Champa

Champa ( Cham: ꨌꩌꨛꨩ; km, ចាម្ប៉ា; vi, Chiêm Thành or ) were a collection of independent Cham polities that extended across the coast of what is contemporary central and southern Vietnam from approximately the 2nd century AD until 1832, when it was annexed by the Vietnamese Empire under its emperor Minh Mạng. The kingdom was known variously as ''Nagaracampa'' ( sa, नगरचम्पः), ''Champa'' (ꨌꩌꨛꨩ) in modern Cham, and ''Châmpa'' () in the Khmer inscriptions, ''Chiêm Thành'' in Vietnamese and ''Zhànchéng'' (Mandarin: 占城) in Chinese records.

The Kingdoms of Champa and the Chams contribute profound and direct impacts to the history of Vietnam, Southeast Asia, as well as their present day. Early Champa, evolved from local seafaring Austronesian Chamic Sa Huỳnh culture off the coast of modern-day Vietnam. The emergence of Champa at the late 2nd century AD shows testimony of early Southeast Asian statecrafting and crucial stage of the making of Southeast Asia. The peoples of Champa had been established and maintained a vast system of lucrative trade networks across the region, connecting the Indian Ocean and Eastern Asia, until the 17th century. In Champa, historians also witness the first and oldest native Southeast Asian language literature being written down around 350 AD, predating first Khmer, Mon, Malay texts by centuries.

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. 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 (Vietnamese), or Linyi (, Middle Chinese ( ZS): *''liɪm ʔˠiɪp̚''), 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 AD. 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 (''Ni tục'', from Arabic: Bani). There are, however, the Bacam (''Bacham'', Chiêm tục) who still retain and preserve their Hindu faith, rituals, and festivals. The ''Bacam'' is one of only two surviving non- Indic indigenous Hindu peoples in the world, with a culture dating back thousands of years. The other being the Balinese Hinduism of the Balinese of Indonesia.

Etymology

The name ''Champa'' derived from the Sanskrit word (pronounced ), which refers to ''Magnolia champaca'', a species of flowering tree known for its fragrant flowers.

Recent 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'' (pa–abbreviation of ''peśvara'', ''Campādeśa'', ''Campānagara''). 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

Sources

The historiography of Champa relies upon four types of sources:
* Physical remains, including ruins as well as stone sculptures;
* Inscriptions in Cham and Sanskrit on steles and other stone surfaces;
* Chinese and Vietnamese annals, diplomatic reports, and other literature such as those provided by Jia Dan;
* Historiography of modern Cham people.

The Cham have their written records in form of paper book, known as the ''Sakkarai dak rai patao'', was a 5227-pages collection of Cham veritable records, documenting a history range from early legendary kings of 11th–13th century, to the deposition of Po Thak The, the last king of Panduranga in 1832, reckoning in total 39 rulers of Panduranga from Adam, the tales of spread of Islam to Champa in 1000 AD, to Po Thak The. The annals were written in Akhar Thrah (traditional) Cham script with collection of Cham and Vietnamese seals imprinted by Vietnamese rulers. However, it had been dismissed for a long time by scholars until Po Dharma. Cham literature also have been greatly preserved in approximately more than 3,000 Cham manuscripts and printed books dating from the 16th to 20th centuries. The Southeast Asia Digital Library (SEADL) at Northern Illinois University currently contains an extensive collection of 977 digitized Cham manuscripts, totaling more than 57,800 pages of multigenre content.

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 AD, it is richest for Vijaya; following the 15th century AD, 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.Early colonial era scholars and later DRV and SRV authors treated Champa as a single, unified political body. New academic works on Cham studies begun in late 1980s revised this notion. The majority of scholarship now at least agree that Champa was a series of dynamic coexisting, overlapping polyethnic kingdoms and small principalities.Previous histories of Champa such as Étienne Aymonier's 1889 ''Tschampa'' and Georges Maspero's 1910 ''The Kingdom of Champa'' had provided the ground academic understanding of Champa for almost a century. Maspero represented Champa as a single, unified kingdom, with the Cham explicitly made up nearly entire of its demographics. He also presented a list of 14 presumably Cham dynasties dating back to the 2nd century.

