Champa
Champa was a collection of independent Cham polities that extended across the coast of what is present-day central and southern Vietnam from approximately the 2nd century AD until 1832.
According to earliest historical references found in ancient sources, the first Cham polities were established around the 2nd to 3rd centuries AD, in the wake of Khu Liên's rebellion against the rule of China's Eastern Han dynasty, and lasted until when the final remaining principality of Champa was annexed by Emperor Minh Mạng of the Vietnamese Nguyễn dynasty as part of the expansionist Nam tiến policy. The kingdom was known variously as Nagaracampa, Champa in modern Cham, and Châmpa in the Khmer inscriptions, Chiêm Thành in Vietnamese, Campa in Malay, Zhànchéng in Chinese records, and al-Ṣanf in Middle Eastern Muslim records.
Early Champa evolved from the seafaring Austronesian Chamic Sa Huỳnh culture off the coast of modern-day Vietnam. Its emergence in the late 2nd century AD exemplifies early Southeast Asian statecraft at a crucial stage of the making of Southeast Asia. The peoples of Champa maintained a system of lucrative trade networks across the region, connecting the Indian Ocean and Eastern Asia, until the 17th century. In Champa, historians also found the Đông Yên Châu inscription, the oldest known native Southeast Asian literature written in a native Southeast Asian language dating to around 350 AD, predating first Khmer, Mon, Malay texts by centuries.
Scholarly consensus has shifted several times as to what degree Champa functioned as a unified polity. Originally being viewed as a unified kingdom throughout most of its history, later authors suggested that Champa was better considered to be a federation of independent states. A number of modern scholars have suggested that Champa did form a unified kingdom in some periods but was disunited in others.
The Chams of modern Vietnam and Cambodia are the major remnants of this former kingdom. They speak Chamic languages, a subfamily of Malayo-Polynesian closely related to the Malayic and Bali–Sasak languages that is spoken throughout maritime Southeast Asia. Although Cham culture is usually intertwined with the broader culture of Champa, the kingdom had a multiethnic population, which consisted of Austronesian Chamic-speaking peoples that made up the majority of its demographics. The people who used to inhabit the region are the present-day Chamic-speaking Cham, Rade and Jarai peoples in South and Central Vietnam and Cambodia; the Acehnese from Northern Sumatra, Indonesia, along with elements of Austroasiatic Bahnaric and Katuic-speaking peoples in Central Vietnam.
Champa was preceded in the region by a kingdom called Lâm Ấp, or Linyi, that was in existence since 192 AD; although the historical relationship between Linyi and Champa is not clear. Champa reached its apogee in the 9th and 10th centuries CE. Thereafter, it began a gradual decline under pressure from Đại Việt, the Vietnamese polity centered in the region of modern Hanoi. In 1832, the Vietnamese emperor Minh Mạng annexed the remaining Cham territories.
Hinduism, adopted through conflicts and conquest of territory from neighboring Funan in the 4th century AD, shaped the art and culture of the Cham Kingdom for centuries, as testified by the many Cham Hindu statues and red brick temples that dotted the landscape in Cham lands. Mỹ Sơn, a former religious center, and Hội An, one of Champa's main port cities, are now World Heritage Sites. Today, many Cham people adhere to Islam, a conversion which began in the 10th century, with the ruling dynasty having fully adopted the faith by the 17th century; they are called the Bani. There are, however, the Bacam who still retain and preserve their Hindu faith, rituals, and festivals. The Bacam are one of the few surviving non-Indic indigenous Hindu peoples in the world, with a culture dating back thousands of years. The other being the Balinese Hindus of the Balinese people and Tengger Hindus of the Javanese people in Indonesia.
Etymology
The name Champa derived from the Sanskrit word , which refers to Magnolia champaca, a species of flowering tree known for its fragrant flowers. Rolf Stein proposed that Champa might have been inspired when Austronesian sailors originating from Central Vietnam arrived in present-day Eastern India around the area of Champapuri, an ancient sacred city in Buddhism, for trade, then adopted the name for their people back in their homeland. While Louis Finot argued that the name Champa was brought by Indians to Central Vietnam.Other academics however dispute the Indic origin explanation, which was conceived by Louis Finot, a colonial-era board director of the École française d'Extrême-Orient. In his 2005 Champa revised, Michael Vickery challenges Finot's idea. He argues that the Cham people always refer themselves as Čaṃ rather than Champa. Most indigenous Austronesian ethnic groups in Central Vietnam such as the Rade, Jarai, Chru, Roglai peoples call the Cham by similar lexemes which likely derived from Čaṃ. Vietnamese historical accounts also have the Cham named as Chiêm. Most importantly, the official designation of Champa in Chinese historical texts was Zhànchéng – meaning "the city of the Cham," "why not city of the Champa?," Vickery doubts.
