The Champa Civilization (192 BCE – 1832 CE)

For almost two thousand years the central Vietnamese coast was governed not by the Vietnamese but by the Cham, a Malayo-Polynesian people whose kingdoms collectively form what historians call Champa. Their brick sanctuaries still dot the landscape from Quảng Bình to Bình Thuận.

Background

The Cham spoke an Austronesian language related to those of the Malay Archipelago and arrived in mainland South-East Asia in prehistoric times. By the late centuries BCE their communities along the central coast had developed maritime trade links across the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. From early in the common era they adopted Indian religious and political ideas, becoming a deeply Hinduised culture.

The traditional founding date of Champa is 192 CE, when a local leader named Khu Liên rose against the Chinese commandery of Rinan and established an independent polity called Lâm Ấp. Later Cham historiography traces the royal lineage back further, to a figure called Sri Mara active around 192 BCE, and many overviews follow that earlier date.

What happened

Champa was rarely a single centralised state. It functioned as a federation of port principalities, each centred on a river mouth and a sacred mountain. The main political regions, from north to south, were Indrapura around modern Đà Nẵng, Amaravati centred on My Son, Vijaya near modern Quy Nhơn, Kauthara around Nha Trang and Panduranga around Phan Rang.

Across the first millennium Cham kings sponsored a remarkable building programme:

• The My Son sanctuary in the hills of Quảng Nam, built between roughly the fourth and thirteenth centuries, served as the spiritual centre of the kingdom and held more than seventy brick towers dedicated mainly to Shiva.
• The Po Nagar towers above Nha Trang were begun in the eighth century and dedicated to a goddess later identified with the Cham mother figure Yan Po Nagar.
• The Po Klong Garai towers near Phan Rang, built in the late thirteenth century, honour a Cham king deified after his death.

The economy combined irrigated rice farming, sandalwood and aloe forestry, and trade in spices, ceramics and slaves. Cham mariners ranged as far as the Persian Gulf and were active intermediaries in the China trade.

Champa fought intermittently with the Vietnamese to its north, the Khmer to its west and the Javanese and Srivijayan thalassocracies to its south. It was sacked by a Javanese fleet around 774, repeatedly clashed with the Lý and Trần courts, and itself sacked Angkor in 1177. Under King Chế Bồng Nga (Po Binasuor) in the late fourteenth century it briefly turned the tables on the Trần, raiding Thăng Long three times.

The decisive blow came in 1471, when the Lê emperor Lê Thánh Tông captured the Cham capital at Vijaya and annexed most of the kingdom. A residual Cham state survived in Panduranga, paying tribute and ruling under increasingly close Nguyễn supervision. In 1832 the Nguyễn emperor Minh Mạng formally abolished the last Cham polity, and the territory was absorbed into Vietnamese administration.

From the fifteenth century onwards many Cham gradually converted to Islam, partly through contact with Malay traders. Today the Cham of central Vietnam, around Phan Rang, remain mostly Hindu, while the Cham of the Mekong delta and Cambodia are predominantly Muslim.

Why it matters

Champa was the principal Indianised civilization on the eastern coast of mainland South-East Asia and one of the great maritime cultures of the medieval world. Its absorption changed Vietnam's geographic and cultural identity, adding a long, dry, palm-fringed coast to a country whose original homeland was the cool, wet Red River delta. Cham contributions to Vietnamese music, dance, textiles and cuisine remain visible in the central provinces.

What you can see today

• The My Son Sanctuary in Quảng Nam, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is reachable from Hội An by a short bus ride; many of its towers were damaged by American bombing in 1969 but a substantial complex remains.
• The Po Nagar Cham Towers above the Cái River in Nha Trang are still an active place of worship for both Cham and Vietnamese Buddhists.
• The Po Klong Garai and Po Rome towers near Phan Rang preserve a more austere late-period Cham architecture and host major festivals during the Cham Kate celebrations in autumn.
• The Museum of Cham Sculpture in Đà Nẵng holds the world's finest collection of Cham stone art, with sandstone deities and altar reliefs gathered from temples across the central coast.

Related reading

• The Lê dynasty
• Vietnamese dynasties at a glance
• Overview of Vietnamese history
• Huế region guide
• The Nguyễn dynasty