing of the culture of the Montagnards

during the Indianized period, since nothing about it is

mentioned in the inscriptions. On the other hand, much is

known about the cultural elements which still subsisted at

the middle of the 20th century, when, beginning around

1955, large numbers of Vietnamese, fleeing the north of the

country and displaced from certain areas in the center and

south, resettled in the high plateaus, inundating with their

numbers the original inhabitants and destroying the

indigenous civilization.

For the proto-Indochinese, the universe was animated

by innumerable invisible beings who resided in nature, the

sky, the earth, and tangible objects and who, after having

created the world, continued to rule over it. These beliefs

impacted the daily life of the Montagnards, and every

activity he undertook, and explains his continuous recourse

to religious ceremonies of a sacrificial nature where he

believed that, through prayer, he could influence the spirits

by neutralizing their malefic intentions or make them

favorable (P.-B. Lafont, Prières Jarai, Paris, EFEO, Textes

et ocuments sur l’Indochine VIII, 9 These religious

cultural elements also appeared in the customs and “dits de

justice” of each ethnic group, inasmuch as they were not

simply rules to govern social conduct but also to regulate

the conduct of each individual both internally and vis-à-vis

the invisible beings who presided over the destiny of the

world. Indeed, customary law required perfection in each

individual. It included not only rules aimed at achieving

relative fairness among individuals in their dealings with

each other, but also at governing each of their thoughts and

their acts. Customs, proverbs about justice and morality

thus were all part of the same domain and were

intermingled, since for the proto- Indochinese what we call

customary law and what we call morality came did not

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spring from different sources: both were revealed to them

by the spirits who governed the universe.

For these people, whose languages never had a written

form, all knowledge was transmitted orally, be it prayers,

customs and proverbs, or literature. Also, in order that the

largest number of people could remember them, they were

preserved in the form of poems which, when recited, were

set to a rhythm which complemented the sound. Rhythm

and sound aided in memorization of these works, and as a

result a number of literary texts – sayings, tales, legends,

narratives and even an epic poem (D. Antomarchi, « Le

chant épique de Kdam Yi », in B.E.F.E.O. XLVII-2, 1955,

pp. 590-615) – have been preserved to this day. Thanks to

this, we are able to state that these works promoted

harmony in the society that produced them, the existing

economic order and the omnipotence and preeminence of

the invisible spirits in the world over which they ruled.

Political organization

As with all of the other countries in the region, both

during the Indianized period and the period that followed,

Champa’s political system was that of absolute monarchy

But contrary to what one often reads, it was not a unitary

kingdom but rather a federation of principalities or small

kingdoms, the most prominent of which, from north to

south, were Indrapura, Amâravatî, Vijaya, Kauthâra and

Pânduranga, which were themselves divided into smaller

circumscriptions governed by minor princelings. From the

11th to the 15th century the head of this federation, the

existence of which was repeatedly contested by

Pânduranga which on numerous occasions sought to

establish its independence, was the king of Vijaya, who

held the title “king of kings” râjadhirâja) and who alone

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could undergo the abhisheka, a rite which, according to the

inscriptions, could be performed only in the city of Vijaya,

located near the modern city of Qui-nh n The Champa

kings, who were all of the Ksatriya caste or a Brahmano-

Ksatriya mixture, accorded particular importance to their

deification as soon as they ascended the throne. Each of

them presented himself to his people not only as their king,

but also, and more importantly, as the emanation of a

divine being (normally Shiva). And these divine rulers,

who had statues made in their images which included the

attributes of this god, and which were identified with a

religious name as well as the king’s throne name L Finot,

«Stèle de ambhuvarman M -s n , in B.E.F.E.O. III,

1903, pp. 210, 211), saw themselves as symbols of power

and glory, as shown in the lavish praise which they had

engraved in each of their inscriptions. But this never

prevented rival princes who contested the legitimacy of the

sovereign, as occurred in the middle and end of the 12th

century and in the middle of the 14th, or simply wanted to

overthrow him and take his place, as was, inter alia, the

case with Indravarman V and Maha Qu ô, from rising

against him. These internecine wars among princes,

aggravated by the constant warfare between the country’s

northern and southern regions, often led to internal

instability. As a result, with force taking precedence over

law (as shown throughout the history of Champa), the top

priority of the kings, during unsettled times, was to

establish their authority, defend the throne and deal with

immediate issues rather than concern themselves with

strengthening institutions which would last over time; and

during calmer times to insure domestic order and peace in

order to avoid challenges to their authority.

To assist in governing the country and exercising their

authority, the kings surrounding themselves with high-

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ranking dignitaries – other writers refer to them as

ministers, but this word has a meaning which makes its use

inappropriate in this context – which they selected, as well

numerous wives and concubines from the most influential

families of the kingdom, all belonging to the upper castes,

chosen in order to secure their loyalty. These dignitaries

had as their principal mission the collection of taxes and

making preparations for warfare by the land and naval

forces, but we do not know whether or not they were each

assigned specific areas of responsibility. Collecting taxes,

without which the royal treasury would be bare, was

essential in order to control the high officials, to maintain

the army, to undertake irrigation projects and to build the

temples and religious foundations on which the monarch’s

prestige depended. Raising revenues was the top priority

for all of the kings. But revenue requirements often

exceeded the amounts raised, due to the impoverishment of

the population and the dispensation of religious

foundations from all taxes, as shown in the steles of ng-

d ng translated by L Finot BEFEO IV, 1904, pp. 89 and

95) and E. Huber (BEFEO V, 1905, pp. 280 and 281).

Thus, in order to replenish the royal treasury, the kings

would on occasion send out pillaging expeditions to

neighboring countries – in particular to the coasts of the

neighboring Vietnamese – or engage in piracy on the high

seas. In addition to the requirements of national defense,

this explains why the Champa kings placed such

importance on the country’s land and naval forces, whose

manpower, materials and war animals are known to us

through the bas-reliefs of Angkor Wat, the Bayon (Angkor)

and Banteay Chmar (Cambodia) as well as in M. Jacq-

Hergoualc’h’s book L’armament et l’organisation de

l’armée khmère aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles (Paris, PUF,

1979).

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After the collapse of Indianized Champa in 1471, the

polity which was formed in the southern portion of ancient

Champa and which took its name abandoned the political

system modeled on that of India, which had subsisted at all

times prior thereto, and set up a new system with new

elements derived from the indigenous cultures of Kauthâra

and Pânduranga and also from the Malay world, with

which the country had been integrated from the end of the

15th century through maritime commercial ties with the

ports of southern China (D. Lombard, Le carrefour

javanais. Essai d'histoire globale: II. Les réseaux

asiatiques, Paris, Editions de l'E.H.E.S.S., 1990). From that

time forward, the kings of the new Champa ceased to be

identified as reincarnations of gods and were considered

simply as political leaders. But since at the same time there

appeared a new political model wherein wealth became

synonymous with power – not just in the exploitation of

agricultural lands as during the Indianized period but also

through long term trade relations, the kings of Champa

henceforth made large-scale maritime trade a royal

monopoly, and on multiple occasions acted as merchants

themselves, as was the case of many of the Malay sultans.

This new order explains why the sovereigns of

Champa began to include people from the Malay peninsula

in their entourages. According to indigenous texts as well

as the tales of Western visitors, they acted as economic

advisors, but they were also responsible for establishing

and developing contacts with merchants and ship captains,

supervising cargos and dealing with foreigners. It should

not be forgotten that, effectively, that between the 16th and

18th centuries the Malay language was the lingua franca of

southeast Asia, and all verbal and written communication

with both natives and Europeans was conducted in this

language (as an example, see the treaty of 1656 between

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Holland and the Khmers). This required the presence in

each region of experts in spoken Malay, who were of

necessity people who spoke Malay as their mother tongue,

and in the Arabic script in which it was written. In addition

to this essential Malay presence, the entourage of the kings

of Champa was composed above all by Chams Ahiér, and

beginning in the 17th century Chams Bani, as well as

Montagnards, who appear to have been chosen from the

Ede, Chru and Raglai tribes, i.e. among those who spoke an

Austronesian language. According to the documentary

evidence, a number of these officials had specific duties:

religious, military, financial (supervising the collection of

taxes), economic (regulating the mining of gold) and

administrative.

This situation lasted until the middle of the th

century when, after having occupied Prangdarang, the

Nguy n lords of Ph -xu n Hu themselves chose the

rulers and kept them under tight control, at the same time

allowing them to exercise some of the attributes of

sovereignty in order that they might accept their

subordinate status This changed with the T y S n revolt

(1771-1802), during which the Champa installed as rulers

lost all authority and became virtual puppets of the

Vietnamese Finally, in 2, the Vietnamese emperor

Minh M ng abolished the position and erased Champa

from the map.

The Economy

There exists only scattered documentation concerning

the economy of Champa, whether before or after the 15th

century; the writers evidenced little interest in the subject.

Nonetheless, it is possible to identify two economies that

existed side by side: a subsistence economy of farmers and

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coastal fishermen in which the mass of the population

lived, and an economy involving trade with foreign

merchants which existed for the benefit of the court,

The principal economic activity of the country’s

inhabitants was agricultural production, in which the

majority of the population of the lowlands and all of the

Montagnards were involved. For the most part this meant

rice farming (in all of the countries in this region, to

consume food was expressed not by the word “eat”

standing alone but by the words “eat rice” According to

the inscriptions, riziculture was practiced in the lowlands

on irrigable lands, the existence of which we are aware

because such lands were donated to the sanctuaries

(BEFEO IV, 1904, pp. 959 and 962), and in the higher

elevations in geographic depressions. Given the climate

and the droughts that were endemic in a number of regions,

including the south, these lands required irrigation –

“giving water” BEFEO IV, 1904, pp. 942 and 943) being

one of the main gifts bestowed by the kings – which

normally consisted of dams on the rivers. We have no

information at all on the level of rice production during the

Indianized period and it is impossible to even arrive at an

approximation, since to the extent the inscriptions mention

levels of production at all, it is denominated in jak, a

measure of volume that is unknown and for which the

various hypotheses that have been proposed are

unsatisfactory. Apart from rice, the ancient Cham writings

make no mention of any other cultivated plants, referring

only to “food”, “grains” and “means of sustenance”

However, thanks to Malay records, we know that the

people cultivated – on lands that were not subject to

flooding – sesame, peas, bananas, sugar cane, and coconut,

from which, according to Chinese documents, they

produced, among other things, “coconut wine” In spite of

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the paucity of information, the report of the voyage of

Bienheureux Odoric de Pordenone in Asia in the 14th

century leads one to conclude that the people of Champa, at

least during this period, had enough food to satisfy their

needs. We are no better informed regarding the period

following the 15th century, although the European

merchants who visited Champa beginning in 1540

regularly make mention of the agricultural products in

which they were interested. But these lists, obviously, do

not include products in which foreigners had little interest,

which were bulky and only marginally profitable – which

describes the country’s most widely planted grain, rice

Even during this period the level of rice production is

unknown, although it continued to be the country’s basic

source of nutrition and was used in barter – the Chams of

this era cultivated neither betel nut nor areca, although they

used both, trading rice to obtain them from Vietnamese

producers – and as a measure of loans and repayments. In

addition to rice, the farmers grew sweet potatoes

(Convolvulus Batatas Linné) which served as a supplement

to rice when the harvests were poor, cotton (Gossypium

hirsutum) which grew in the region later known as Bình-

thu n, tobacco which was cultivated in the environs of

Phan-rang, coconuts, and other plants of lesser importance.

Alongside these cultivated crops, which were grown for

consumption, the peasants harvested plants that grew in the

wild: vegetables and wild fruits that they gathered to eat

with their meals or as snacks. They also hunted small game

– rabbits, wild chickens, pangolins, birds, peacocks

(BEFEO XI, 1911, pp. 291 and 296) – on a daily basis on

their way to and from the rice fields, which provided them

with a source of meat which was otherwise rarely available

from raised livestock due to frequent epidemics,

particularly bovine fever, which periodically destroyed

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their few head of cattle, as well as to the frequency of

animal sacrifices which resulted in a dearth of pigs and

other backyard animals for consumption. Finally, the

farmers fished in rivers and ponds, providing them and

their families with an additional source of alimentation.

The fishermen living along the some 800 kilometers

of the country’s coast made their living in much the same

way as the peasants, except that in their case their

livelihood was based on the fish which they caught and ate

and traded for rice with the farmers in the lowlands. Thus,

fish together with rice formed the basis of the diet in the

entire region, the coasts of which, especially in the south,

were (as observed by O. de Pordenone in the 14th century)

a plentiful source of seafood.

In contrast to the subsistence economy of the farmers

and coastal fishermen – that is, the quasi-totality of the

population – the economy of the kings and their courts was

based on profit from trade with merchant/navigators from

India, China, Arabia, the Malay world and, beginning in

the 16th century, Europeans. The latter came in order to

acquire perfumed products, the hides of wild animals and

precious metals, for which they had a ready market, and the

absolute monarchs of Champa were in a position to satisfy

these requirements in part, thanks to the monopoly they

enjoyed for the harvesting, the hunting and the production

of these products as well as the monopoly on their trade.

In light of the discovery of shards of pottery of

Chinese and Indian origin discovered at the excavation of

Trà-ki u, it would appear that Champa began to participate

in trade soon after the beginning of our era. It also seems to

have had, from very early on, a navy. From the first years

of the 5th century, Chinese documents mention a naval

fleet, but only in the context of pillaging expeditions along

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the coasts of present-day northern Vietnam; but this navy

certainly also played a role in commerce, even if

documentation from that time period allege that it was

engaged in piracy on a grand scale. Although we know

nothing of the size of this fleet, everything points to its

aggrandizement from the early years of the 9th century

when events taking place in western and central Asia

disrupted transasiatic commerce along the land route

known as the Silk Road, whereupon the merchants engaged

in such commerce turned to the maritime route The

expansion of large-scale maritime commerce was of

immediate benefit to Champa, given a geographic location

which was ideal for layovers and a number of excellent

ports: Turan modern-day -n ng , Kam Ran Cam-ranh),

Sri anoy the port of Vijayapura, located in the bay of

modern- day Qui-nh n , Malithit Phan-thi t , etc The first

monarchs to profit from this, as the archeological record

shows, were those of Indrapura ng-d ng

Subsequently, Champa would become an important sea

power – in 1177 it was its fleet that transported its army all

the way to Angkor, and in 1203 over two hundred of its

sailing vessels accompanied the flight of the king of Vijaya

(Vi t S L c III – and greatly expanded its commercial

trade with China, India and the Middle East, where there

was demand for Champa’s products The fall of Vijaya in

1471 does not seem to have negatively affected its

commerce for any extended period; the successor

“indigenous” Champa soon found itself included in the

economic sphere of Malacca and what remained of its

maritime fleet plied the commercial trade routes which

connected the trading ports and the godowns located along

the coast of southern China. This continued until the

middle of the 17th century when the Nguy n lords of Ph -

xu n Hu put an end to freedom of navigation to and

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from Champa and thus to free commerce with Champa,

from which the monarchs and the high dignitaries derived

an important part of their revenues.

Among the principal items of the maritime trade from

which the kings and the court derived their wealth, in first

position – whether during the Indianized period or after the

15th century – was agarwood, the gahlau of the Cham, a

fragrant wood which made Champa’s reputation from

Japan to the Middle East. Botanists have yet to establish

with certitude the type of tree which produces agarwood,

but it has been continuously harvested and commercially

traded since ancient times. And the agarwood of Champa

has always been deemed to be the very finest: by the

Indians at the beginning of our era, by the Chinese who

already during the time Linyi required it as part of their

tribute, by the great Arab writers such as al-Mas’ûdî in the

10th century and al-Idrisi in the 12th century, who called it

çanfi (Arab: çanf = Champa), from the middle of the 16th

century by Portuguese writers who called it calambac, and

then in the following century by Dutch merchants. The

trade in agarwood is mentioned in all of the accounts, as it

was a source of great profits: in the 15th century, the

Chinese offered to pay for the product with its weight in

silver, and during the 17th century Europeans wrote that

they could sell the product in Japan or the Middle East for

fifteen times its cost in Champa. However, they make a

distinction between agarwood (calambac) and eaglewood,

the tree of origin of which is also little understood by

botanists and which contemporary writers often confound

with the former, while western merchants of the 17th

century deemed it to be twenty times less valuable than

calambac.