History

Sources of foreign cultural influence

Through the centuries, Cham culture and society were influenced by forces emanating from Cambodia, China, Java and India amongst others.The majority of colonial era scholarship had popularized a generic orientalist assumption that Southeast Asian history has always been profoundly driven by "external forces" from the civilizations of India and China. By this narrative, Champa was glimpsed as a merely shadow, "cultural zone" of Indian civilization.Some of the colonial era scholars and Indologist often favored the "Champa kingdom" when it maintained strong affirmation with Indian influence such as Hinduism, and showed less interest when Indianized features in Champa began declining by the 11th century as the Cham appeared having tendencies toward localization and Islam. The shrink of Indian traces in Champa (''or'' the downfall of Cham civilization) was assumed through the eyes of some colonial-era French researchers (such as Jeanne Leuba) as the corruption of pure Hinduism and Buddhism due to syncreticizing with local traditions. Leuba also took blame on Islam for the decline of Champa.Along with a global renewal of Cham studies in the late 1980s, a group of French academics favored a reevaluation/redefinition the importance of Cham and indigenous history in the making of Southeast Asia. This trend rejected earlier colonial-era scholarship's Eurocentric framework "externalist thesis" for denying and downplaying indigenous Southeast Asian civilizations, slamming them as deliberate attempts to justify colonialism. Lâm Ấp, a predecessor state in the region, began its existence in AD 192 as a breakaway Chinese colony. An official successfully revolted against Chinese rule in central Vietnam, and Lâm Ấp was founded in AD 192. In the 4th century AD, wars with the neighbouring Kingdom of Funan in Cambodia and the acquisition of Funanese territory led to the infusion of Indian culture into Cham society. Sanskrit was adopted as a scholarly language, and Hinduism, especially Shaivism, became the state religion. Starting from the 10th century AD, the Arab maritime trade introduces Islamic cultural and religious influences to the region. Although Hinduism was the predominant religion among the Cham people until the 16th century, Islam began to attract large numbers of Chams, when some members of the Cham royalty converted to Islam in the 17th century. Champa came to serve as an important link in the spice trade, which stretched from the Persian Gulf to South China, and later in the Arab maritime routes in Mainland Southeast Asia as a supplier of aloe.

Despite the frequent wars between the Cham and the Khmer, the two nations also traded and their cultural influences moved in the same directions. Since royal families of the two countries intermarried frequently. Champa also had close trade and cultural relations with the powerful maritime empire of Srivijaya and later with the Majapahit of the Malay Archipelago, its easternmost trade relations being with the kingdoms of Butuan and Sulu in the Philippines.

Evidence gathered from linguistic studies around Aceh confirms that a very strong Chamic cultural influence existed in Indonesia; this is indicated by the use of the Chamic language Acehnese as the main language in the coastal regions of Aceh. Linguists believe the Acehnese language, a descendant of the Proto-Chamic language, separated from the Chamic tongue sometime in the 1st millennium AD. Some argue that Acehnese originated from Chamic dispersal after a Vietnamese invasion in 982 AD. Tsat, a northern Chamic language spoken by the Utsul on the Hainan Island, is speculated to be separated from Cham at the time when contact between Champa and Islam had grown considerably, but precise details remain inadequate. Under Chinese language influence over Hainan, Tsat has become fully monosyllabic, while some certain shifts to monosyllabicity can be observed in Eastern Cham (in contact with Vietnamese). Eastern Cham has developed a quasi-registral, incipiently tonal system. After the fall of Vijaya Champa in 1471, another group of Cham and Chamic might have moved west, forming Haroi, which has reversal Bahnaric linguistic influences. However, scholarly views on the precise nature of Aceh-Chamic relations vary.

Founding legend

According to Cham folk legends, Champa was founded by Lady Po Nagar–the divide mother goddess of the kingdom. She came from the moon and arrived in Central Vietnam and found 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. Her portrayal image in the temple is said dating from 965 AD, is of a commanding personage seated cross-legged upon a throne. She is also worshiped by the Vietnamese, a tradition dates back to the 11th century during the Ly dynasty period.

Formation and growth

The people of Champa descended from seafaring settlers who reached the Southeast Asian mainland from Borneo about the time of the Sa Huỳnh culture between 1000 BC and 200 AD, 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 centered around present-day Central Vietnam coastal region. During its heyday, the culture distributed across the Central Vietnam coast and has commercial links across the South China sea to the other side in the Philippines archipelago and even with Taiwan (through Maritime Jade Road, Sa Huynh-Kalanay Interaction Sphere), which now most archaeologists and scholars have consentient determined and 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 and carry the patrilineal Han Chinese O-M7 haplogroup, 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. Analysis of Vietnamese Kinh people's genetics show that within the last 800 years there was mixture between a Malay-like southern Asian and a Chinese ancestral component that happens to fit the time period in which Kinh expanded south from their Red River Delta homeland in the ''nam tiến'' (lit. 'southward advance') process, which also matches the event 700 years ago when the Cham population suffered massive losses. With the exception of Cham who are Austronesian speaking and Mang who are Austroasiatic speaking, the southern Han Chinese and all other ethnic groups in Vietnam share ancestry.

To the Han Chinese, the country of Champa was known as 林邑 '' Linyi'' in Mandarin and ''Lam Yap'' in Cantonese and to the Vietnamese, ''Lâm Ấp'' (which is the Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation of 林邑). It was founded in 192 AD.Historians like Vickery criticize the use of Chinese and Vietnamese sources uncritically in reconstructing the history of Champa.

Around the 4th century AD, Cham polities began to absorb much of Indic influences, probably through its neighbor, 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 380 to 413 AD. 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 (r. 413–?) of Champa was pe