[2] To provide 'Cham Awareness' to all Chams of all ages, in any religion
[3] To create an alliance between all the communities of Cham all over the world.
This is a Cham exclusive profile made to network people of Cham descent (from Kingdom of Champa). Please do not attempt to add unless you are really Cham. (and if your profile does not specifically state that you are Cham I will most likely deny your request unless you notify me via message prior to add)
The history of the Kingdom of Champa can be divided into two eras. The first era dated from the end of the 2nd century until 1471, during which, Champa was under the influence of Hinduism. The second era was from 1471 until 1832, a time when Champa professed a mixture of local beliefs intermixed with Islamic traditions.
We are now in the 21st Century and a lot of Cham kids including the adults don't even know where they came from, let alone even care about it. Join us in our journey and learn the rich culture of the Kingdom of Champa.
Language
The ancestral heartland of the Chams is along the narrow coast in what is now central Vietnam. The Chams speak a language which belongs to Malayo-Polynesian family (now usually called the Austronesian family). In contrast, the Khmers and Vietnamese, neighbours of the Chams, speak languages belonging to the Mon-Khmer family (now usually called the Austroasiatic family). According to statistical comparisons of vocabulary sets, it appears that Cham is closely related to the languages of the western Indonesian archipelago, that is, the languages of Malaysia, Kalimantan, Sumatra, Java and Bali (Dyen 1971). The Chams thus speak a language that is related to the great family of languages spoken in the islands of Indonesia and throughout the Pacific, except for New Guinea and Australia.
Chamic languages are also spoken in the mountainous hinterland of Champa, that is, in the highlands of what is now called the Annamite Range or the Truong Son Mountains, separating the Vietnamese coast from the Cambodian river plain. The tribal peoples like the Churu, Hroy, Jorai, Rhade, Rai and Roglai speak languages closely related to Cham.
These Chamic highlanders are also neighbours to highlanders speaking Mon-Khmer languages of the Bahnaric group like the Stieng, Phnong, Lun, Kraveth, Tampuan and Brao. Members of both the Chamic and Bahnaric language groups are found on both sides of the border between Cambodia and Vietnam. Other Mon-Khmer languages are found scattered across the Southeast Asian mainland from Vietnam and Cambodia to Laos (Khmu), Burma (Mon), Assam (Khasi) and finally to eastern India (Munda).
At first glance, the Cham languages seem to be an odd, isolated enclave of Austronesian speakers on the mainland, surrounded by Austroasiatic speakers. But the reverse situation also exists nearby. In the central highlands of Malaya there is an enclave of orang asli (original people) who speak an Austroasiatic language distantly related to Khmer, surrounded by speakers of an Austronesian language, Malay.
How did this distribution of languages and peoples come about? Were there migrations and colonisation by seafaring islanders who settled on the Vietnamese coast in prehistoric times? How did the Mon-Khmer peoples get so fragmented across a great swath of Southeast Asia? The last question is easiest to answer because the southward push of the Burmese from Tibet and the Thai from south China down rivers into an area formerly inhabited by Mon-Khmer speakers occurred in fairly recent historical times and separated the indigenous Mon-Khmer people into the isolated groups we now see on the ethnolinguistic map.
To account for the Chamic peoples in Vietnam it would be incorrect to think in terms of migrations, because what happened was that these people stayed where they had always been and the land changed around them. During the last Ice Age, which ended about 10,000 years ago, a great amount of the ocean's water was held in the polar glaciers. With much lower sea levels, what we now think of as coastal shelves were exposed land. During this period there was a single land mass, called the Sunda Shelf, that extended south from the present Southeast Asian mainland to connect the Malayan peninsula and the islands of western Indonesia--Sumatra, Kalimantan and Java. Rivers draining the Sunda Shelf, like the ancient ancestor to the Mekong, formed a delta in what is now the middle of the South China Sea.
Along the coast of the Sunda Shelf were people speaking Austronesian languages, while in the interior Austroasiatic languages were spoken. As the Ice Age ended, sea levels rose and inundated the Sunda Shelf, forming the coasts and islands and seas we see today. The Chamic peoples lived on a coast that fell abruptly to the oceanic abyss, so they did not have to deal with a major coastal inundation resulting from rising sea levels. But the Chamic peoples were separated from their fellow Austronesian speakers who, over a period of some thousands of years, followed the receding coasts to higher land and found themselves on islands when the sea levels stabilised.