If on the one hand we are well informed about the

trade in agarwood, this is not the case with the other forest

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products mentioned in Chinese and Portuguese documents

dating from the beginning of the 16th century, and it is

difficult to determine if the trade in these products was

subject to the king’s monopoly or to that of his entourage

Such is the case with, inter alia, the bark of wild cinnamon,

which grew in the forests in the country’s center and which

could be found in cargos destined for Japan up until the

time the country closed its doors to trade in the 17th

century; sandalwood; and cardamom, whose aromatic

seeds harvested at higher altitudes was exported to China.

Among other products sought by maritime traders

were the skins, the tusks, the antlers and certain of the

internal of wild animals such as gaurs, bantengs (Bos

Sondaïcus Schleg et Müll , Eld’s deer and organs

Aristotle’s deer, and rhinoceros large numbers of which

inhabited the high plateaus – Chinese documents mention

that in 995 the king of Champa sent the emperor ten

rhinocerous horns, in addition to three hundred elephant

tusks) required for the preparation of certain medicines in

the Chinese pharmacopoeia. Also worth mentioning are

wildcats, tigers and panthers, who lived in the lowlands as

well as in the peneplains, the hides of which were sent to

regional warehouses for re-export to the West. Finally, a

product of big game hunting, ivory, was derived from wild

elephants of the highlands killed by proto-Indochinese

people, who were required to send the kings of Champa a

portion of the tusks as a fee for the right to hunt. During the

16th and 17th centuries these tusks were traded, similarly

to furs, with China being the principal destination of the

exports.

The Cham monarchs also controlled the extraction of

precious metals and, beginning at the end of the 15th

century, established for themselves a monopoly on their

trade. The most sought-after metal, gold, was extracted

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from the sands of river beds. Its production must have been

substantial, given the number and size of the gold objects

which the kings of Champa made for their gods on a

regular basis. For example, in the year 1114 alone, King

Harivarman V made an offering of nine gold objects

weighing more than twenty kilograms to the god Srî

Sânabhadresvara (BEFEO IV, 1904, pp. 951 and 952). The

second precious metal, silver, which came from mines in

the southern part of Indrapura, from Amarâvatî and from

the northern part of Vijaya, was also found in abundance

during the Indianized period, when the kings donated large

amounts of the metal to the sanctuaries. Thus, in 1174 Jaya

Indravarman V made a gift of nearly sixty kilograms of

silver to the god Srî Sânbhadresvara for the ornamentation

of a group of edifices dedicated to the god’s glory BEFEO

IV, 1904, pp. 971 and 974). After the fall of Vijaya,

Champa found itself deprived of a number of its gold-

bearing rivers and nearly all of its silver mines. It continued

however to produce gold – no doubt in much smaller

quantities – the trade in which (with seafaring merchants

from Portugal, Holland and the Vietnamese nation) was

subject to the royal monopoly. But we do not know if

Champa continued to produce silver, since beginning in the

early years of the 16th century no mention of the metal can

be found in any document.

Art

It was the monuments scattered across the countryside

of what had been Indianized Champa that attracted French

scholars who arrived in the lowlands of what is now central

Vietnam Subsequently, the discovery of the mountain

complex of M -s n and its sixty-six monuments buried in

earth and vegetation, as well as the imposing site of ng-

d ng which H Parmentier and C Carpeaux would begin

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to uncover at the beginning of the 20th century (Missions

archéologiques françaises au Champa. Photographies et

itinéraires 1902-1904, Paris, Les Indes Savantes, 2005),

soon led to an understanding of the importance of the

monumental art of Champa. The discovery of numerous

statues and other sculpture during the course of excavations

undertaken by scientists and architects of the Ecole

Fran caise d’Extr me- Orient in turn the artistic value of

these objects, which were inventoried and a large number

of which were transferred to a museum founded by H

Parmentier in Tourane -n ng This state of affairs

continued until the period beginning at the end of 9 9,

when a number of the tower sanctuaries of M - s n and

ng-d ng were, along with other important

archeological and cultural sites in Indochina, destroyed

under the carpet of bombs released by the United States

military aviation forces. After the end of the war, the

cultural services of the government of the Socialist

Republic of Vietnam undertook the demining and

reparation of the some fifteen monuments that could be

restored through local efforts.

The monumental art that has survived to this day, or of

which we have knowledge notwithstanding their

destruction thanks to the drawings and rubbings left to us

by the pioneers of Cham studies, consists solely of

buildings having a religious function, either Hindu or

Buddhist. All of these monuments, which, without

exception, were royal foundations, followed the same plan:

a tower/sanctuary (kalan) housing the statue of a god or a

linga, surrounded by subsidiary towers – normally there

were two – and often with a small enclosure. The towers

are square in form and are built of fired brick, a material of

which the Cham were masters throughout their history.

However, in the course of the long existence of Indianized

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Champa, this architectural form evolved, and scholars have

classified the different styles and dated them (P. Stern,

L’art du Champa (ancient Annam) et son évolution,

Toulouse, Douladoure, 1942) according to key indicators

that are universally accepted today.

From the rd century until the th, no archeological

remains have been found, other than several items of

foreign origin such as the magnificent bronze uddha of

Indian origin known as the ng-d ng uddha,

notwithstanding the fact that Chinese documents of the

time inform us that the inhabitants of Champa were past

masters of the art of brick construction and that the

inscriptions indicate a high level of artistic activity in the

country. This would be confirmed by the discovery in the

first years of the 2 th century of quite beautiful relics

dating from the middle of the th century and the

beginning of the th, which reflected a style which is called

M -s n E the letter designating the group of monuments

in the M -s n circle where the relic was located and the

number being the number given to the particular building

within the group This E style, analyzed by J oisselier

“Arts du Champa et du Cambodge preangkorien La date

de M -s n E ” in Arts Asiatiques XIX 3-4, 1956, pp. 197-

202), shows a great deal of originality while at the same

time reflecting outside influences, notably Indian, Môn

(Dvâravâti), Indonesian and Pre-Angkorian.. It is

particularly distinguished for its richly decorated stepped

foundations, its carved tympanums and frontons and the

decorations of its pedestals. It is also notable for the drape

of the clothing worn by the human beings represented in

carvings and sculpture and their forms of movement, their

adornments and their hair styles.

Between the middle of the 8th century and the middle

of the 9th, the political center of Champa shifted to its

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southernmost part see “History”, infra There, at the

beginning of the 9th century, a new style appeared,

designated by the name “Hòa-lai” from the area in Ninh-

thu n province where three tower-sanctuaries, of which

two remain, were located. The towers in this style are

square, approximately twenty meters high and rising at the

top in stages of ever- decreasing circumference. They are

characterized by blind arcades, decorated with,

overhanging all of the openings, which consisted of real

entrances framed with stone columns and false doors

guarded by Dvârapâla. In the final quarter of the 9th

century, when the political center of the country shifted

back to the north, this style, which was unique to the

southern territories of Champa, would be supplanted by a

new and particularly impressive style, that of ng-d ng

The temple of ng-d ng, totally destroyed by the

American army during the second Indochina war, was the

most imposing and most original monument of Champa.

This monastery of Mahayana Buddhism was built between

875 and the beginning of the 9th century. A map of the

sanctuary can be found in AFAO-EFEO, Le usée de

sculpture cam de - ng (Paris, AFAO, 1997, pp. 68-

69). Within an interior space 1300 meters long were

situated a number of fired brick edifices grouped in several

sections. A large part of the surface areas of these

buildings, nearly all of which were decorated with bas-

reliefs, was covered with leaf decoration – an essential

element of the ng-d ng monumental style was this

sinuous leaf pattern which ornamented the otherwise

undecorated portion of the buildings. This style can be

found in two other Buddhist sanctuaries of the same period,

those of i-h u and M - c

The next succeeding monumental style, which covers

the th century, is called M -s n A and is divided into

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two periods: the first is named Kh ng-m and the second,

Trà- ki u. The first of these two periods derives its name

from three tower-sanctuaries notable for their architectural

harmony and the ornamentation of which marks a

transition between that of ng-d ng and that of the

following period The M -s n A style represents the full

blossoming of monumental art in Champa, the most

notable example of which was the tower-sanctuary

denominated A in the M -s n archeological complex,

considered to be Champa’s most beautiful monument in

brick and reduced to cinders by the bombs of the United

States military. The M -s n A style, represented in a

number of buildings in areas A, , C and of the M -s n

complex (the map of which can be found in AFAO-EFEO,

op. cit., pp. 72-73), shows a balance between the very clean

lines of the structure with decorative mouldings on the wall

panels and antefixes shaped like flames at the corners of

each of the tower’s successively higher and smaller levels

The second period of this style made its debut in the

foundation of tower-sanctuary A1 and was continued in the

designs ornamenting the foundations and tympanums of

other monuments; the ensemble of the octagonal

sanctuaries known as Chánh-l is the most representative

of this period, which terminated with the tower-sactuary of

Po Nagar in Nha-trang dating from the beginning of the

11th century.

Following its golden age in the 10th century, the

monumental art of Champa underwent a long period of

transition, marked from the beginning of the 12th century

by a gradual decline which accelerated during the 13th

century. This new style, referred to as the nh- nh style

from the province where it is most usually found or the

Th p-m m the name of a sanctuary style, is represented

inter alia by the five “silver towers” with their blind

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arcades in the form of fers-de-lance, the three “ivory

towers” Vietnamese: ng- long whose lintels are

copied from those of the ayon at Angkor, the “copper

tower” Vietnamese: C nh-ti n and the “gold tower”

Vietnamese: Th c-l c). This style is characterized by an

increase in the number of blind arcades and by the frequent

appearance of friezes decorated with images of mythical

animals Moreover, the style, which shows a certain

heaviness, is dominated by what P Stern has called the

“motif of Th p-m m”, a snail-shaped design ending with a

hook.

Monumental art then began a period of decadence,

which accelerated over time. The style became dated, and

bit by bit lost its elegance. This final style commences with

the construction of the Po Klong Garai temple, which has a

well- developed and rudimentary statuary, and continues

with the southern tower of Po Nagar, whose sculptures are

quite mediocre, and with the temples of Yang Prong and

Yang Mum in the Montagnard regions. The final example

of this period is the kalan called Po Rome which, in spite

of its name, dates from the end of the 15th century or at the

latest at the beginning of the 16th. The last building to be

constructed with durable materials, it is architecturally

nothing more than a pile of brick cubes.

The statuary of Champa, of which we know a great

deal by virtue of the number of pieces (statues, panels,

pedestals, lintels, bas-reliefs) that have been uncovered

since the end of the 19th century – the majority of which,

following discovery, were transferred to the museum in

- n ng or the Musee Guimet in Paris, thereby escaping

destruction in the war waged by the Americans – have been

the subject of numerous and abundantly illustrated

publications, of which the most important is La statuaire

du Champa. Recherches sur les cultes et l’iconographie

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Paris, Publications de l’EFEO, vol LIV, 9 by J

Boisselier. These works present and discuss such a large

number of objects that we are only able in a work of this

scope to mention the most remarkable of them.

Among the pieces in the style of M -s n E is a very

beautiful pedestal found in the center of the temple in 1903,

whose excellently worked decoration on all of its sides

shows a dancer, some musicians and a number of other

figures, as well as a remarkable fronton showing a

reclining Vishnu with a lotus giving birth to Brahma

growing from his navel. Objects in the Hòa-lai style

(middle of the 8th century to the middle of the 9th) are rare,

and outside of the two Dvârapâla of the Hòa-lai tower they

consist almost exclusively of small bronze uddhist statues

of Indonesian influence representing Avalokitesvara In

contrast, the ng-d ng style produced some of

Champa’s most important statuary It includes

representations of the Buddha as well as scenes from his

life, of monks, of saints (many of which have been

decapitated ) wearing monastic garb, and a variety of other

figures, Dvârapâla wearing sampots, characters lacking

individualized visages, and finally real or mythical animals

(elephants, naga, makara, etc.). Male persons are shown

with flat noses and thick lips topped with a bushy

moustache. As is the also the case with males, females are

represented without smiles. Their bare upper torsos are

adorned with shapely hemispheric breasts and the lower

body is draped in a sarong that falls to the ankles. One of

the most beautiful examples of this style – perhaps the

most beautiful – is a large bronze statue 120 centimeters in

height that was excavated in 1978 and which has been the

subject of a study by J oisselier “Un bronze de T r du

musée de -n ng et son importance pour l’histoire de l’art

du Champa” in BEFEO LXXII, 1984, pp. 319-337, 5

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plates). This Târâ, which has a rather severe countenance,

voluminous breasts and is clothed in a two- layered skirt

falling to the top of her feet, is a remarkable work, and

represents the union of a style that is typically Cham with

influences from China and India The succeeding style of

M -s n A , which is dated from the th century, is during

its first period that of Kh ng-m characterized by figures

with smiles much broader than had previously been the

case, with more jewelry (necklaces, earrings, etc.) and, in

the case of male figures, dressed in sampots reaching only

to the knees. One of the most beautiful statues of this

period is the stone bust called the devî of H ng-qu ,

whose hair is adorned with the lunar crescent that identifies

her as the sakti of Shiva. During certain ceremonies, this

statue would be decorated with items of gold jewelry on

the head and ears. This period was one of transition

towards that called the Trà- ki u period, when sculpture

showed a true commonality of style in the representations

of humans, whose hair is bound in chignons and covered

with chignon caps and often with a diadem; of mythical

persons (who are found only in high relief and bas-relief);

of apsara who appear to be wearing nothing but jewelry;

and real and mythical animals (garuda, nandin, lions, kâla,

elephants, etc.) in various poses. One of the chefs-d’oeuvre

of this style is the “Pedestal of the ancers”, where each

upper pilaster is decorated with a beautiful and highly

original sculpture of a dancing girl; it is a true artistic

masterpiece The ensuing Th p-m m style is found in

statuary of artistic importance in which, contrary to the

preceding style, Indo-Javanese influences are absent. The

representations of divinities, ascetics and apsara in this

style are, and always were, attached to temples and were

decorated with the hair style, vestments (a short sampot

and a vest hugging the upper torso) and ornaments (in

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particular, earrings and belts) peculiar to this style.

Animals, generally mythical ones (gajasimha, makara,

dragons, etc.) frequently are seen in the statuary, normally

more or less stylized in appearance. This style is also well

known for one of its motifs, unique in Southeast Asia: rows

of female breasts, hemispheric in shape, which adorn

pedestals which, originally, supported a linga. For the 14th

and 15th centuries we have very few examples of

sculpture, which are moreover rather mediocre in quality.

Representations of human beings are, for the most part,

only found in high relief – their legs becoming less and less

visible – and are shown wearing a diadem or a miter, with a

large mouth and semi-circles for eyes Among the statuary

from this final era of the Indianized period are the Shiva of

rang Lai c-l c and Yang Mum Công-tum).

Finally, we should mention the presents given by the

monarchs to the sanctuaries in addition to statuary: jewelry

made from gold and silver for the adornment of idols as

well as vases, jugs and various metal containers needed for

the performance of rituals. Very little of the handiwork of

the court goldsmiths and jewelers, who worked in “gold,

silver, brass and copper” has survived; in the course of the

numerous wars in which Champa was involved, precious

metals and jewels were taken by enemy armies as booty.