Historiography
Overarching theories
Modern scholarship has been guided by two competing theories in the historiography of Champa. Scholars agree that historically Champa was divided into several regions or principalities spread out from south to north along the coast of modern Vietnam and united by a common language, culture, and heritage. It is acknowledged that the historical record is not equally rich for each of the regions in every historical period. For example, in the 10th century AD, the record is richest for Indrapura; in the 12th century, it is richest for Vijaya; following the 15th century, it is richest for Panduranga. Some scholars have taken these shifts in the historical record to reflect the movement of the Cham capital from one location to another. According to such scholars, if the 10th-century record is richest for Indrapura, it is so because at that time Indrapura was the capital of Champa. Other scholars have disputed this contention, holding that Champa was never a united country, and arguing that the presence of a particularly rich historical record for a given region in a given period is no basis for claiming that the region functioned as the capital of a united Champa during that period.History
Founding legend
According to Cham folk legends, Champa was founded by Lady Po Nagar–the divine mother goddess of the kingdom. She came from the Moon, arrived in modern Central Vietnam and founded the kingdom, but a typhoon drifted her away and left her stranded on the coast of China, where she married a Chinese prince, and returned to Champa. The Po Nagar temple built in Nha Trang during the 8th century, and rebuilt in the 11th century was dedicated to her. Her portrayal image in the temple is said to date from 965, it is of a commanding personage seated cross-legged upon a throne. She is also worshiped by the Vietnamese, a tradition that dates back to the 11th century during the Ly dynasty period.Formation and growth
The Chams descended from seafaring settlers who reached the Southeast Asian mainland from Borneo about the time of the Sa Huỳnh culture between 1000 BC and AD 200, the predecessor of the Cham kingdom. The Cham language is part of the Austronesian family. According to one study, Cham is related most closely to modern Acehnese in northern Sumatra.The Sa Huỳnh culture was an Austronesian seafaring culture that centred around present-day Central Vietnam coastal region. During its heyday, the culture distributed across the Central Vietnam coast and had commercial links across the South China Sea with the Philippine archipelago and even with Taiwan, which now most archaeologists and scholars have consentient determined and are no longer hesitant in linking with the ancestors of the Austronesian Cham and Chamic-speaking peoples.
While Northern Vietnam Kinh people assimilated Han Chinese immigrants into their population, have a sinicized culture, Cham people carry the patrilineal R-M17 haplogroup of South Asian Indian origin from South Asian merchants spreading Hinduism to Champa and marrying Cham females since Chams have no matrilineal South Asian mtDNA, and this fits with the matrilocal structure of Cham families. And compared to other Vietnamese ethnic groups, the Cham do not share ancestry with southern Han Chinese, along with Austronesian-speaking Mang.
Champa was known to the Chinese as 林邑 Linyi in Mandarin, Lam Yap in Cantonese and to the Vietnamese, Lâm Ấp. The state of Champa was founded in AD 192 by Khu Liên, an official of the Eastern Han dynasty of China in Xianglin who rebelled against Chinese rule in 192.
Around the 4th century AD, Cham polities began to absorb much of Indic influences, probably through its neighbour, Funan. Hinduism was established as Champa began to create Sanskrit stone inscriptions and erect red brick Hindu temples. The first king acknowledged in the inscriptions is Bhadravarman, who reigned from AD 380 to 413. At Mỹ Sơn, King Bhadravarman established a linga called Bhadresvara, whose name was a combination of the king's own name and that of the Hindu god of gods Shiva. The worship of the original god-king under the name Bhadresvara and other names continued through the centuries that followed.
Being famously known as skillful sailors and navigators, as early as the 5th century AD, the Cham might have reached India by themselves. King Gangaraja of Champa was perhaps the only known Southeast Asian ruler who traveled all the way to India shortly after his abdication. He personally went on pilgrimage in the Ganges River, Northeast India. His itinerary was confirmed by both indigenous Cham sources and Chinese chronicles. George Coedès notes that during the 2nd and 3rd century, an influx of Indian traders, priests, and scholars travelled along the early East Asia–South Asian subcontinent maritime route, could have visited and made communications with local Chamic communities along the coast of Central Vietnam. They played some roles in disseminating Indian culture and Buddhism. But that was not sustained and decisive as active "Indianized native societies," he argues, or Southeast Asian kingdoms that had already been "Indianized" like Funan, were the key factors of the process. On the other hand, Paul Mus suggests the reason for the peaceful acceptance of Hinduism by the Cham elite was likely related to the tropical monsoon climate background shared by areas like the Bay of Bengal, coastal mainland Southeast Asia all the way from Myanmar to Vietnam. Monsoon societies tended to practice animism, most importantly, the creed of earth spirit. To the early Southeast Asian peoples, Hinduism was somewhat similar to their original beliefs. This resulted in peaceful conversions to Hinduism and Buddhism in Champa with little resistance.
Rudravarman I of Champa, a descendant of Gangaraja through maternal line, became king of Champa in 529. During his reign, the temple complex of Bhadresvara was destroyed by a great fire in 535/536. He was succeeded by his son Sambhuvarman. He reconstructed the temple of Bhadravarman and renamed it Shambhu-bhadreshvara. In 605, the Sui Empire launched an invasion of Lam Ap, overrunning Sambhuvarman's resistance, and sacked the Cham capital at Tra Kieu. He died in 629 and was succeeded by his son, Kandarpadharma, who died in 630–31. Kandarpadharma was succeeded by his son, Prabhasadharma, who died in 645.