HISTORY OF CHAMPA
HE CHAM HINDUS OF VIETNAM ARE AN ALMOST FORGOTTEN PEOPLE, remnants of the Cham dynasty which endured in the region now known as central Vietnam from the 7th century well into the 19th. Yet they are 60,000 strong, and they have kept their traditions alive for centuries, far from India’s shores. Builders of cities named Indrapura, Simhapura, Amaravati, Vijaya and Panduranga, these Hindu people and their culture continue to flourish to this day. When we speak of the Champa people, it is not a trek through history; we are speaking of a living culture with roots going back thousands of years.
the Cham are Vietnam’s only surviving Hindus, the nation once harbored some of the world’s most exquisite and vibrant Hindu cultures. The entire region of Southeast Asia, in fact, was home to numerous Hindu kingdoms. The many magnificient temples and artifacts, from Angkor Wat to Prambana, remain as potent testimonials to their splendor and accomplishments. These grand edifices still stand, though the societies around them no longer worship there or practice the lost traditions.
Champa was a formidible Hindu kingdom, renowned
for its immense wealth and sophisticated culture. Its major port was
Kattigara. Nearly 2,000 years ago, Claudius Ptolemy wrote of Cattigara and outlined it on his map of the world. Modern scholarship has confirmed Cattigara as the forerunner of Saigon (modern day Ho Chi Minh City). Cattigara was, in fact, the main port at the mouth of the Mekong River, a name derived from Mae Nam Khong, the Mother Water Ganga.
S. Swaminathan, author of a blog called Ancient Sanskrit Inscriptions in Strange Places,
wrote, “The first Cham king that history knows is Sri Maran, identified
as a Tamil ruler. The fact that a Pandyan king ruled Vietnam was missed
by many historians. Translated into Tamil it is Thiru Maran.
Several Pandyan kings by these names are spoken of in inscriptions and
Tamil sangam literature. The oldest Sanksrit inscription discovered in
Vietnam mentions the name of Sri Maran. The inscription is known as the
Vo-Canch inscription.”
Another early Champa king was Bhadravarman, who ruled from 349-361CE.
His capital was the citadel of Simhapura or ‘Lion City,’ now called Tra
Kieu. Badravarman built a number of temples, conquered his rivals,
ruled well and in his final years abdicated his throne and spent his
last days in India on the banks of the Ganges River.
Historic Champa was divided into five regions.
Indrapura (present-day Dong Duong) served as the religious center of the
kingdom; Amaravati is the present day Quong Nam province; Vijya is now
Cha Ban; Kauthara is the modern Nha Trang; and Panduranga is known today
simply as Phan. Panduranga was the last Cham territory to be conquered
by the Sino-Vietnamese.
Few know that Christopher Columbus, on his
fourth and last voyage, had attempted to reach the Champa Kingdom and
actually believed he had reached Vietnam. In ancient days well-worn
trade routes had linked Europe with India and the entire region of South
and Southeast Asia, and for countless centuries the wealth and wisdom
of India had flowed to the markets and institutions of the world. By the
1400s, however, political instability had disrupted direct trade links
with India and the West. Columbus was convinced that by sailing west
from Spain he could circle the globe—a concept ridiculed by most
Europeans, who still believed the Earth was flat—and thus find a new
trade route and reestablish the long-lost link to the wealth of the
East. His planned route would take him south along the Vietnamese coast,
past the Cape of Kattigara and on to Malacca; he believed this to be
the route Marco Polo had followed from China to India in 1292. Reaching
Cariay on the coast of Costa Rica, he thought he had found Vietnam and
was very close to one of his coveted destinations, the famous gold mines
of the Champa Kingdom. Fortunately for Vietnam, he was mistaken.
Another Vietnamese Hindu kingdom was Funan,
which flourished between the 1st and 6th centuries ce. Its capital was
the Oc Eo Citadel. While exploring sea passages to India in the year 250
ce, two Chinese envoys, Kang Dai and Zhu Ying, described Funan as
“having its own taxation system, ruled by a king in a walled palace.”
Professor Louis Malleret has unearthed much evidence of significant
seaborne trade between Oc Eo, Persia and Rome.
Vast Temple Complexes
In ancient times the Champa built vast temple
complexes that remain standing to this day. Primarily dedicated to Lord
Siva, these structures honor Lord Siva as the founder and protector of
the Champa Dynasty. The most important of these is known as My Son, a
Hindu religious and literary center. Originally, this temple complex
featured 70 structures, of which 25 survive. Sadly, the main tower was
severely damaged by American bombers in 1969 during the Vietnam War.
The Sivalinga was the primary form worshiped at
My Son, its aniconic form also representing the divine authority of the
Siva-empowered king. Today the Cham people continue to worship this form
of Lord Siva.
The site of the ancient Son Tien Tu pagoda, atop
Mt. Ba, is still considered to be one of the most spiritual and sacred
places in all of Vietnam. There, on a three-meter-high granite rock, is
the ban chan tien, a footprint belonging to a God who “set his
footstep on soft land at the dawn of humankind.” Located nearby is the
recently opened Archaeology Museum of the Oc Eo Culture, designed to
replicate a large Sivalingam and yoni. Its walls are lined with seated
Ganesh murtis.
The history of Champa begins in prehistory with the migration of the ancestors of the Cham people to mainland Southeast Asia and the founding of their Indianized maritime kingdom based in what is now central Vietnam in the early centuries AD, and ends when the final vestiges of the kingdom were annexed and absorbed by Vietnam in 1832.
the people of Champa were descended from settlers who reached the Southeast Asian mainland from Borneo about the time of the Sa Huỳnh culture, though genetic evidence points to exchanges with India.[1]:317 Sa Huỳnh sites are rich in iron artifacts, by contrast with the Đông Sơn culture sites found in northern Vietnam and elsewhere in mainland Southeast Asia, where bronze artifacts are dominant. The Cham language is part of the Austronesian family. According to one study, Cham is related most closely to modern Acehnese.[2]
Cham tradition claims that the founder of the Cham state was Lady Po Nagar. She originated from Khánh Hòa Province, in a peasant family in the mountains of Dai An. Spirits assisted her when she sailed on a drift piece of sandalwood to China, where she married a Chinese crown prince, the son of the Emperor of China, with whom she had two children. She then became Queen of Champa.[3] When she returned to Champa to visit her family, the Prince refused to let her go, but she flung the sandalwood into the ocean, disappeared with her children and reappeared at Nha Trang to her family. When the Chinese prince tried to follow her back to Nha Trang, she was furious and turned him and his fleet into stone
The Sa Huỳnh culture was a late prehistoric metal age society on the central coast of Viet Nam. In 1909, urns containing cremated remains and grave goods were discovered at Thanh Duc, near Sa Huỳnh, a coastal village located south of Da Nang. Since then, many more burials have been found, from Huế to the Đồng Nai river delta. The jar burials contain bronze mirrors, coins, bells, bracelets, axes and spearheads, iron spearheads, knives and sickles, and beads made of gold, glass, carnelian, agate and nephrite. Radiocarbon dating of the Sa Huỳnh culture remains range from 400 BC to the first or second century AD. The Sa Huỳnh exchanged items along maritime trade routes with Taiwan and the Philippines. "At present, the consensus of all evidence points to a relatively late intrusive settlement of this region by sea from Borneo, a move which stimulated the rise Sa Huỳnh, and then the development of the Cham states." [1]:211–217
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