And in taking these items from the gods to whom they had

previously been dedicated, they were deemed to have

deprived the country of the protection of these gods. In

spite of this, we are aware of the existence of these objects

since the inscriptions made at the time of donation mention

not only the donor and the recipient but also provide a very

detailed description, including the weight, of the objects

that are being offered to the divinities The following

excerpt from “Les inscriptions de M -s n XVI ”

translated by L. Finot (BEFEO IV, 1904, pp. 948 and 950-

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51), which describes the offering of a kosa (a sheath made

of precious metal to put on a linga) in 1010 sakarâja,

provides an example:

“H M Sri Jaya Indravarmadeva, knowing that the

god Bhadresvara is the master of all things visible

in this world, had a gold kosa with six faces

(sanmukha) made, decorated with a nâga ornament

(nâgabhûsana) and colored jewels set in the points

of the diadems. And the thing we call ûrdhvakasa

is made of magnificent gold. And an âdhâra

(support) was made for it, with a sun stone

(sûryakânti) at the top of the diadem. The face

turned (?) to the East has a ruby...at the peak of the

diadem, and a nagarâja ornament. The faces turned

to NE and SE have a sapphire...in the eye of the

nagarâja and at the peak of the diadem. [The face]

turned to the South has a ruby at the peak of the

diadem. [The face] turned to the West has a topaz

at the peak of the diadem. [The face] turned to the

North has a pearl (? uttaratna). This gold kosa

contains 314 thil and 9 dram...of gold; the six

faces, with the diadems, the nagarâja [which is]

above, and the âdhâra ûrdhvamukha weigh 136

thil; in total 450 thei 9 dram ”

The discovery in 1995 of the cargo of a shipwreck

south of the island of Palawan (Philippines) also provides

evidence that around the 15th century, the area of Vijaya

produced and exported – to countries of the region and

even beyond – ceramics from from Gò-sành and the

surrounding region K Morimura, “Ceramics Salvaged

from a Sunken Vessel of Pandanan Island in Philippines”

in Trade Ceramic Studies No. 16, 1996, p. 111-125) . And

if, as one hypothesis would have it – a doubtful one, in our

opinion – the production of ceramics continued during the

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16th century, it was certainly the only art form to survive –

temporarily –the collapse of Indianized Champa.

Indeed, after 1471, there would be no further

construction of sanctuaries, no more sculpture, no more

production of jewelry. Nothing survived of what had

previously contributed to the explosion of artistic creativity

in Champa. And the solitary example of the art of

indigenous Champa, the Kut, which mark the cemeteries of

the matrilineal clans Nghi m Th m, “Tôn-gi o c a ng i

Ch m t i Vi t Nam” in u ng 34, 4-1962, pp. 108-

123), provide no evidence to the contrary. These markers,

which look like stelae, sometimes are shaped in a form that

is vaguely human, and sometimes are engraved (with

varying degrees of skill) with a representation of a human

face, but the vast majority are decorated only with a simple

border. They are far from being works of art, even though a

few art historians have made mention of them.

3. HISTORY

The history of Champa is still not well understood. To

begin with, many of the primary source materials have

disappeared. In addition, such documentation as still exist

are few in number and are often difficult to decipher.

Accordingly, our sole source for the earliest period of

Champa‟s history are a few Chinese texts, of which some

exist only in fragments. Moreover, these writings were

often made long after the occurrence of the events that they

describe, with the results therefrom that can be expected,

and deal with Champa only in the context of the latter‟s

relationship with the country of origin of the writers. With

respect to the epigraphs in Sanskrit and “old Cham”, on

which we depend for the following historical period, they

are – unlike in Cambodia – not found in great num ers and

have large gaps in time, since very few of the steles

containing the epigraphs escaped the destruction of the

Vietnamese in the course of the latter‟s march to the south

Nam-ti n dd to this the fact that of the full or

partial inscriptions that have been discovered and

catalogued, only 81 have been translated, and one can

understand why we have less than perfect knowledge of the

history of Champa. And while these epigraphs provide a

fairly detailed description of the religious practices in

Champa, they are less prolix regarding its history.

Moreover, the dates are missing on some of the

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inscriptions, so that they may only be used with great

caution. The writings in middle and modern Cham deal

only with the history of Champa from the 15th century

forward and are concerned almost exclusively with the

region of Pânduranga. Many of these have disappeared due

to the ravages of time and the fragility of the materials

used. Finally, the Vietnamese annals, to which we make

constant reference for modern and contemporary history,

normally deal with Champa only in the context of Nam-

ti n or when events occurring in Champa had a direct

impact on the Vietnamese polity.

In large strokes, the history of Champa consists of

three distinct periods. The first period was that of the

foundation and early years of Linyi, the name given by

Chinese historians to the country when it made its first

historical appearance. The second period can be called

Indianized Champa. This period covers the centuries

during which Sanskrit culture, Sivaism – and for a short

period, Mayahana Buddhism – and Hindu traditions,

emanating from the Indian subcontinent, served as the basis

for the socio-political institutions of the kingdom. This

period was marked by the prolonged struggle between

Indian civilization, represented by Champa, which tried to

expand to the north, and the Sinicized civilization driven

by the Vietnamese, which pushed to the south. The third

period, which I have earlier designated as Indigenous

Champa, made its debut immediately following the final

collapse of Indianized Champa and the absorption of the

northern part of the country into the Vietnamese nation in

the 15th century. Reduced to its southern territories –

Kauthara and Panduranga – the new Champa would, until

its annexation by Vietnam in the 19th century, implement

new values and a new social organization based on the

cultural norms indigenous to the southern principalities.

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The beginnings of Champa: Linyi

Chinese documents which reference the origins of

Champa mention the existence at the end of the nd

century C of the military command of Rinan, now part of

central Vietnam ut then at China‟s southern order This

territory extended from the Porte d‟ nnam Ho nh-s n

and the Col des Nuages o H i-vân). In spite of its

ownership and legal status, the majority of the territory‟s

population was indigenous and included only a few

Chinese colonizers. This is why, at the end of the 2nd

century, during a period of weakness in the authority of the

central government of China, one of the constituent parts of

this command, the prefecture of Xianglin, successfully

seceded from Chinese rule. R. A. Stein, who studied and

wrote a out these texts “Le Lin-Yi. Sa localization, sa

contribution à la formation du Champa et ses liens avec la

Chine” in Han-Hiue, Pekin, Vol. II, Fascicules 1- 3, 1947,

335 pages), has shown that around 192 CE an important

local notable resident in this prefecture killed the

representative of the Chinese government and proclaimed

himself king of the territory, of which the center was the

region where the city of Hu is currently located and the

southern order the ch-mã Mountain. At some point

between 220 and 230 CE, in connection with the

appointment of an ambassador, the Chinese documents

make their first reference to this territory under the name

“Linyi”, which some elieve to e a derivation of the name

of the prefecture of Xianglin. This fledgling nation, which

subsequently grew in size by absorbing a portion of the

northern part of the Rinan military command, seems at the

beginning to have been subject primarily to Chinese

influences. But we do not know how long this period of

Chinese influence subsisted, since the Chinese documents,

which are our sole source of information up to the 7th

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century, make no mention of exactly when Champa began

to become subject to Indian influence. However, the fact

that beginning with the 3rd century it made alliances and

constructed bonds, which appear to have been important

ones, with Funan – which was strongly influenced by India

from its beginnings in the 1st century CE – and that of the

kings of Champa who reigned between the 3rd and 7th

centuries listed in Chinese texts, sixteen have names

eginning with the word “Fan” the Chinese transcription

of the Sanskrit “ rahma” , leads us to elieve that this

occurred earlier than previously thought. Still, it is

impossible to determine at what point the country became

truly Indianized.

But it was through Indianization that Linyi was

transformed into Champa, as R. A. Stein has shown based

on historical, linguistic and ethnographic research.

Throughout its history Linyi was governed by a

succession of monarchs, some of whom were usurpers. Up

until the 6th century, the names of the monarchs, as written

by Chinese scribes, are difficult to decipher. Another

reason we do not mention these monarchs here is because

the existence of a majority of them is a subject of dispute.

During periods of strong central authority in China, the

Champa monarchs sent ambassadors and tribute to the

Chinese court. The profited from period when this

authority was weak by engaging in piracy and attacking the

coasts in the area of Jiaozhou (present day north Vietnam),

against which the Chinese strongly reacted. Thus from the

3rd century on there occurred regular periods of warfare

between Linyi and the Han governors of the southern

marches of the Chinese empire.

Chinese documents state that on the coastal plains and

small river deltas south of Linyi, from ch-mã mountain

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to Funan (which occupied the southern extremity of the

Indochinese peninsula), separate and distinct from Linyi

itself there existed a number of kingdoms and principalities

qualified as “ ar arian”, i e outside of the am it of

Chinese culture. These territories, unlike Linyi, were

su ject to Indian influences from the eginning of the

modern era and were strongly Indianized from early on

pigraphs discovered in the area of M -s n southwest of

present day -n ng and west of H i-an) and in the south

near present day Nha-trang demonstrate that Sanskrit was

in common use as early as the rd century C in the

southern part of modern day central Vietnam K

hattacharya Pr cisions sur la pal ographie de

l inscription de V -c nh , in Artibus Asiae XXIV- - ,

, pp - and in the second half of the th

century in the kingdom that existed on the territory of

modern day Qu ng- nam – -n ng, the mar vat of the

Champa. These writings also include information about the

practice of Sivaism and its importance during this period in

the region of modern day Qu ng-nam province We know

this from four inscriptions in Sanskrit attri uted to the king

hadravarman I – the first sovereign of a kingdom south

of ch-mã mountain whose name is known to us – who

esta lished a religious sanctuary at M -s n, which would

later become a center of religious practice in Champa.

These epigraphs in Sanskrit, as well as those in “old Cham”

– a language which during the 4th century, and no doubt

well before then, existed in both spoken and written forms

at least to the southern borders of Linyi, and certainly

beyond – are silent as regards any contact between this

kingdom and those situated south of the Col des Nuages.

Furthermore, with the exception of the stele in Sanskrit

dated at the end of the 5th century known as that of Vat

Luong Kau, which was discovered in Champassak

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(southern Laos) but which does not provide any

information of use to us, no inscriptions from the 5th and

6th centuries – no doubt they were destroyed – have been

found. Thus we are obligated to rely on Chinese sources for

our knowledge of the events occurring in these two

centuries. Unfortunately, these sources provide very little

information. At most, they would lead us to believe that the

southern order of Linyi remained to the north of the Col

des Nuages and that its capital was in the area of modern

day Hu Since it was precisely y reaching this pass and

seizing the territory of modern day Qu ng-nam province –

by which the population of Champa grew to include the

occupants of the area south of ch-mã mountain – and in

moving the capital to the south of this rocky barrier, that

Linyi was transformed into Champa, we can reasonably

assume that this expansion of territory had not yet

occurred. The change does not seem to have occurred until

the end of the 6th century, although we cannot determine

the exact date. First, the Chinese account of the itinerary of

the expedition of Liu Fang (Suizhou, K. 53, 4b) allows us

to locate the capital of Linyi, as of the beginning of 605, at

Simhapura (Trà-ki u , i e south of the Col des Nuages In

addition, a Sanskrit inscription from the first quarter of the

th century, found at M -s n, uses the term Champa for the

first time L Finot, “St le de Cam huvarman M -s n” in

BEFEO III, 1903, pp. 209-210). The term is also used from

this time forward in Khmer epigraphs, beginning in 667, as

well as in documents from Champa‟s northern neigh or,

beginning in 877, under its Chinese transcription

Zhancheng.

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Indianized Champa

The Beginnings

The first monarch to have ruled over Champa – that is,

over Linyi after it had expanded into the territories situated

south of the Col des Nuages – appears to have been King

Sambhuvarman (?-629). But it also could have been his

father Rudravarman (I) (530 -? or the latter‟s predecessor,

Vijayavarman (?-529). This Sambhuvarman, to whom we

owe the earliest known mention of the term Champa,

inaugurated a policy of friendship with Chenla (Cambodia)

during his reign, but he was also subjected to an invasion,

led by Liu Fang, by the Chinese, who pillaged the country.

He was succeeded by his son Kandarpadharma, who

maintained the policy of good relations with the Khmer,

and then no doubt by his grandson Prabhâsadharma.

Identifying the succeeding monarchs presents a problem,

inasmuch as the epigraphs of Champa, those of Cambodia

and the documentation in Chinese are not in accord as to

the number of sovereigns until the coronation – abhisheka

– of Prakâsadharma in 653. This king, who was the son of

a descendant of Kandarpadharma and one of the daughters

of the Khmer monarch Îsânavarman (I), was installed on

the throne by the high dignitaries of the kingdom, a custom

which would continue to be carried on in the following

centuries He adopted Vikr ntavarman as his throne name,

and attri uted to himself, among other titles, that of

“Supreme Lord of the City of Champa” He increased the

num er of religious foundations oth in M -s n and at

other sites in Amarâvatî and left us with the first examples

of Champa art. To him we owe the existence of a number

of inscriptions, including one to the north of Nha-trang,

which proved that he exercised a degree of authority over

the principalities of the south up to and including Kauthâra.

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But there is nothing to indicate that he exercised his

authority in Pânduranga, which consisted of the modern

day Vietnamese province of Ninh-thu n and Bình-thu n.

His successor seems to have been a king with the same

name who else sent a number of embassies to China, of

which the last was in 731. Next, Chinese documents make

mention of an embassy sent to their country in 749 by a

king named Rudravarman (II), of which we know

absolutely nothing. Thereafter, whereas the Chinese texts

had up to this point continued to designate Champa by the

name Linyi, in 757-758 they abruptly ceased to do so,

using instead the term Huan Wang.

Huan Wang

The use of this new name, which was employed by

Chinese historians up to the year 859, corresponds to a

period when the center of power moved to the south, i.e. to

Kauthâra and Pânduranga. This shift is confirmed by the

absence of inscriptions in Sanskrit and old Cham in the

northern part of Champa and the multiplicity of such

inscriptions in the south. This is without doubt attributable

to the fact that the monarch chosen by the high dignitaries

to succeed Rudravarman (II), Prthivîndravarman, was from

the south and instead of moving to the north to rule over

“the entire territory of Champa”, he chose to exercise his

authority from his native principality. This situation

continued throughout the hundred-year existence of the

dynasty which he founded. It seems to have had its origins

in Kauthâra: a majority of the inscriptions emanating from

the country‟s sovereigns were erected in the holy sanctuary

of Po Nagar in Nha-trang, whereas those attributable to the

country‟s high dignatories are divided etween this site and

others in Pânduranga. These inscriptions, which contain a

great deal of information, glorify the kings from the south

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and idealize their ancestry, while making no mention

whatsoever of predecessor dynasties in the north. They also

attribute the earliest of origins to the principal divinity of

Kauthâra, the Bhagavatî of Po Nagar, while omitting all

mention of hadresvara, the great divinity of M -s n

The first sovereign of this southern dynasty, whose

capital was, it seems, at all times during this period located

at Vîrapura – the exact location of the site is a matter of

dispute – was Prthivîndravarman. It is to this king, and to

his successors, that we owe the introduction of local

southern practices into the court culture of Champa. It is

also to him that we owe the adoption of the use of a

posthumous name – he himself would receive the name

Rudraloka after his death – a practice which was continued

regularly by the southern monarchs but only sporadically

when the domination by kings from the south came to an

end. His successor was his nephew Satyavarman, who in

774 was confronted with a maritime raid originating in

Java, in the course of which men described as being

“completely lack and thin” stole the adornments of the

linga of Po Nagar and burned the sanctuary. However, the

king took chase, and the raiders were “defeated at sea”,

according to an inscription found at this site, which also

states that this same king built a new sanctuary in 784 (A.

Barth and A. Bergaigne, Inscriptions sanskrites du

Cambodge et du Campâ, Paris, 1885, pp. 252-253). After

his death, whereupon he was given the posthumous name

of Îsvaraloka, he was succeeded by his son Indravarman,

who in 787 was also the victim of a maritime raid by the

“army of Java” that destroyed a sanctuary near his capital,

Vîrapura; he had this monument rebuilt seven years later.

