The Kingdom of Champa by Professor Pièrre-Bernard Lafont

Champaka 13

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: champaka.info@club-internet.fr Web: http://www.champaka.info

Publishing House International Office of Champa (IOC-Champa) PO Box 28024, Anaheim, CA 92809, USA

© Champaka 2014 e Cover : Devi, Hương Quế, Quang Nam, 10 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- PopulationHistoire” 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 12

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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 premodern 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.

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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 mng, ia-lai (the Pleiku plateau , and c-l c ( arlac , shows that these regions

Geography

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 12831285 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 18

Geography

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 ivân 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 ngnam 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, 19

Geography

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 20

Geography

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 21

Geography

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, 22

Geography

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 23

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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 (Brahyang, 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 24

Geography

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 (Côngtum), 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 25

Geography

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 ( nd 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 26

Geography

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 27

Geography

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 (Phanthi 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 protoIndochinese 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 28

Geography

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 everdecreasing 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 29

Geography

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.

30

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

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.

32

Population

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 Bìnhthu 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 33

Population

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.

34

Population

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-andburn 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

35

Population

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 36

Population

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 37

Population

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 protohistorical 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 38

Population

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 39

Population

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.

40

Population

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 41

Population

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 42

Population

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 43

Population

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. 157171). 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 44

Population

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 45

Population

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 ThànhPrangdarang, 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.

46

Population

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 47

Population

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 48

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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 49

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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 Phanrang (CM 22-4) a buffalo is sacrificed in thanksgiving to the spirits of the irrigation works and every seven years a 50

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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 trimĂťrti 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 51

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and the foam of the sea, was the creator of land (CAM 573), 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 AhiĂŠr 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

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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 53

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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 54

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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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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 ngd 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 56

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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 57

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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 58

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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 59

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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, 60

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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 62

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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 63

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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 BrahmanoKsatriya 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 high64

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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 ngd 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. JacqHergoualc’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 66

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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 AhiĂŠr, 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 67

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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 68

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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 Bìnhthu 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 69

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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 70

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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 71

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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 72

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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 73

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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 goldbearing 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 ngd ng which H Parmentier and C Carpeaux would begin 74

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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 75

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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. 197202), 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 76

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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 Ninhthu 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. 6869). 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 basreliefs, 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 77

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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 78

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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 79

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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 80

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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 81

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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 95082

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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 83

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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. 108123), 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.

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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 Namti 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 87

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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 88

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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 89

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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 92

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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 93

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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 94

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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 95

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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 ngd 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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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 97

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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 98

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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 99

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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 athiên 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 Nhatrang. 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 100

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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 semiautonomous territories that were parts of these principalities and which themselves were constantly seeking greater autonomy if not outright independence.

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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 nglong (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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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 Nhatrang 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 103

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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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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, Vidhy창nandana, who had lived at Angkor since the prime of his youth, following a form of Mah창y창na 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 S청ryajayavarmadeva. 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 105

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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 VidhyânandanaSûryavarmadeva 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 106

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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 107

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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, 108

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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 109

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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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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 111

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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 112

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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 dâ€&#x; 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. 275298). 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 Ngaâ€&#x;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 chm 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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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 114

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– 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 115

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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 Tn -yên), they pulled up at the top of Cap 116

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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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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 118

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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 119

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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 (PLafont, “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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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 121

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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 122

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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 123

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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 (Phanrí) which had been the capital of the country since , and captured Po Saut Ph -xu n then changed the name of 124

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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 Phanrang, 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 125

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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 126

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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 127

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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 Bìnhthu 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 128

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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 Phanrang – 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 129

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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 130

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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 IVI, 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 nth 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 131

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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 nth 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 132

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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 nthành, and no doubt of Bình-thu n as well Thus the Cham dignitaries and the population found themselves aligned on 133

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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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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 nhPrangdarang 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 135

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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, 136

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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 exPrangdarang, 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 137

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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 138

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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 antiVietnamese 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 fiveweek 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 139

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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 140

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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.

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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

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 secondclass 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 144

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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 145

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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.

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