The Chams were no doubts of Indonesian origin and occupied the coasts of central and south Vietnam. In 2nd century, this people of sailors adopted Hinduism on contact with Indian merchants, which gave birth to the kingdom of Champa.
[HISTORY]
A Chinese traveller of 4th century described them with a particular typical physique: Big straight nose, black and curly hair, practicing a funeral ritual that consists of cremation at the sound of the drum.
The Chà ms were not only excellent sailors but also formidable builders and ingenious farmers. The Chà ms arrived at achieving the unity of the country at the beginning of 5th century after having resisted several rounds of Chinese domination attempt. Their capital was located at Indrapura ( Trà Ki?u ), near Dà Nang ( former Tourane of the French ) from 7th to 9th century.
Thanks to the silk, spices, and ivory trade between China on one hand and India and the Muslim world on the other, this kingdom experienced a period of prosperity that was troubled first by the conquest of the Khmers in 1145-1147 then next by the policy of expansion of Kubilai Khan's Mongols. To face this domination, the Chà ms sought alliance with Vietnam, which allowed the Chà ms and the Vietnamese to come out victorious during this confrontation.
To seal this union, a Vietnamese princess of the name Huyen Trân of the Tran dynasty, sister of king Tran Anh Tôn was proposed to become in 1306 the wife of the Champa king Che Man ( Jaya Simhavarman ) in exchange for the two Cham territories Châu Ô and Châu RÃ, located at the Hai Vân Pass. These are no other than the two northern provinces Quang Tri and Thura Thiên of presently Vietnam (Huê'). This union was of short term. The Vietnamese continued to claim more land toward the South and the death of king Che Man a year after his marriage without an heir was only an additional pretext in the conquest of Champa. The king of Vietnam set up a plot by sending his general Tran Khac Chung to rescue his sister, who had to be sacrificed according to the Cham tradition, at the funeral of her husband. The provinces of Châu Ô and Châu Ri' became then the subject of discord between Champa and Vietnam. The Chams had a burst of energy with king Che Bong Nga ( Binasuor ) who struck the Vietnamese several times by ransacking the capital Thang Long in 1372 and 1377. But he was assassinated in 1389 during a new invasion of Vietnam and his death marked the decline of the Chams. The Vietnamese annexed this kingdom around 1470 under the Lê dynasty with king Lê Thánh Tôn.
Around 192 A.D., this country was known in Chinese texts and literature as Lin-Yi, which expanded its territories to southern Hue and became the Kingdom of Champa. It was this Champa Kingdom, which had borrowed Hinduism theories to explain the universe, social organization, kingship, acts of worshipping and the Sanskrit language. It is not a centralized nation but rather a federation of lives small regional governments, namely: Indrapura, Amaravati, Vijaya, Kauthara and Panduranga.
During its first eight centuries of its existence, the Kingdom of Champa had on many occasions invaded its northern and southern neighbors. However, the 11th Century marked the decline of the Hindu-Champa, a result of the Vietnamese invasion. In 1069, Champa shifted its border to Lao Bao (north of Hue). In 1306, King Jaya Simhavarman III left the region between Lao Bao and Col des Nuages (south of Hue) to the Vietnamese. In 1471, after conquering Vijaya, the Vietnamese king, Le Thanh Tong destroyed the capital and systematically abolished all Champa identity and culture.
Even though 1471 marked the end of the Hindu-Champa Kingdom, it does not mean the end of Champa as subscribed by some historians. In fact the southern territories (Kauthara and Panduranga), which were not conquered, have revived a new Champa with new values and belief. This southern Champa Kingdom no longer practiced Hinduism but a mixture of local beliefs and toward the end of the 16th Century; it began to receive Islamic influence. In short, the new Champa Kingdom had very little similarities with the old Hindu-Champa.
The new Kingdom received the same fate as the old Champa when the Nguyen Dynasty actively expanded its territory to the south (Nam Tien). In 1611, the Nguyen Lords conquered the Champa Kingdom region between Cu Mong and Thach Bi Billy. In 1653, it conquered Kauthara. After the end of the Vietnamese civil war (1771-1802), Panduranga-Champa was rebuilt with only one zone of autonomy in Vietnam. This zone was later annexed definitively by force by Emperor Minh Menh in 1832.