He remained on the throne at least until 801, and his

successor was Harivarman I, who appears to have been the

brother-in-law of Satyavarman. His reign was characterized

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by bellicosity; reviving the Linyi tradition of hostility with

the Chinese, he organized two expeditions against the

southern reaches of China, one in 803 and the other in 809.

Then, abandoning the policy of friendship with the Khmers

that had been in place since the beginning of the 7th

century, he sent his military chief, the senâpati Par, to

attack them. An inscription made by the latter at the Po

Nagar complex in Nha-trang makes mention of his

victories over the Kambuja, but does not state why the

attack was made. After the death of Harivarman (I), his son

Vikrântarvarman (III) succeeded him at an unknown date

sometime between 813 and 817. Before he ascended to the

throne, epigraphic records tell us that his father entrusted

him with the administration of Pânduranga. As is also

disclosed in Chinese documents, this territory was neither

an independent nation nor a province of Champa, but rather

a border territory which paid tribute to Champa and

received its governers from Champa, but which enjoyed a

large degree of autonomy. L. Finot concluded

“P nduranga”, in Album Kern, Leide, E. J. Brill, 1903)

that from the beginning of the 9th century, Pânduranga had

the characteristics “of a feudatory state, governed, under

the suzerainty of Champa, by a vice-king (adhipati ” who

“added, to the title of P ndurangesvara, „lord of

P nduranga‟, that of senâpati, „general‟ ” and appears to

“have often een the land designated for the crown prince

(yuvarâja ” The inscriptions left ehind y this monarch

are not particularly informative. They provide no

information either about the end of his life or his successor.

For reasons we do not know, in 854 they suddenly cease to

appear. At this point the epigraphic record in the south

ends, just as it had in the north a century earlier.

During these hundred years, commerce among the

Arab world, the Indian subcontinent and China expanded

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greatly. On the one hand, the disturbances which afflicted

Central Asia had a negative impact on the security of the

land route which we call the Silk Road. In addition,

maritime commence entered into a period of dynamism.

However, since this commerce involved sailing vessels that

were relatively slow, they needed to frequently make port

to take on provisions, even if all that was required was

fresh water. And since navigators of the time believed that

there were shallow waters in the middle of the South China

Sea, vessels travelling from India to China and vice versa

were obligated to sail along the coasts of Champa, which

soon became a virtually obligatory stopover on this route

see, inter alia, P Pelliot, “Textes chinois sur P nduranga”

in BEFEO III, 1903, pp. 630-654 and Relation de la Chine

et de l’Inde redigée en 851. Texte établi, traduit et

commenté par J. Sauvaget, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1948,

pp. 8-9). And as a result, between the middle of the 8th and

the middle of the 9th centuries, the names of Champa and

Pânduranga – Arab language documents make a distinction

between the two – enter into the mainstream of maritime

trade (the Cham having long been recognized as excellent

seafarers), of the economy (Champa already being known

as a source of raw materials much sought-after by traders),

and culture (as evidenced by the implantation of Buddhism

at the court and the arrival of the first Moslems in the

country; whether they came to proselytize or for other

reasons, we do not know).

The Capital at Indrapura

It is only from twenty years later, in 875, that new

inscriptions can be found, and once again it is from the

principality of Amarâvatî; which constitutes a reversion to

the situation existing before the middle of the 8th century.

They give evidence of the rise of a new dynasty ruling

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96

from Indrapura, which was elevated to the rank of capital.

Its founder was Indravarman (II), who no doubt was

descended from a line of minor princes – in all of the

inscriptions in which his father hadravarman is

mentioned, the latter is given the title of king and a stele

erected y Indravarman II in discovered at ng-

d ng, twenty kilometers southeast of M -s n, provides

him with a fictitious lineage.

However, he makes a point of saying that the kingship

“was given to him y neither his grandfather nor his

father”, ut rather that it was “due to the perfection of the

fruits of the asceticism (practiced in numerous previous

lives that he was lessed y fortune to ecome the

sovereign of Champa” L Finot, “Inscriptions du Quang

Nam I, Premi re st le de ng-d ng ” in BEFEO IV,

1904, pp. 92 and 94). This monarch of strong Buddhist

leanings – he appears to have een the sole uddhist king

of his dynasty – was the founder of the great uddhist

foundation at ng-d ng ut his faith, and the fact that

he constructed this important center of Mahâyâna

Buddhism (the inner court of which is more than a

kilometer in length), did not prevent him from reviving the

Shivaite traditions that had been previously dominant in the

north of Champa. After his death, he received the

posthumous name of Paramabuddhaloka.

He was replaced on the throne, apparently in 898, by

his nephew Jaya Simhavarman (I). The only thing known

of this monarch is that he established not only Shivaite

religious foundations, but Vishnuite ones as well. As for

his successor, his son Jaya Saktivarman, all that is known

of him is his name, which appears in a stele that was

erected y a mem er of the royal family after having een

in the service of the four successors of Indravarman II

Hu er, “La stele de Nhan- i u”, in BEFEO XI-3, 1911, p.

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97

309). The next monarch, Bhadravarman (II), whose family

relationship to his predecessors is unknown, continued to

maintain relations of a religious nature with Java. This

should come as no surprise inasmuch as there had been

close contact between the Cham and the Malays, whose

navies, on top of their commercial operations, regularly

engaged in joint operations of pillage along the coasts of

neigh oring countries, which contri uted to Champa‟s rise

as a maritime power. The son of this king, Indravarman

(II), reigned from 916 and 960. In 918 he commissioned a

gold statue of Bhagavatî and installed it in the Po Nagar

d‟ ia Tra Nha-trang) complex. This act in a holy place of

Kauthâra by a sovereign from the north, appears to have

had a political motive: the motive of Indravarman (II) was

no doubt to cement the religious unity of Champa – a unity

often put in peril by the principalities of the south, who

were jealous of their autonomy. Subsequently, the king had

to deal with an increasingly contentious relationship with

the Khmer kingdom. What began as a rivalry among the

royal families soon led to armed clashes. Thus, in 947, the

Khmer army invaded Kauthâra, whose capital, according to

a Cam odian stele, “was reduced to ashes” G Coedes,

“St le de Pr Rup”, in Inscriptions du Cambodge I, Paris,

Publications de l‟ cole Française d‟ xtrême-Orient, Textes

et documents sur l‟Indochine III, , pp et seq , and

the gold statue of Bhagavatî was seized. But the Champa

later succeeded in repelling the invaders and inflicting on

them serious losses. Finally, a year later, this king

established diplomatic relations with China, interrupted

since 877. After his death, in 960, he was succeeded by

Jaya Indravarman (I), who reigned until 971 or 972. To

him we owe the restoration of the Po Nagar sanctuary in

965 and the installation of a new statue of Bhagavatî this

time made of stone – no doubt to avoid inciting the

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98

cupidity of raiders with another one made of precious

metal. Like his father and his successor, he sent embassies

to China at the prescribed intervals.

The next king, Paramesvaravarman I , was the first

sovereign of Champa to come up against the Vietnamese

who, after throwing off the Chinese yoke, esta lished the

state of i C Vi t in the Red River Delta and the

province of Thanh-hóa. The relations etween the two

countries immediately developed into a contest of force

fter an initial unfortunate invasion y Champa troops in

, Lê i H nh – the founder of the Early Lê dynasty –

attacked Champa, using as a pretext an incident involving

its king Paramesvaravarman I was killed at the very

eginning of hostilities, in or , and his successor,

Indravarman IV , was forced to flee to the south while the

capital Indrapura was sacked and urned year

later, a Vietnamese named L u K Tông, taking advantage

of the disorder in the capital Indrapura, seized power, and

upon the death of Indravarman (IV) in 986 officially

proclaimed himself the king of Champa, and notified China

of his ascension to the throne. In response to this

usurpation, the Champa dignitaries who had themselves

fled to the south four years earlier selected a new king of

their own race who enthroned at Vijaya modern day

province of nh- nh in fter the death of the

usurper in 989, this monarch returned to Indrapura where

he was consecrated king under the name Harivarman (II).

The following year, the Vietnamese king launched a new

attack against the north of Champa, and then again in 995

and 997, but on the latter two occasions as a response to

Cham incursions into Vietnamese territory. Due to the

absence of epigraphs, which were no doubt destroyed by

the Vietnamese during and after the third quarter of the

10th century – all that exists is a fragment in Cham dealing

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99

with religious issues – our documentation for this period,

and up through the middle of the 11th century, consists

entirely of Chinese texts and the Vietnamese annals; which

is why there is so little. Thus, it has not been possible to

determine the name of Harivarman II ‟s successor, or

those of the monarchs that followed up to the year 1044.

The Capital at Vijaya

In spite of the paucity of data, we do know that after

the death in 998 of Harivarman (II), the new king, of which

we know only his royal title, Yang Po Ku Vijaya Srî,

abandoned Indrapura, which was located too close to the

order with i C Vi t, in the year 1000, and moved the

capital further to the south, to Vijaya, where it would

remain the principal city of the kingdom even after the

northern part of the country was temporarily occupied later

on. This year marks the first retreat of Champa under the

pressure of the Vietnamese – a retreat that would continue

until the complete disappearance of the country some eight

hundred years later.

Following the death, which is thought to have

occurred prior to , of Harivarman II , four other

kings, whose names are unknown, are elieved to have

ascended the throne Outside of sending regular em assies

to China to seek its protection and to i C Vi t in an

attempt to deflect the menace which it posed, all that we

know a out these reigns is that Champa suffered a series of

defeats at the hands of the first kings of the L dynasty,

which had replaced that of the arly Lê in In

the son of L Th i T successfully attacked the northern

part of Champa. He repeated the feat in 1026 and, after

succeeding his father on the throne in 1028 and taking the

name Lý Thái Tông, he became involved in the internecine

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100

quarrels of the Champa princes. Subsequently, when a new

Champa monarch, who ascended to the throne in ,

pillaged the coasts of i C Vi t, he led a naval

expedition which landed on the coast of Champa in Th a-

thiên nh-tr -thiên) in 1044. As recounted in Vi t S

L c II, the army of Champa was crushed, the king was

killed, and Vijaya was seized and ransacked and a portion

of its population was expelled.

Following this disaster, a new dynasty of unknown

origins succeeded to the throne in Vijaya in the same year

of Immediately upon his investiture as “King of

Kings”, the first mem er of the dynasty, Jaya

Paramesvaravarman (I), found himself confronted with a

rebellious situation in Pânduranga, which refused to

recognize his authority and proclaimed one of their own

princes as king. The yuvarâja, a nephew of the king, was

sent to suppress the revolt, and succeeded in doing so in

1050. This event is mentioned in three inscriptions, one of

which, engraved on a rock near the sanctuary of Po Klong

Garai, states that the inhabitants of the city of Panrang,

who “were vicious, destructive, stupid, always in revolt

against the kings” were divided into two groups of equal

size, one of which was left in place “in order to re uild the

city” while the remainder were presented as gifts to various

temples and monasteries (L. Finot, “Inscriptions in dites de

Panrang” in BEFEO III, 1903, pp. 645-646). According to

epigraphs in Sanskrit and Cham dated 1050 and 1055,

Paramesvaravarman (I) is responsible for the construction

of a number of edifices at the Po Nagar sanctuary of Nha-

trang. He was succeeded by Bhadravarman (III), of whom

we know nearly nothing, and then y the latter‟s rother,

Rudravarman (III). This king ascended to the throne in

1061, at Vijaya, and in 1064 added new buildings to the

sanctuary of Po Nagar d‟ ia Trang Then, in , he

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101

attacked i Vi t the new name, adopted in , of i

C Vi t King L Th nh T ng of i Vi t immediately

mounted a counterattack by sea, landing his forces near

Vijaya and seizing it while destroying the Champa army.

Rudravarman III fled to Cam odia where he was

captured y the pursuing Vietnamese forces fter having

destroyed Vijaya, L Th nh T ng took the Champa king to

his capital, Th ng-long, where he was kept prisoner. At the

end of 1069, Rudravarman bought his freedom y ceding

to i Vi t the northernmost territories of Champa, those

situated etween the “Porte d‟ nnam” and the Lao- o

pass These territories were renamed a-l , Ma-linh and

-chánh by the Vietnamese.

Upon his return from captivity, Rudravarman (III)

found his country in complete disarray, split up into a

dozen minor kingdoms ymonier, “Premiere tude sur

les inscriptions tchames” in Journal Asiatique XVII-1,

1891, pp. 33 et seq.), one of which, Pânduranga, would

remain independent until 1084 We do not know when

Rudravarman died, or if it was he or his successor who sent

the tri ute of a “vassal state” to the i Vi t in 1071 and

1074, inasmuch as no information that could answer these

questions exist in any document. On the other hand, thanks

to a stele at M -s n written in Sanskrit and in Cham, we do

know that two hitherto unknown princes named Thâng and

Pâng decided to put an end to the anarchy which stemmed

from the “feudal” organization of Champa, which since its

creation had been divided into five large principalities (or

kingdoms): Indrapura in the north, followed (from north to

south) by Amarâvatâ, Vijaya, Kauthâra and Pânduranga.

And this does not include the even smaller semi-

autonomous territories that were parts of these

principalities and which themselves were constantly

seeking greater autonomy if not outright independence.

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102

In Prince Th ng seized power and, after having

restored Champa‟s patron divinity, hadresvara, at the M -

s n complex, he was enthroned with the name Harivarman

IV The following year he repelled an attack y i Vi t

and at the same time continued to pursue the secessionist

princes. Then he attacked Cambodia – we do not know the

reason why – by occupying briefly its northern territories,

destroying the sanctuaries of Sambor and deporting its

population fter having restored the country to “its former

splendor”, he designated as his successor his son V k, age

9, who became king in 1080 with the name Jaya

Indravarman (II), and Harivarman (IV) went into

retirement. The following year he died, his death was

followed by that of many of his wives who, according to an

inscription, had submitted to the ritual of satî. Jaya

Indravarman (II) having been deemed incapable of

governing, the country‟s dignitaries replaced him, only a

month after his father‟s death in this same year , with

his uncle, Prince P ng, who chose Parama odhisattva, of

uddhist inspiration, as his throne name This king

continued to send tri ute to i Vi t and, after defeating

the prince who had ruled Pânduranga for sixteen years,

reunified Champa in the year 1084. Notwithstanding these

successes, he was forced to surrender power in 1084, and

his nephew Jaya Indravarman (II) once more took the

throne. Even though he continued to pay tri ute to Th ng-

long (the ancient name of Hà-n i), in 1103 he tried,

without success, to recover the northern territories which

Champa had lost in 1069. Jaya Indravarman (II) died in

1113 and was given the posthumous name

Paramabuddhaloka. He was succeeded y his nephew, who

took the name Harivarman V , and who is known to us for

the foundations which he esta lished at M -s n and the

em assies sent y him to China and i Vi t.

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103

Champa confronts Angkor

The successor of Harivarman (V), who up to then had

been yuvarâja, took the throne in under the name

Jaya Indravarman III Following the esta lishment of

foundations at M -s n in and at Po Nagar of Nha-

trang in 1143, two years later he found himself, for reasons

that we cannot determine, faced with an invasion by the

Cambodian army. Vijaya was taken, the north of the

country was occupied by the Khmers, and the king

disappeared.

After this disaster – which commenced seventy-five

years of warfare between Champa and Cambodia – Jaya

Rudravarman (IV), who had only just ascended to the

throne, fled Vijaya together with his entourage and took

refuge in Pânduranga to escape from the Khmers. There

being no inscriptions attributable to him, all we know of

this monarch is what is provided in epigraphs left y his

son at M -s n and in the south, to wit his posthumous

name, Paramabrahmaloka, and the date of his death, 1147.

Following his death, his son was elected king by the

dignitaries then residing in Pânduranga, with the name Jaya

Harivarman (I). A Khmer army, swollen with Chams from

the north, was sent against him the following year, and was

defeated. A second attack also resulted in defeat. When the

Khmer king Sûryavarman (II) had the brother of Harideva,

one of his wives, installed as king of Champa in Vijaya,

Jaya Harivarman I marched against him, defeated him,

and killed him, retaking the city of Vijaya where he was

crowned king in , thus putting an end to the

Cam odian occupation L Finot, “Les inscriptions de M -

s n XXI”, in BEFEO IV, , pp - In spite of

this victory, his own rother-in-law rose against him with

the assistance of the country‟s mountainous regions

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104

Following his defeat in , the challenger enlisted the

aid of i Vi t, which supplied him with troops. Still, even

with these reinforcements, he was again defeated, and

disappeared from the scene. The Champa king then turned

to Amarâvatî, which had opposed him, and brought it into

submission in 1151; and then to the south of the country,

once again in revolt against the north In he rought

P nduranga, which had risen against the central authorities

five years earlier, ack into su mission This warrior-king

esta lished numerous foundations at M -s n and Po Nagar

of Nha-trang. But we do not know when his reign ended,

which occurred at some point between 1162 and 1166, nor

do we know if his son, mentioned in an epigraph by his

grandson as having the name Jaya Harivarman (II), ever

took the throne. We know only that in 1167 a usurper

calling himself Jaya Harivarman IV requested recognition

as king from the Chinese, This man, who had een a

dignitary in the court of Jaya Harivarman I , who had een

responsi le for increasing the num er of foundations at M -

s n and Po Nagar of Nha-trang, and who is praised in the

inscriptions for his qualities and his knowledge, was

obsessed with revenging the disaster of 1145 and the

occupation which followed. The first ten years of his reign

were devoted to fighting the Cambodians, with little result.

Unable to reach the capital, Angkor, by the terrestrial route,

he changed tactics. He put his army on ships, which sailed

down the coast of what is now south Vietnam to the

Mekong Delta. From there, thanks to a Chinese pilot, he

sailed up the Mekong and the Tonlé Sap to the Great Lake,

arriving in 1177. The surprise was complete. The Champa

took the city of Angkor; its enormous riches were pillaged

and its king, a usurper himself, killed (M. Giteau, Histoire

d’Angkor, Paris, Ed. Kailash, 1996, pp. 77- 78).

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105

It was a Khmer prince of royal lineage, the future

Jayavarman (VII), who repelled the invaders after a series

of battles, including a naval battle on the Great Lake and

Tonle Sap and another, probably decisive, battle in the

vicinity of the Preah Khan temple in Angkor. As a result,

the Cambodians definitively liberated their country from

the Champa around 1180-1181 (the year in which

Jayavarman (VII) was enthroned at Angkor).

We do not know when Jaya Inrdavarman (IV), the

conqueror of Angkor, died, although he was still alive as

late as 1183, nor do we know the date of accession to the

throne of his successor, Jaya Indravarman Ong Vatuv.

However we do know that it was during the reign of this

successor that Champa launched, in 1190, another attack

against Cambodia. Jayavarman (VII) then decided to

resolve the problem of Champa once and for all. In order to

do so, he put his troops under the command of a young

prince of Champa origin, Vidhyânandana, who had lived at

Angkor since the prime of his youth, following a form of

Mahâyâna Buddhism somewhat different from that of

Jayavarman (VII) and having pledged fealty to the latter.

While leading the Cambodian army, he seized Vijaya and

captured its king, Jaya Indravarman Ong Vatuv, who he

bought back to Angkor and held in captivity. In the year

1191, Champa was divided into two kingdoms. One was in

the north, centered at Vijaya, where a brother-in-law of the

Khmer monarch, Prince In, was installed as king under the

name Sûryajayavarmadeva. The other was in the south,

where Prince Vidhy nandana was made king and ruled

from Panrang today Phan Rang under the name

S ryavarmadeva, and who left ehind a description of

these events up through on a stele written in Cham

which was discovered at M -s n and pu lished y L Finot

The stele informs us that two years later a revolt broke out

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106

in Vijaya, deposing the brother-in-law of the Khmer king

who fled to Cambodia and placing on the throne of the

northern kingdom a Cham prince, Rasupati, who took the

name Jaya Indravarmadeva. Determined to reestablish

Khmer authority, Jayavarman VII sent troops to Champa

and with them his prisoner the former king Jaya

Indravarman Ong Vatuv. The latter, alongside

Vidhyânandana-Süryavarmadeva, took Vijaya and put

Rasupati to death. But then Vidhyânandana-

Sûryavarmadeva placed himself on the throne of Vijaya,

thereby uniting Champa but for his sole benefit. The

former king Jaya Indravarman Ong Vatuv, escaping from

Khmer control, fled to the principality of Amarâvatî, where

he led a successful uprising, and then proceeded to take

Vijaya. Soon thereafter, however, he was captured and put

to death by the troops of Vidhyânandana-Sûryavarmadeva,

who once again became the sole king of Champa. In 1193

and 1994 he was attacked by two Khmer armies sent to

beat him into submission, but both attacks failed. Chinese

texts inform us that he was enthroned in 1198 and that in

1199 he received recognition from the Chinese court. But

in 1203 he was removed from power by another Champa

prince, the yuvarâja Ong Dhanapatigrâma, who had also

been raised in Angkor and was beholden to the king of

Cam odia Under this prince‟s government, Champa

became a Khmer province.

The incorporation of Champa into the Khmer empire

lasted seventeen years. During this period, as the country

ecame poorer, a Champa prince of royal lineage named

ngsar ja, who had himself een raised in ngkor and

who had previously, on ehalf of the Khmer monarch, led

Cam odian troops against the i Vi t, appears to have

been assigned certain responsibilities, the nature of which

is unknown, as adjoint to the yuvarâja, Ong

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107

Dhanapatigrâma. It seems that the annexation of Champa at

the same time as that of other territories contributed to

weakening of Cambodia which, having grown excessively

in size, was no longer able to control its territories or

maintain its cohesion. This may be the reason why it

voluntarily withdrew from Champa in 1220. But when it

did so it left the country in the hands of prince Ansaraja,

hoping thereby to maintain a degree of influence in the

country. Angsarâja was not enthroned until 1226, when he

took the name of Jaya Paramesvaravarman (II). During his

reign, he concerned himself above all with repairing the

damage caused by the wars with the Cambodians and the

occupation of the country, most notably, it seems, in the

southern principalities, where almost all of his epigraphs

can be found. After his demise, the date of which is

unknown, he was succeeded by his elder brother, whose

enthronement took place between 1230 and 1243, and who

took the name Jaya Indravarman (VI).

The Second Half of the Thirteenth Century

In the course of his reign, during which he esta lished

foundations at M -s n, Jaya Indravarman VI was faced

with a revolt in Pânduranga, which was put down at his

direction y one of his nephews, prince Harideva He also

found himself up against a new dynasty in i Vi t, the

Tr n, who succeeded the L in For some time, piracy

by the Cham fleet along the coast of modern day North

Vietnam and up the Red River Delta had een on the

increase The Vietnamese king, Tr n Th i T ng, demanded

that these incursions cease. In reply, Jaya Indravarman (VI)

demanded the return of the territories of northern Champa

that had been ceded to the Vietnamese in 1069. Given this

refusal, in the Vietnamese king personally led an

invasion of Champa which, according to Vietnamese

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108

annals, resulted in its surrender and the looting of the

country‟s riches these annals add that in that same year,

Champa sent tri ute to i Vi t in acknowledgement of its

“vassal” status Five years later, Jaya Indravarman VI

was assassinated y his nephew Harideva Yuanchi, XX,

a , who the same year seized the throne fter sending

tri ute to i Vi t in 1262 and 1265, he led an expedition

against Pânduranga, which had revolted in 1265. The

following year he was enthroned under the name

Indravarman (V). Upon his return from Pânduranga, which

had risen in revolt once again in 1277, he received an

order, in 1278, to make his appearance at the court of the

Mongol sovereign, the Great Khan Kubilai, to offer the

tribute of vassaldom which he had been previously making

to the Chinese Song dynasty. With much tergiversation,

declarations of fealty from Vijaya, sending of embassies

and numerous gifts, he managed to put off complying with

the order until 1281 when, no doubt tired of waiting,

Ku ilai sent two “ministers” to Champa charged with

establishing Mongol rule. If Indravarman (V) seems to

have acquiesced to this situation, his son Harijit refused

and in 1282 organized a revolt which sent the Mongol

envoys back home. At this development the Great Khan

decided to turn Champa into a mere province of his empire

and sent his troops to attack it by land and sea in December

1282 – January 1283. After having lost the capital,

Indravarman (V), accompanied by his son, set up his

resistance to the west, in the mountainous regions, where

he was able to hold out thanks to the montagnard peoples,

whose assistance enabled him to organize a

counteroffensive which would extend to the year

This was the year in which Marco Polo travelled along

Champa‟s coast, and in which the Mongol troops withdrew

from the country to attack the i Vi t where the king,

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109

Tr n Nh n T ng, who ascended to the throne in , had

twice inflicted humiliating defeats on them. This freed

Champa from the Mongol threat. But the two years of

occupation which they had just suffered had seriously

weakened the country, already destabilized by the effects

of seventy-five years of continuous warfare with

Cambodia. And this was happening while the civilization

of Champa was already in decline due to the etiolation of

Sanskrit culture – the last Sanskrit inscription in Champa is

dated 1253 – the very basis of Hinduism and Mahâyâna

Buddhism which themselves constituted the pillars of

Champa‟s political structures

After the death of Indravarman (V) in 1287, his son

prince Harijit ascended the throne under the name Jaya

Simhavarman (III). To him we owe the construction of the

temple of Po Klong Garai to the north of Panrang and the

temple of Yang Prong at the far west of Darlac province

(H. Parmentier, Inventaire descriptif des monuments cams

de l’Annam, Vol I, Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, Ernest

Leroux, 1909, pp. 81-95 and 557-559), which evidences

the integration of the montagnards of this part of the

highlands into Champa. During the course of his life he

married, among others, a daughter of a king of Java, which

shows that as of the end of the th century the relationship

etween the princely families of this island and Champa

were still active, and a daughter of Tr n Nh n T ng, the

king of i Vi t. The latter marriage, which aroused the

opposition of the Vietnamese leaders and people, arose

from a promise made in y Tr n Nh n T ng – who

had a dicated eight years earlier in favor of his son Tr n

nh T ng – to his former “vassal”, the Champa king called

“Ch M n” in the Vietnamese annals ue to the turmoil to

which this promise gave rise, the marriage with the

princess Huy n Tr n – a name and a story known by all

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110

Vietnamese – could not take place until 1306. And it

occurred only after a lengthy period of bargaining, at the

conclusion of which Jaya Simhavarman III agreed to cede

two provinces, Ch u and Ch u L , to the king of i

Vi t in exchange for the hand of Huy n Tr n These two

provinces occupied the entire area etween Lao- o Pass

and the Col des Nuages (the southern part of modern day

Qu ng-tr , and all of Th a-thiên).

This abrupt surrender of territory, as in 1069, by a

“feudal” monarch who treated the country over which he

ruled as his personal property, to be dispose of as he saw

fit, is attributable solely to the arbitrary wishes of the

Champa king. Contrary to what has often been said, one

cannot accuse the Vietnamese kings of having planned

these annexations, since, unlike what would happen

beginning at the end of the 15th century, at the time they

occurred the Vietnamese had no imperialistic policy of

territorial expansion. After successful military campaigns

against the Champa they were satisfied, as we have already

seen and as we shall see again, with an acknowledgment of

fealty on the part of the defeated Champa kings, without

questioning the territorial integrity of the kingdom over

which they ruled.

Jaya Simhavarman III died several months later, in

The king of i Vi t, Tr n nh T ng, took

advantage of his demise to organize his sister‟s escape and

return to Th ng Long He did not, however, relinquish the

two Ch u From this point forward, ch-mã mountain

would be the northern border of Champa, which, due to the

fault of two of its kings, had between 1069 and 1306 lost

all of its original territory – that of Linyi.

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111

t

Because of the almost total disappearance of

inscriptions after the end of the 13th century, we do not

know the royal name of the son and successor to Jaya

Simhavarman (III) – or those of the kings that followed –

or whether or not they were formally enthroned We are

thus o liged to call him, and those who followed him, y

Ch Chi, which is the name used to designate him in the

Vietnamese annals (on which we must often depend from

this point forward).

The transfer of Ch u and Ch u L to the i Vi t

was opposed by their inhabitants, who were constantly in

rebellion, and also y the court in Vijaya, which supported

these revolts The Vietnamese king Tr n nh T ng

determined to put an end to this state of affairs He led an

expedition against Champa in and seized the king, his

enemy, and took him as a captive ack to i Vi t where

he died in In the meantime Tr n nh T ng selected

one of the brothers of the Champa king, to whom the

Vietnamese annals give the name Ch N ng, to govern

Champa as a “feudatory prince of the second rank”, thus

placing the country under his authority Taking advantage

of the accession of a new king, Tr n Minh T ng, in ,

Ch N ng tried to recover the two Ch u and restore

Champa‟s independence He failed, and following his

defeat he was forced to flee and take refuge in Java The

i Vi t then reinforced its control of Champa To lead the

country they chose a senior Champa military officer,

named Ch Nan in the Vietnamese annals, who was

given the title of viceroy ut just like his predecessors,

Ch Nan wanted to free his country from Vietnamese

rule. In the year 1322 he began approaching the Mongol

court for assistance, and when the Vietnamese army

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112

attacked in , it was vanquished s a result, Champa

recovered its independence and eliminated the trappings of

a vassal state, immediately putting an end to the sending of

tri ute and em assies to i Vi t. The remaining years of

his reign were notably calm. He first sent embassies to the

Chinese court, but ceased doing so from 1331. Then he was

visited by the Franciscan Odoric de Pordenone, who wrote

an account in which he descri ed Champa as a “very

eautiful country” One should not assume, however, that

everything was going smoothly. For more than a century

the Champa nation had been in a state of crisis with respect

to its spiritual values, which served as the pillar of society,

and had been seriously weakened thereby. Furthermore, the

Hindu rituals which conferred legitimacy on the monarchy

were themselves in a state of decay. And if one adds to this

the infighting among princes and the struggles between

north and south, both of which caused constant internal

dissension, one understands the degree of destabilization of

the country in the middle of the 14th century.

Upon the death of Ch Nan in , a struggle for

power roke out among mem ers of his family His son in

law, identified with the name Tr H a in the Vietnamese

annals, had ousted Ch M , the son of Ch Nan, from

the throne Ch M ‟s efforts to recover the throne from the

usurper were unsuccessful, and he fled to the court of the

Vietnamese king Tr n T ng, who promised to help him

restore him to the throne on the condition that the payment

of tri ute e resumed In a Vietnamese army

accompanied Ch M to Champa ut turned ack efore

attacking Vijaya, taking Ch M ack with them to i

Vi t where he died soon afterwards. Trà Hòa then took this

opportunity to try to recover Châu Ô and Châu Lý, but he

was unsuccessful. Until his death, which is believed to

have occurred in 1360, the country engaged in no further

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113

military ventures. Next follows a blank space, there being

no mention of Champa anywhere until 1369 when Chinese

texts make reference to the investiture of a king of Champa

y the first emperor of the Ming dynasty This king, who

from appears in the Vietnamese annals under the

name Ch ng Nga, without any mention of his family

history or the date on which he ecame king, was a great

strategist, who for thirty years was the scourge of the

Vietnamese nation He attacked the i Vi t army in 1361,

1362, 1365, 1368, 1377, 1378, 1383 and 1386, and three

times (in 1371, 1377 and 1378) took and sacked the capital

Recovering the territories ceded y his predecessors in

and , he moved the northern order of Champa

ack to the Porte d‟ nnam, i e where it was in the middle

of the th century nd then, when the i Vi t were in

complete disarray, the Champa king was betrayed and

killed while on board his warship in 1390 (G. Maspero, Le

Royaume de Champa, Leide, E. J. Brill, 1914, pp. 275-

298). This brilliant period in the history of Champa had

been entirely the result of the personality, the energy and

the military prowess of Ch ong Nga, who in addition had

known how to exploit the decline of the Vietnamese Tr n

dynasty. His death brought the Champa back to the harsh

reality that had temporarily been hidden: that of a

moribund kingdom and civilization Their army, which

after Ch ng Nga‟s death was led y a military officer

called La Kh i in the Vietnamese annals, was forced to

retreat and return to Champa La Kh i seized power,

evicting the son of Ch ng Nga from the throne, and

abandoned to i Vi t all of the territories north of ch-

m Mountain which his predecessor had retaken This king,

whom an inscription found on the entrance of the citadel of

nh- nh identifies under the throne name of Jaya

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114

Simhavarman, reigned twelve years. This is all that we

know about him.

The End of Indianized Champa

fter his death in , Jaya Simhavarman was

succeeded y his son, called a ch L i in the Vietnamse

annals and V ra hadravarman in the inscriptions

Immediately upon the death of his father he was attacked

y H Qu Ly, the first king of the new dynasty of

usurpers, the H , which had replaced the Tr n in

This attack was repulsed second campaign was launched

in To avoid an unequal fight, the Champa king ceded

the principality of mar vat to H Qu Ly in return for

the evacuation of his troops from Champa soil No dou t

elieving that he could acquire additional territories with

similar ease, around - H Qu Ly launched a

third campaign directed at Vijaya however, he was forced

to return to i Vi t as a result of the intervention of the

Ming court Then, the Chinese, using the change of dynasty

as a pretext, annexed i Vi t in 1407. This enabled

Champa, freed from the threat from it dangerous neighbor

to the north, to retake Amarâvatî. It also enabled it to attack

Cambodia, which had been in a state of almost permanent

warfare with the Thai kings at Ayudhyâ since the middle of

the 14th century and had been severely weakened.

Notwithstanding the remonstrances from the Chinese in

1408 and 1414, the Champa king attacked and annexed the

region of modern day Biên Hòa (A. Cabaton,

”L‟inscription de iên- h a”, in BEFEO IV, 1904, pp. 687

et seq.) This pushed the southern border of the kingdom to

an area extending from this region to Bé mountain, which,

according to a Portuguese adventurer at the eginning of

the th century, remained the eastern limit of the two

kingdoms This king maintained good relations with Lê L i

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115

– to whom he sent an em assy in – who, in ,

would li erate i Vi t from the Chinese and found the Lê

dynasty nd after thirty-two years at the head of the

country, a ch L i - Vîrabhadravarman was crowned

king of Champa and chose Vrasu Indravarman as his

throne name. On his death in 1441, he was succeeded by a

king of which all that is known is the name given to him in

the Vietnamese annals Maha C i eginning in ,

this sovereign engaged in repeated strikes against i Vi t,

which led the latter‟s king, after having o tained the

neutrality of the Ming emperor, to attack Champa in 1446.

Vijaya was taken and sacked, Maha Bí Cái taken prisoner,

and his nephew, Maha Quí Lai, placed on the throne. In

1447 the new monarch sent tribute to the Vietnamese king

Lê Nhân Tông. Two years later, in 1449, for reasons not

known to us, he was overthrown by his brother, Maha Quí

, who would receive recognition from China in

and assassinated the following year. His successor, whom

the Vietnamese annals call Trà Nguy t, would be forced to

abdicate, for unknown reasons, two years later, in 1460, in

favor of his rother Tr To n, who would have the sad

privilege of eing the last king of Vijaya Having refused to

comply with king Lê Th nh T ng‟s demand for

supplementary tri ute, Tr T an attacked i Vi t in 1468

and 1469. The Vietnamese king responded by invading

Champa the following year. Vijaya was taken in 1471,

sacked and razed; part of its population – around 20,000

people – was expelled, and another part killed (between

40,000 and 60,000 people). After being captured, Trà Toàn

died at sea while being taken to i Vi t (Bùi Quang Tùng

et alias, Le i i t et ses voisins, Paris, L‟Harmattan,

1990, pp. 73-86).

This final seizure of Vijaya marks the end of the slow

death agony of a civilization and a kingdom. The former

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116

began with the Moslem invasions of India at the end of the

12th century, which cut Champa off from the periodic

infusion of Indian cultural elements which had sustained it.

And the slow decline of this civilization led bit by bit to the

impoverishment of its social structures. At the same time,

the kingdom came to an end, the string of defeats that it

suffered beginning in the 11th century having called into

question the viability of the Hindu order which served as

its basis – an order said to have been put in place by the

gods but which had been mismanaged by men. The fall of

Vijaya also marks the culmination of the centuries-long

confrontation of the civilization of India, represented by

Champa, and that of China in the form of the Vietnamese

who, blocked by China from expanding to the north,

pushed instead to the south. For both of the protagonists,

this struggle was one for nothing less than its survival, and

from the end of the 10th century forward was noted for

successive retreats on the part of Champa. The year 1471

thus marked the definitive victory of the Sinicized world

over the Indian which, since the th century, had

dominated the eastern part of the Indochinese peninsula It

was to seal this victory that i Vi t wiped Vijaya off the

map and imposed its own culture by annexing all of the

Champa territory which it felt capa le of a sor ing nd

this included the northern part of the country, which had

een the heart of Indianized Champa and where the great

Hindu M - s n and uddhist ng-d ng groups of

monuments could be found, as well as the great center of

diffusion of Indian influences, Trà-ki u.

Indigenous Champa

After taking Vijaya, Lê Thánh Tông sent his troops

toward the south. According to the i am t T ng

T n -yên), they pulled up at the top of Cap

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117

Varella and erected a oundary marker on - ia also

called Th ch- i mountain to mark the order of i Vi t.

This has led a number of Vietnam specialists to conclude

that from 1471 this constituted the southern limit of the

Vietnamese nation However, the same work, ut in the

part dealing with the province of nh- nh, places the

border – we are still dealing with the period of the reign of

Lê Thánh Tông – in the area of the Cù-mông pass, that is,

one hundred kilometers further north This is confirmed y

other annals, since they state that the province of Ph -yên,

which is located etween the C -m ng pass and - ia

mountain, was not conquered until The location of

the southern order of i Vi t at the end of the 15th

century undoubtedly will continue to be the subject of

discussion for many years to come. Indeed, the i i t

T an T (III, Traduction en quoc-ngu, Hanoi 1972)

states that after the fall of Vijaya, Lê Thánh Tông divided

the part of Champa lying south of the former capital into

three vassal states: Chiêm Thành (the name given to the

southernmost part), Hoa Anh and Nam Bàn. But inasmuch

as this work mentions the second of these only on this one

occasion, does not make reference to the third until three

centuries later, and never gives the names of their kings,

one must question whether they really existed – especially

since no indication is given of their locations. Some writers

have proposed for the location of Hoa Anh the territory

between Cù-mông pass and -bia mountain, and for Nam

Ban the high plateaus, in the upper reaches of Công-tum

(Kontum)- Gia-lai. Others believe that both lay to the west

of the Annamite Cordillera. But no evidence supporting

these hypotheses has been brought forward.

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118

The Transition Period

lthough the southern order of i Vi t during this

period continues to be a subject of controversy, we do

know that the end of Indianized Champa did not mean the

end of Champa itself, as a number of Indianists have

tended to propose. It was in the southern part of the

country, in Kauthâra and Pânduranga, where an unruly

population had always fought for autonomy and even

independence, that Champa would be reborn. This came

about when a Champa military leader from Vijaya, whom

the annals call Tr Tr , who had fled to P nduranga and

there proclaimed himself king, succeeded in o taining

recognition from China and i Vi t, whose ooks would

thenceforth refer to the country y the name Chiêm Th nh

We know very little a out this Trì Trì, whose death in

1478 appears, according to Mingshi (CCCXXV-15a) to

have been at the hands of one of his brothers named Gulai.

The latter ascended to the throne of the new Champa this

same year and also asked for recognition by China. He

reigned until when his son, identified in the

Vietnamese annals y the name Tr To i, succeeded him

In Tr To i sent his son Tr Ph c on an em assy to

the Ming court and o tained China‟s recognition another

embassy to China was sent in 1543. This is the last

embassy from Champa recorded in Chinese texts, which

thereafter contain no reference to a Cham nation. This

suggests that from this time forward, the new Champa

stood alone, without a protector, against the Vietnamese.

Nevertheless, it enjoyed a period of calm until the middle

of the 17th century.

The three monarchs which we have just mentioned

stood at the junction of two separate worlds: one which,

since the 14th century, purported to maintain a Hindu

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119

tradition even though it had already ceased to exist, and

another, which I term “indigenous”, which gave primary

place to southern traditions and the native cultural

attributes of Pânduranga and Kauthâra which had always

been very strong in these two principalities. Indeed, the

establishment, between the end of the 15th and the 16th

centuries, of the new social organization and religious

practices which from then on would serve as the

foundations of the new Champa took place rather quickly.

Hinduism, which had died along with the demise of the

Brahmin aristocracy, gave place to flourishing native cults

with links to the earth and to specific geographic locations,

which were the only reality that the mass of the population

could understand. The Hindu concepts of the universe no

longer had currency, and were replaced by indigenous

beliefs supplemented, beginning in the 17th century, with

Islamic elements. The upper classes no longer practiced

their former religion, centered around royal and personal

cults. Instead, they participated in native religious practices

wherein the images from prior religions became

confounded with characters populating local folkloric

traditions. Kings no longer represented themselves as

quasi-incarnations of gods and became purely political

leaders. They no longer adopted Sanskrit throne names, nor

did they have statues made in their image with the

attributes of a divinity. This however did not prevent them

from cultivating the level of prestige which the princes of

the south had always believed to be their due.

The End of the 16th and 17th Century

For the th century up through the middle of the th

century, very little information can e found in the

Vietnamese annals regarding the new Champa, “Chiêm

Th nh” These documents deal almost entirely with the

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120

internal struggle in i Vi t etween the later Lê dynasty

and the M c, followed y that etween the Tr nh lords in

the north and the Nguy n lords in the south Reports y

European travelers are also rather sparse. Furthermore, the

chronicles in modern Cham script can be used only with a

great deal of caution up through the first third of the 17th

century, due to problems in identifying place names and

determining dates with accuracy. For later periods, these

documents are quite reliable (P- Lafont, “Pour une

rehabilitation des chroniques redig es en cam moderne” in

BEFEO LXVIII, 1980, pp. 105- 111).

Although they are limited in number and volume,

these documents inform us that in 1578 the Champa king –

the name of whom is not provided – taking advantage no

doubt of the civil war in i Vi t, had his troops occupy a

citadel that formerly belonged to Champa in the area of

modern-day Tuy-hòa (Phú-yên). They also inform us – this

time from a Dutch source – that in 1594 the sovereign of

Champa (who also is not identified by name) sent

assistance to the Sultan of Johor in Malaysia in the latter‟s

fight with the Portuguese. And the Spanish who arrived in

Phnom Penh in 1596 make mention of Cham volunteers in

the service of the king of Cambodia. These documents also

tell us that in the Champa monarch, presuma ly Po

Klaong Halau, sent an em assy to i Vi t, and that in

1603 his son Po Nit established his capital in the region of

modern-day Phan-rang; this is confirmed by Spanish and

Portuguese sources. Finally, the royal chronicles of

Cambodia state that under the reign of Paramarâjâ VII, i.e.

between 1602 and 1619, the royal prince Jayajetthâ

succeeded in retaking the provinces of Barea and Daung

Nay – that is, the region of modern-day Biên Hòa – which

had first been occupied by Champa in the beginning of the

15th century.

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121

In , to the north of the new Champa, the

Vietnamese lord Nguy n H ang, following Champa

incursions on the opposite side of the -r ng river,

occupied the region between the Cù-m ng pass and -bia

mountain Thenceforth, the Vietnamese and the new

Champa had as their common frontier the peak of this

mountain Nguy n H ang, followed y his successor

Nguy n Ph c Nguyên, populated the region which they had

just annexed with colonies of soldier-farmers entrusted

with the task of defending the newly-conquered territory,

composed of resettled Vietnamese as well as a not

negligible number of common law criminals. If we are to

give credence to the account of the Jesuit Father A. de

Rhodes, this initiative was adly received y the Champa

who, taking advantage of the extreme tensions eginning in

etween the Tr nh lords of the north and the Nguy n,

and then y the latter family‟s succession disputes,

embarked that same year on a program of virtual

permanent harassment of this region and its new

inha itants Lord Nguy n Ph c Nguyên changed the areas

status to frontier province in ut this did not put an

end to the Champa attacks, and the Nguy n lords were

obligated to station troops on their southern frontier for the

next 25 years.

While included since the 15th century within the

economic zone controlled by Malacca, Champa was also

integrated into the long distance trade conducted by the

Malays which connected all of the coastal regions washed

by the South China Sea. This is the reason why Champa

ships could be found at Malacca, where their presence in

the 15th and 16th centuries is recorded in the Sejarah

Melayu in i Vi t during times of peace; at Pattani

(Malaysia); and in the delta of the Menam Chao Praya, the

great river of Thailand, where the Portuguese would

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122

encounter them in the 16th century; in the Indonesian

archipelago; and at Johor, with which the Dutch observed

that they had a trading relationship in the 17th century. It is

also why there was a virtually permanent presence of ships

from the Malay archipelago and peninsula in the ports of

Malithit Phan-thi t , Parik Phan-ri), Panrang (Phan-rang)

and Kam Ran (Cam-ranh). And not to be forgotten are the

vessels from China, Japan (until the country closed its

doors in 1636), the Arab lands, and, from the 16th century,

Europe, which engaged in competition, often in the form of

merciless fighting, to be able to trade directly with the

countries which produced the spices and luxury items that

were increasingly in demand in Europe. Among these

countries, the new Champa produced gold – “in large

quantity” according to the Suma Oriental of T. Pires – a

portion of which was sent to Malacca from which it was

reexported; the aromatic wood called bois d‟aloes or

Calambac, of which Champa was the premier producer and

which it exported to India, the Arab world, the West and

China; sandalwood; ivory; the skins of wild animals; and

rhinoceros horns. Up until the middle of the 17th century,

this commerce was highly developed, and was at the same

time very lucrative for the Cham government which had

made maritime trade a royal monopoly. Accordingly, they

provided protection to the merchants with whom they had

business dealings, as evidenced by the authorization given

in 1644 by the king of Champa, believed to be Po Rome, to

Dutch navigators to do business with the kingdom,

provided that they refrained from attacking the Portuguese

ships and merchants in the Champa ports.

The overall situation of new Champa developed

favora ly until when its king, called Th m y the

Vietnamese and who seems to be the Po Nraup of the

Cham texts, appears – if the Vietnamese annals are to be

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123

believed – to have attacked Phú-yên. Since no other source

confirms the occurrence of this event, one may question if

it actually occurred nd one might ask whether the

Nguy n lord Nguy n Ph c T n, who maintained a large

army in connection with his fight against the Tr nh lords,

did not take advantage of the extended period of peace

from to y sending his idle troops to attack

Chiêm Th nh Champa Whatever the case might have

een, continuing the imperialistic policies of his

predecessors, Nguy n Ph c T n took Kauth ra and seized

Th m, and then sent his troops all the way to the river

of Phan-rang which he esta lished as his southern order

Thus new Champa, deprived of half of its territory – from

which Ph -xu n Hu immediately created the

Vietnamese provinces of Thái-khang and Diên-khánh –

found itself reduced to the single principality of

P nduranga, which for some time had een designated y

its Cham name, Prangdarang In this event Champa lost

more than half of its coastline as well as its deep-water

ports nd since the Nguy n lords su mitted all navigation

to Champa/Prangdarang to their control, ships avoided

going there, thus putting an end to the maritime relations

between Champa and the ports of the South China Sea and

to the trade from which it derived a large part of its

revenues.

Already at the end of the th century, ut especially

during the th century, increasingly large num ers of

Vietnamese – individuals without land, the very poor,

vaga onds, people who had een anished – no longer

prevented y the Nguy n lords from leaving their lands as

had een the case in the past, egan to settle in

Prangdarang and in the provinces to the south as well, in

the Cam odia provinces of area the future -r a of the

Vietnamese and aung Nay ng-nai), which were

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124

sparsely populated. Profiting from the presence of this

immigrants and under the pretext of protecting them, Ph -

xu n Hu egan to actively intervene in Cam odia,

encouraged y the latter‟s weakness as a result of an

endless series of internal uprisings. Thus, after having

forced Cambodia to cede the customs office of Prei Nokor

S i-c n in , the Nguyen seized the region they would

call iên-h a in s a result, Prangdarang‟s order

with the Nguy n lands was no longer not only to the north,

but to the south as well. Already deprived of its access to

the sea and to the route to Cam odia via Prei Nokor, it now

found itself etween the pincers of the Vietnamese state

and at its mercy However, the Nguy n lords refrained for

the time being from seizing Prangdarang, being fully

occupied with expanding their empire in the Mekong Delta

and imposing their suzerainty on the Khmer kingdom.

Moreover, as long as Prangdarang continued to pay the

annual tribute, as noted in detail by the Abbé de Choisy in

1686 (Journal du Voyage de Siam fait en 1685 et 1686 par

Monsieur l’abbé de oisy, Paris, Mabre-Cramoisy, 1687),

and its king continued to e a loyal “vassal”, Ph -xuân let

it alone. But when, in 1692, the Champa king Po Saut,

called by the name Bà Tranh in the Vietnamese records,

attacked the province of iên-kh nh the southern part of

what had een Kauth ra , the lord Nguy n Ph c Chu

reacted rutally He was especially well positioned to do so

inasmuch as since the de facto partition of the Vietnamese

lands etween the Tr nh and the Nguy n, he had at his

disposition a large and seasoned army, in contrast with

Prangdarang which, once again, found itself in a

particularly unfavorable geographic situation. The

Vietnamese army entered Prangdarang, took Parik (Phan-

rí) which had been the capital of the country since ,

and captured Po Saut Ph -xu n then changed the name of

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125

the country from Chiêm Th nh to Tr n Thu n Thành

(marches of Thu n Thành). The three leaders of the

victorious army were placed in charge of the area‟s three

regions, which were also renamed Panrang ecame Phan-

rang, Parik ecame Phan-r , and Pajai was re aptized Ph -

hài. The land was subsequently annexed outright and

became the prefecture of Bình-thu n in 1693. Rejecting the

annexation and a life of servitude to a race that looked

down on them, a significant number of Cham left their

homes and, as in the years following 1471, went into exile.

This time, however, it was in Cambodia that (if credence is

given to the local chronicles) approximately five thousand

families, led by former high dignitaries of Prangdarang,

sought refuge, after crossing the southern Annamite

Cordillera. The Khmer king Jayajettâ III, himself a victim

of Vietnamese expansionist imperialism, received them

with benevolence and granted them lands in the area

around his capital and in the provinces (Mak Phoeun,

Histoire du Cambodge de la fin du XVIe siècle au debut du

XVIIIe siècle, Paris, Presses de l‟ F O, Monographie ,

1995, pp. 397-398).

uring this period, lord Nguy n Ph c Chu named a

Cham, Po Saktiraydapatih – known as K T in

Vietnamese texts – who was the brother of the ex-king Po

Saut, as leader of the prefecture to Bình-thu n. His goal no

doubt was to secure the acceptance by a restive population

of the new situation. But this policy did not meet with

success, if one can rely on the Vietnamese chronicles,

which report that the annexation of Prangdarang gave rise

to major opposition. This rapidly grew into an armed

struggle, beginning in 1693, against the Vietnamese troops

and the settlers who accompanied them. The violence of

the Cham insurrection must have surprised the court of

Phú-xuân: in 1694, it began to backpeddle. It annulled the

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126

annexation of Prangdarang and restored the country within

its former borders, but it gave the region the name Tr n

Thu n Th nh – the same name as had een given to it in

It then placed as its leader a “Tr n V ng Thu n

Th nh” sovereign prince of Thu n Th nh The first to

hold this position was Po Saktiraydapatih K T , to

whom the Vietnamese court accorded, this same year,

some of the attributes of sovereignty. He was given

exclusive authority to impose taxes on the inhabitants and

recruit among them officials to administer the territory. But

they also made him a “vassal”, with the o ligation to pay

annual tribute ( i am T c c n i n I,

Traduction en quoc-ngu, Hanoi, 1962, pp. 147-151. Three

years later, in 1697, the court of Phú-xuân put in place a

structure which would ultimately enable the Vietnamese to

reverse their retreat and annex Thu n Thành. Within the

borders of Thu n Thành, it created a special kind of

Vietnamese prefecture which was named Bình Thu n,

which has led a number of scholars to confuse it with the

entity of the same name which had been created in 1693.

This new prefecture consisted of the Vietnamese village of

Hàm-thu n, which served as the administrative seat, as

well as two other Vietnamese villages – Hoa- a in the

region of Phan-r and n-ph c in the region of Phan-rang

– which became the administrative centers for these two

districts, to which Nguy n Ph c Chu attached, for

political and administrative purposes, all of the villages and

hamlets of Thu n Thành populated by Vietnamese, and the

lands belonging to them. From this point forward, the

Vietnamese immigrants answered solely to the Nguy n

lords, and not to the government of Prangdarang This was

accomplished without any consultation with Po

Saktiraydapatih K T nd since the villages and

land belonging to the Vietnamese were scattered

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127

throughout Prangdarang, the latter found itself dotted with

enclaves governed from Ph -xu n Hu Furthermore,

since Nguyen Phuoc Chu had ordered that any future lands

becoming the property of the Vietnamese should be

attached to the prefecture of Bình-thu n, the Vietnamese

possessed a particularly effective instrument for

accomplishing the complete absorption of Prangdarang

without any direct intervention. And they would exploit

this instrument to a great extent in encouraging their

compatriots to settle there.

The 18th Century

Neither the Vietnamese nor the Cham documents

make mention of any significant political development in

Prangdarang during the first seventy years of the 18th

century. On the other hand, the Cham archives, and several

passages in the Vietnamese annals, mention a series of

conflicts within the borders of Prangdarang, especially

where the Cham found themselves in contact with

Vietnamese immigrants who, assured of the protection of

the mandarins of the prefecture of Bình-thu n, did not

hesitate to exploit Cham labor or, by usurious lending

practices, acquire their property or even their persons.

It is while these exactions were taking place that in

a re ellion roke out in the lands of the Nguy n lords

a revolt y the Vietnamese peasantry against their rulers

and the landlords y whom they were oppressed Known as

the T y S n re ellion, it would last until i am

Chính Biên Li t Truy n, T y n, Translation in

Quoc-ngu, Saigon, 1970) and would deal a fatal low to

Prangdarang, which practically ceased to exist during these

thirty years in the course of which a civil war which only

involved the Vietnamese was taking place in part on its

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128

territory Indeed, with the T y S n rothers having

occupied the lands of the Nguy n lords north of

Prangdarang soon after the eginning of the revolt, the lord

Nguy n nh took refuge in the southern part of his

domain, south of Prangdarang. This placed Prangdarang

geographically in between the two belligerents, each of

which was obligated to cross Prangdarang – and Bình-

thu n – in order to attack the other; and much of the

fighting took place on its territory. Furthermore, because of

its strategic importance, each party to the conflict, from the

very beginning, tried to take control of the territory and

esta lish key positions and ases Thus, Prangdarang was

occupied y the T y S n army in The territory was

recovered y the troops of Nguy n nh in - ,

reoccupied y the T y S n in -17 , and again y

Nguy n nh in The T y S n took it again in ,

and then the troops of Nguy n nh took the southern part –

the region of Phan-r – in they su sequently lost it

ack to the T y S n, ut it was retaken, this time

definitively, y Nguy n nh in fter this defeat the

T y S n also lost the northern part of Prangdarang – the

region of Phan-rang – in - , which once and for

all, passed under the control of Nguy n nh

The to-and-fro of troops in full campaign mode

effectively erased the borders of Prangdarang from the map

from the first years of the civil war. And it subjected its

inhabitants, whom the Vietnamese army regarded as

“ ar arians” M n , strangers to the Vietnamese people, to

enormous difficulties. Furthermore, since each time a

belligerent occupied a region it would force the population

to take its side, each change of occupant subjected the

population to accusations of having taken the enemy side,

and accordingly to punishment. Also, whether to take

revenge for the suffering inflicted upon them, or to avoid

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129

becoming innocent victims, or simply by being caught up

in the conflict, many Cham took sides with one belligerent

or the other, even taking up arms for them. This not only

created divisions in the society, which up until then had

been solidly united, but set many of the Cham in conflict

with one another. Actual conflict erupted when, in order to

solidify their standing with the Cham, each of the

belligerents designated as its representative in Thu n

Th nh one of its own partisans Thus, for example, in

the south of Prangdarang – the region of Phan-r – was

placed under the guardianship of Po Ladhuanpughuh, the

Nguy n V n Th a of the Vietnamese annals, y Nguy n

Anh, while the north of the territory – the region of Phan-

rang – was placed y the T y S n under that of Po

Tisuntiraydapuran, who had already engaged in combat

with Po Ladhuanpughuh ( i am T c c n i n

II-1, translation in Quoc-ngu, Hanoi, 1963, pp. 58 and

125). It would be erroneous, however, to conclude that the

leaders of the two Vietnamese belligerents appointed these

Cham representatives to govern or even administer

Prangdarang. Rather, they vested them with no political

authority and gave them titles solely as part of an effort to

rally the Cham population to their side Indeed, at no time

during the course of the civil war, or even afterwards, did

the Nguy n or the T y S n accord the title of Tr n V ng

(sovereign prince) to their Cham representatives, but rather

that of Ch ng C regimental commander nd they

were not treated with great consideration For example,

after having designated Po Cei rei, the Nguy n V n

Chiêu of the Vietnamese annals, as Ch ng C of Thu n

Thành in 1783/1784, replacing Po Tisuntiraydapuran

whom they had previously placed in this post in

, the T y S n named Po Tisuntiraydapuran once

again to this position in 1786/1787, this time displacing Po

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130

Cei Brei. And they never provided any reason for these

changes.

Beginning in , when it came under the

control of Nguy n nh once and for all, the Cham lands

ceased to suffer from the horrors of war: the brief

Montagnard revolt in 1796 in the Phan-rí region which is

mentioned in the Vietnamese annals had no serious impact

on the country. However, it was confronted with a flood of

indigent Vietnamese in search of land who, thanks to the

assistance of Vietnamese occupation troops, settled in its

territory, in which a portion of the native inhabitants had

disappeared – killed in the war, victims of misconduct y

the troops of Nguy n nh and the T y S n, or in exile in

Cambodia to escape the tragic situation in their homeland.

The 19th Century

fter his final victory over the T y S n in ,

Nguy n nh ecame the undisputed master of the

Vietnamese people and renamed the country Vietnam. He

also, contrary to all expectations, reestablished Thu n

Thành as a geographic entity. But he refrained from

legitimizing it as a political entity, for he gave it no

particular juridical status; it was more a case of granting it

de facto autonomy based on its distinct ethnic population

than in recognizing it politically. Then he placed at the

head of Thu n Th nh still using the title of Ch ng C

one of his former wartime commanders, Po Saong Nyung

Ceng – the Nguy n V n Ch n of the Vietnamese annals –

whose loyalty was unquestioned and to whom he had

previously granted authority over the territory after the

death of Po Ladhuanpughuh in 1799.

It is possible that in reestablishing this diminished

Thu n Th nh and placing at its head the scion of one of its

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princely families, whom he had caused to e so designated

y the dignitaries of Prangdarang themselves, the goal of

Nguy n nh now mperor Gia Long was to ring calm

to a region that had experienced frequent periods of unrest.

This certainly seems to have been the case. The Cham

population, which had been uprooted and divided internally

throughout the final decades of the 18th century, needed to

find a home and at least the illusion of being a part of their

traditional socio-political organization in order to recover

its equilibrium.

The policy of Gia Long appears to have allowed this

to happen, since neither the Vietnamese annals nor the

Cham chronicles make any mention of agitation or disunity

in Prangdarang – or in the areas surrounding Bình-thu n –

between 1802 and 1820.

The situation would change for the worse after the

death of Gia Long and the accession of Emperor Minh

M nh to the throne of Vietnam (Minh M nh n u I-

VI, Translation in Quoc-ngu, Saigon, -

eginning in , the new emperor set out on a policy of

force against Lê V n uy t, the viceroy of Gia- nh-thành,

who up until that time had had, with the assent of Gia

Long, a virtually free hand in governing the six provinces

of southern Vietnam. This new development placed

Prangdarang in a particularly difficult position, especially

beginning in 1822 when Minh M nh detached Bình-thu n

from Gia- nh-thành and placed it under the direct control

of the court in Hu s a result, given the geographic

complexity of the territories of Bình-thu n and Thu n-

th nh, the latter was also cut off from Lê V n uy t, who

up until then had been its protector, and placed it under the

direct control of the emperor. From that point forward, and

against its wishes, Thu n-thành would be used by these

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132

two powerful individuals for internal Vietnamese political

ends.

This situation, and the death in of Ch ng C Po

Saong Nyung Ceng, whom the Cham chronicles identify as

the last of the rulers of Prangdarang, leads us to ask

whether this country, which already no longer possessed

any of the elements of sovereignty, still existed after this

date s a geographic matter, the answer is certainly

affirmative, ut as a political matter, it is much less so,

inasmuch as the manner of designating the successors of

this Ch ng C and the way they were treated, as well as

the title given to them, gives way to a degree of doubt.

Going against a well-established tradition, in choosing a

successor to Po Saong Nyung Ceng, Minh M nh passed

over his deputy, Po Klan Thu called Nguy n V n V nh y

the Vietnamese) and chose instead, without consulting the

Cham dignitaries – which was also a tradition – one of

these dignatiries, identified in the documents as Bait Lan,

who was instructed to implement a policy of “coha itation

between the inhabitants of [Pânduranga] and the

Vietnamese” It was no dou t this appointment, and this

mandate, and also perhaps the intervention of Lê V n

Duy t, which led to an insurrection in the order area of

Prangdarang and Gia- nh-thành. When Bait Lan was

unable to deal with the disturbance he was removed from

office by Minh M nh and replaced ar itrarily y Po Klan

Thu Nguy n V n V nh , whom he had previously passed

over However, in lieu of the title held to Po Saong Nyung

Ceng and his predecessors of Ch ng C , he was simply

designated Qu n-lý Thu n-thành (administrator of Thu n-

th nh , which relegated him to a rank that was purely

administrative in nature In Nguy n V n V nh, thanks

to support provided by Vietnamese troops, was able to

push the insurrectionists back to the mountainous regions

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in the west of Prangdarang ut it was only after Lê V n

Duy t intervened that they a andoned their struggle nd

they surrendered not to the court of Hu ut to the

authorities of Gia- nh-thành.

In 1826 a new uprising took place, directed this time

as much against Nguy n V n V nh, accused of siding with

the Vietnamese colonists who continued to dispossess the

Cham of their land and the Hu court which was

imposing crushing taxes) as against the Vietnamese living

in Prangdarang and Bình-thu n, starting once again in the

region of the order of Prangdarang with Gia- nh-th nh

The revolt spread as far as Kh nh-h a and Ph -yên, which,

following the initial failure of Nguy n V n V nh to

suppress it, led to the intervention of Vietnamese troops

who defeated the re els and captured their leader in

The following year Nguy n V n V nh died The viceroy of

Gia- nh-thành went into open opposition to the emperor

when it came to the matter of choosing his successor, since

each of the parties wanted his own man in place In the

event, it was Po Phaok The, also called Nguy n V n Th a

in the Vietnamese annals, the son of the former Ch ng C

Po Saong Nyung Ceng and the deputy of the deceased, but

above all the candidate of Lê V n uy t, who was chosen

in 1828 (Po Dharma, Le Panduranga (Campa) 1802-1835.

Ses rapports avec le Vietnam, I, Paris, Publications de

l‟ F O, vol CXLIX, , pp -118). There is no

documentary evidence of just how the decision was made,

whether it happened with or without the consent of Minh

M nh, or whether or not Po Phaok The ever requested

investiture from the emperor Whatever the case may e,

the end result was that the viceroy of Gia- nh-thành had

regained the control which he had lost in 1822 of Thu n-

thành, and no doubt of Bình-thu n as well Thus the Cham

dignitaries and the population found themselves aligned on

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134

the side of Lê V n uy t, to whom Po Phaok The would

thenceforth turn over the taxes which had previously been

sent to the court of Hu

The End of Thu n Thành-Prangdarang

lthough it had sided with Lê V n uy t in his

struggles against the emperor, and had practically roken

relations with Hu , Prangdarang gained a solutely nothing

from its loyalty to the viceroy. Indeed, Cham documents

indicate that vis- -vis the Cham, Lê V n uy t continued

the same policies of forced Vietnamization as had been

implemented by Minh M nh. This explains in part why

certain of the dignitaries of Prangdarang came to believe

that there was no longer any reason to cut it off from the

court of Hu , especially since the latter represented legal

sovereignty Towards the end of , they let their

opposition to the pro- Lê V n uy t policy of Po Thaok

The be known to the imperial court. Seeing that the

guardianship of Lê V n uy t was under challenge, the

royal palace promptly ordered the arrest of the

administrator of Thu n Th nh and demanded the payment

of the taxes which it had failed to remit to Hu

Po Phaok The was arrested by Minh M nh‟s men in

Soon afterwards, Lê V n uy t died. The emperor

then took control of the entire southern part of Vietnam and

proceded to punish Thu n Thành for having contested his

authority. Thus, the Vietnamese annals and the Cham

chronicles both note that in the 13th year of his reign

(1832) he dissolved all of the institutions of Prangdarang,

made its inhabitants subject solely to Vietnamese law

(CAM 30-8), and eliminated what remained of the country

from the map by dividing the territory into huy n and t ng,

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135

political subdivisions which were then made part of the

prefectures of Bình-thu n and Ninh-thu n.

Thu n Thành-Prangdarang thus finally ceased to exist

– geographically, politically, economically and socially –

as is shown in the following passage from the Cham

manuscript CAM 30-15 (p. 116):

“The king was dethroned The kingdom was

dismantled. The young were constrained from obeying

their elders. Nephews were obligated to cut their family

ties with their maternal uncles. Members of clans were

obliged to act like Vietnamese and [could even] bring legal

action against members of the family. Dignitaries, of

whatever title or whatever lineage, were forced to wear

Vietnamese pants [instead of sarongs]. The people suffered

greatly, and wondered if they had any future ”

After Thu n Thành-Prangdarang

Following the annexation of Thu n Th nh-

Prangdarang y Hu , its people ecame su ject to the

Vietnamese tax regime, which would have been acceptable

had they not also been required to make significant

payments in kind and in specie to the Vietnamese

mandarins for their personal profit. On top of this, the

people were required, illegally as well as legally, to

perform corvee labor.

Furthermore, much fertile land belonging to the Cham

was seized y the Vietnamese authorities, at times so

latantly that Hu was o liged to punish those responsi le,

as was the case in 1835 in the province of Bình-thu n ( i

am T c c n i n XVI, translation in Quoc-ngu,

Hanoi, 1966, p. 289). Subjected to arbitrary rule and

corruption on the part of the authorities, stripped of their

belongings and exploited by the Vietnamese immigrants, a

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136

number of Cham left the lowlands, where they had been

“turned into halun” CM - 1), and fled to the highlands,

or rose in revolt.

In 1833, at a time when revolts were breaking out in

various locations in Vietnam, a Khmer Moslem – we do

not know if he was a Malay or a Cham – who had returned

from an extended trip to Mecca organized an uprising of a

very singular nature in the area of the former Prangdarang

fter having esta lished himself in the upper regions of

onnai ng-nai), this Katip, whose name is given as

Sumat in the texts, gathered around him Chams and

Montagnards who wanted to liberate their land from

Vietnamese rule and oppression. But once these recruits

joined him – for the sole purpose of liberating their country

– he used what must have been his considerable powers of

persuasion to redirect their zeal towards the Islamization of

their country. To this end, he sent missionaries out to the

Churu and Raglai to convert them to this faith, and to the

Cham Bani to bring them into the orthodox Islam fold.

These missionary activities ran counter to Minh M nh‟s

policy of suppression of foreign religions, which he saw as

sowing disunity in his country, and produced the expected

reaction from the court C M - Katip Sumat‟s

response was to order his followers to take up arms against

Hu , which he accused of denigrating Islam and

obstructing the will of llah He then declared a “holy

war” jihad), promising his troops that they would have the

support of Allah as well as that of his own magical powers.

The uprising must have taken on significant proportions,

since the court, after having sent troops to the region, felt

obligated to arm the Vietnamese settlers as well. While the

latter took reprisals against the Cham villages of the

lowlands, whether or not they had participated in the

uprising, the regular army attacked the rebels who,

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137

demoralized by the fact that no god or magic powers had

come to their assistance, lost heart in the fight and were

crushed. They were forced to take refuge in the highlands,

and we have no information on the fate of the survivors, or

that of the Katip Sumat himself, who is mentioned in no

document dating from after the year 1833.

This setback did not discourage the inhabitants of ex-

Prangdarang, who attributed it to the fact that the Katip

Sumat had een leading a “holy war” which, given its

aims, was unlikely to gain much popular support, whereas

the entire population would have participated in a general

insurrection. Fortified with this analysis and the fact that

the people continued to suffer terribly from the exactions of

the Vietnamese, as shown in documents from the time, a

Katip of the ani faith from the Phan-thi t area named Ja

Thak Wa – identified as i n S in Vietnamese texts –

called on all of the people of the former Prangdarang,

regardless of their religious beliefs, to prepare to liberate

their country. In 1834 he organized a meeting in the

mountainous region in the west of the Vietnamese province

of Ninh-thu n and called on the people gathered there to

designate a king, a crown prince and a commanding

general to lead the nation which he planned to resuscitate

The assem ly designated as king – the i Nam Th c L c

Ch nh iên XVI Hanoi, states that it was i n S

who was behind the designation – a man from the Raglai

tribe, the spouse of the sister of the former deputy

administrator of Thu n Thành, called Po War Palei in the

Cham documents and La Bông in the Vietnamese annals. It

then designated a member of the Churu tribe as crown

prince and a Cham named Ja Yok Ai as commanding

general.

At the end of 1834, while the uprisings of the

Vietnamese were at their highest levels and a Siamese

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138

army was threatening the southern part of Vietnam, Ja

Thak Wa launched an attack eastward towards the coastal

areas of Ninh-thu n and Bình-thu n (CM 32-6). His troops

succeeded in destroying the Vietnamese military

installations ut were unsuccessful in li erating the Cham

population, terrorized y the representatives of the court of

Hu who, as disclosed in the Vietnamese annals, decreed

that anyone who participated in the rebellion would be

killed and his body cut into small pieces. Following the

initial campaign, Ja Thak Wa, realizing that he could not

achieve a decisive victory absent a general uprising of the

Cham and Montagnards, decreed in turn the severe

punishment of those who failed to espouse his cause. At the

beginning of 1835, together with his Churu and Raglai

troops, he commenced a second attack towards the coast

(CAM 30-17), directed as much against the Vietnamese of

Bình-thu n as against the Chams who had previously failed

to join the cause (Minh M n n u, V, Saigon, ,

p This time he was successful, with the re els

seizing the quasi-totality of the territory of the former

Prangdarang This prompted the court in Hu to send

additional troops to the region, promising rewards for each

rebel killed or captured. At the same time, in order to dry

up support for the rebels and bring the population back to

the government fold, Minh M nh ordered his mandarins to

refrain from mistreating or exploiting their subjects. This

was the situation when, while engaged in combat, the

Raglai “king”, Po Var Palei, was killed – in May 1835,

according to the Vietnamese annals. Soon thereafter, Ja

Thak Va was wounded in battle near Phan- rang and

captured and killed by the Vietnamese soldiers. Although

combat continued sporadically after the death of its two

leaders, the rebellion soon sputtered out and nearly all of

the rebels went home. Fierce repression against the former

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139

rebels, commencing in mid-1835, followed. Those who

were captured were killed, deported or enslaved their

villages were pillaged or urned To etter control the

Cham, the court in Hu then instituted a policy of

separating the Cham villages from each other and attaching

them to one or more villages of Vietnamese colonists.

Furthermore, all contact between Montagnards and the

Cham was forbidden, in order to insure that the Cham

would no longer be able to access the highlands – a region

which had regularly served as the starting point for anti-

Vietnamese insurgencies.

During the years that followed, the mandarins, but

more particularly the Vietnamese colonists under their

protection, continued the exploitation and subjugation of

the Cham – if one gives credence to the great number of

Cham manuscripts from this period which dwell on this

situation. Several small revolts did take place, apparently

limited to the areas of Phan-rang and Phan-rí, the best

known of which is that led by Biang Thang (CM37-29) in

the middle of the century. After this, calm seems to have

reigned in the region for several decades, up to the arrival

of the French in the province and especially that of E.

Aymonier, who in 1886 was appointed Resident of the

province of Bình-thu n, which at the time was under the

control of the C n V ng movement ymonier launched a

series of operations against the C n V ng which in a five-

week period succeeded in pacifying not only the province

of Bình-thu n but Ninh-thu n and Khánh-hòa as well (C.

Fourniau, Annam-Tonkin 1885-1896. Lettres et paysans

vietnamiens face à la conquête colonial, Paris,

L‟Harmattan, , pp -67). The Cham then rose

against the Vietnamese, whose oppression of the Cham had

never abated, and rallied to the side of Aymonier. He

provided the Cham villages with arms, and then allowed

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140

them to regroup and granted them a degree of

administrative autonomy, relieving them from Vietnamese

rule (CM60). Practically nothing was heard from the Cham

thereafter.

It was not until the period after 1955, when Vietnam

was divided into two separate states, that another series of

rebellions took place, led this time not by the Cham but by

the Montagnards of the former Prangdarang, principally the

Rhade (Ede), in whose lands the newly-established

Republic of Vietnam (South) settled a large number of

Vietnamese refugees fleeing from the part of the country

that had passed under communist rule. From the moment of

their arrival, these refugees proceeded to dispossess the

Montagnards of a part of their lands and treated them like

sub-humans – as their ancestors had done in the coastal

regions in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The

Montagnards responded by organizing a movement to

defend their rights and demand the restitution of their

lands: the Front de Liberation des Montagnards (FLM),

which in 1958 became the BAJARAKA movement.

However, with the authorities of south Vietnam refusing to

listen to their grievances and subject to ever- increasing

degrees of mistreatment by its army, some joined the

communist resistence (FLN) and others the Front de

Liberation du Champa/Front de Liberation des Haut

Plateaux de Champa (FLC/FLHPC), one of the three

components of the Front Unifié de Lutte des Races

Opprimees (FULRO). Beginning in 1964, this movement,

under its charismatic leader from the Rhade tribe, Y Bham

Enoul, engaged in battle with the army of south Vietnam,

with a degree of success – in it took over the province

of arlac c-l c – while at the same time seeking, in

vain as it turned out, a modus vivendi with the Saigon

government that would assure the survival of the

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141

Montagnards (Po Dharma and Mak Phoeun, Du FLM au

FULRO, Paris, Les Indes savants, 2006). This movement

would disappear in 1968, the victim of foreign

intervention.

AFTERWORD

One cannot bring a conclusion to an introduction to Champa without referencing once again the fact that, for reasons attributable in part to geography, the population of the country was never large, either in the lowlands or in the mountainous regions, or either during the Indianized era or during the period of “indigenous” Champa. This constituted a handicap, and all the more because the populations of its immediate neighbors, and particularly the Vietnamese, were regularly growing.

During the Indianized era, although beginning in the 10th century the country began to engage in conflicts with the Vietnamese (who had just recovered their independence from China), the territory and population remained fairly stable inasmuch as the Dai Viet kings, even when victorious over Champa, manifested no desire either to annex territory or to expel the indigenous people and replace them with Vietnamese settlers. This ceased to be the case beginning in 1471, when the Le kings seized all of the northern territories of Champa which could be absorbed and either killed or expelled the indigenous population of Vijaya, replacing them with Vietnamese. This period of expansion of the Vietnamese nation to the south would develop in intensity starting in the 16th century, when little by little the Nguyen lords attacked all of the areas still inhabited by the Cham and seized their lands. Along with

Afterword

144

this they imposed their socio-political organization on the vanquished people, subjected them to crushing tax and corvee labor burdens and treated them like sub-humans—conditions mentioned in all of the Cham language archives and not contradicted by Vietnamese sources. Actions taken by the Vietnamese administration and settlers led to a collapse in Cham population numbers, which at the end of the 19th century was approximately 40,000. The Cham were saved from complete extinction by the colonization of Indochina by the French who, by providing protection to ethnic minorities, created the conditions for an increase in the population of the Cham of the coastal region of central Vietnam to approximately 60,000 by the middle of the 20th century.

After this brief period of relative calm, the ethnic minority groups of the southern part of Vietnam would once more find themselves the victims of Vietnamese racism with the coming to power of Ngo Dinh Diem in 1955. This dictator started with the Cham, with policies aimed at the Vietnamization of those who had not already been Vietnamized. He then turned his attention to the montagnard highlands, which up until then, thanks to its reputation as an unhealthy region, had previously been of no interest to the Vietnamese, and instituted policies aimed at reducing the proto-Indochinese population to second-class citizens and restricting their numbers through programs whereby lands were taken from the montagnards and given to his Roman Catholic coreligionists--fleeing from the north Vietnam-based Democratic Republic of Vietnam--whose treatment of the montagnards became progressively worse over time. The displacement of populations to the benefit of the Vietnamese and detriment of the montagnards continued following the victory of the north over the south in 1975, and was accelerated by the

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145

arrival in the highlands of new Vietnamese immigrants from the overpopulated deltas of central and northern Vietnam. Although this is contrary to the official pronouncements of the Socialist Republic Vietnam, it is evident in the montagnard uprisings which have taken place in the highlands, notably those of 2001 and 2004.

For a half century, the proto-Indochinese have been subjected to the same process of elimination as that used to evict the Cham from the coastal lands. It is thus worth asking what kind of future they have, and whether over the long term they are not destined to disappear, as are the Cham of central Vietnam.

As regards the situation in Cambodia, it would appear from official Khmer documents, containing statistical studies carried out since the end of the 20th century, that the number of Cham living in the country has been in steady decline. However, on closer investigation, it is readily apparent that they had not physically disappeared: they simply went from one category to another in the official classification of the kingdom’s ethnic groups. We have already seen that the Cambodian Cham, who have been geographically intermingled with the Malays of the country, were, under the latter’s influence, long ago converted to orthodox Islam of the Sunni persuasion. Furthermore, the Islamist movements which sprung up in the Muslim countries of western Asia at the end of the 20th century have expanded to the Far East and through the activities of missionaries from the Middle East, Pakistan and Malaysia have made efforts to persuade believers in Southeast Asia to become adherents to these movements. These reformist movements lead their followers to strict observance in their religious practices and to see themselves not as members of any ethnic group but rather, and solely, as Muslims. These efforts have met with some

Afterword

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success, with an ever-increasing number of the Cham in Cambodia turning away from their ethnic identity, which poses the question of whether, under these external influences, these Cham will survive as a distinct ethnic group. Given the dynamism of Islam in the region, one wonders how much longer the Cham will continue to be included in the list of the country’s minority groups, rather than simply as Muslims, as ever greater numbers of the Cambodian Cham, under pressure from the Islamists, have demanded.