Research on Champa and its Evolution Pierre Bernard Lafont
It was in 1852 that a researcher, J. Crawford, for the first time turned his attention to the Chams in a scientific manner and published a list of 81 Cham words. Only 16 years later new interests in these people were expressed and this time again from a linguist, A. Bastian, who published in 1868 a two-page list of Cham vocabulary gathered by himself and in 1870 a paper on the language and the origin of the Chams. Five years later, another linguist, A. Morice, produced in Revue de Linguistique et de Philologie (VII, 1875), the first Cham glossary, of about 800 words, in an important work on the Cham and Stieng languages. Finally, in 1877, K. F. Holle published the Cham alphabet which was completed by a commentary in 1882.
It was only from 1880 onwards that publications on ancient Champa and its people began to abound. It was, in fact, around that date that we saw the publication of findings of the first research led by a Frenchman who had lived in the country a few years before. In 1880, A. Labussière gave the first information on the socio-religious aspect of the Muslim Chams in South- western Vietnam; E. Aymonier published in 1881 an article on Cham writing and dialects, followed by six studies of epigraphy, a Grammaire de la Langue Chame (1889), a long article on religion and many other publications; Neis and Septfons published a new vocabulary; L. P. Lesserteur two notes on epigraphy, J. Moura an alphabet and a text of the language of the Chams in Cambodia, and A. Landes a collection of tales. A. Bergaigne published notes on Cham epigraphy, then in 1889, a first history of Champa as seen through epigraphy and, in 1893, the text and a translation of sixteen inscriptions with commentaries.
During the same period, Lamire wrote ten articles on the monuments of Champa and C. Paris, in three notes, made an inventory of the Cham vestiges in Quang-Nam. One may think that those studies were a good start and they would develop more and more as researchers other than French (H. Kern, E. Kuhn, G. K. Niemann, C. O. Blagden) were directly or indirectly interested in it.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, L. Finot published an inventory of monuments as well as a study of the religions of ancient Champa (1901) then until 1918, a series of Epigraphical Notes. During that time, H. Parmentier took stock and described the monuments of Champa, the treasures of its kings and reported on the results of excavations on the sites of the ancient cities of Champa. At the beginning of the century, A. Cabaton, who later on wrote more notes on Champa, published a first report on Cham literature and a book on ethnography which, although written in 1901, has remained a good reference work. In 1906, associated with E. Aymonier, he published a Dictionaire Français-Cham, which is a basic work for the knowledge of the language. The same year, W. Schmidt published a famous article assigning Cham to the Austroasiatic language family, which does not befit its genetic relationship. In the same period, E. M. Durand published twelve notes on the Chams as well as many other articles, E. Huber devoted himself to the epigraphy of Champa in Indochinese Studies, G. Coedès published an inventory of Cham inscriptions (1906) and two epigraphs; L. Cadière published notes on Cham vestiges in the provinces of Quang-Tri and Quang-Binh. Between 1910 and 1913 G. Maspéro published Le Royaume du Champa, a revised version of a book which appeared in 1828, and H. Maspéro published in 1912 a study of historical phonetics of Cham.
From 1915 to 1920, the number of publications on Champa decreased sharply for the pioneers of Cham studies had passed away and the researchers who should have normally succeeded them turned away from a field of research they considered too restricted compared to those offered by the Khmer, Vietnamese or Thai worlds. A. Sallet published Cham Recollec- tions of Faifoo in 1919 as well as articles on Cham folklore (1923); P. Ravaisse published Deux Inscriptions coufiques du Champa (1922) which proved the existence of a Muslim community in Champa in the tenth century but whose authenticity was doubted by L. Finot. In 1927 R. Majumdar published his Ancient Indian Colonies in the Far East, Champa which depicts Cham history and religion and a collection of Cham inscriptions. In 1931, E. D. K. Bosch in two Notes Archéologiques stressed the existence of precise relationships between Cham and Javanese art motifs. In 1931 and then in 1933, P. Mus published two articles on the religion of the Chams, in 1932 H. Baudesson published an ethnology book and in 1933 and 1934 Nguyễn Văn Tố published three notes on the “treasury” of Champa.
In 1934, J. Y. Claeys did a good dissemination work, Introduction à l’étude de l’Asie et du Champa: les Chams, les Annamites; in 1931 K. A. Nilakanta Sastri wrote a reply to an article on Cham paleography, published three years earlier by R. C. Majundar. During the Second World War, E. D. Edwards and C. O. Blagden published a Chinese vocabulary of Cham words and phrases which was a fifteenth century compilation. P. Stern published a book on the art of Champa, G. Coedès a note on the Sanskrit inscription of Võ Canh, Nguyễn Văn Tố a complete list of Vietnamese toponymy of Cham origin and Nguyễn Thiệu Lâu two studies of historical geography.
Soon after the war, R. Stein published Le Lin-Yi (1947), P. Dupont Le Sud Indochinois du VIe et XIIe Siècles: Tchen-La et Panduranga, a study on the affinities between the dynasty of Panduranga and Tchen-La. In 1949 R. Linguat published L’Influence Juridique de l’Inde au Champa et au Cambodge d’après l’épigraphie, J. Boisselier published an article on Cham art (1957) and a book on Cham statuary (1963).
Since 1967 when we succeeded in gathering a research team decided to revitalize the studies on Champa, those studies gained vigor. H. Moussage published in 1971 a Dictionnaire Cam-Vietnamien-Français. Using Portuguese sources, P. Y. Manguin published in 1973 a study on the sea routes and commercial relations of Champa and Vietnam in the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. Our team then published two books cataloguing Cham manuscripts found in France (1978; 1981) then the Inventaire des Archives du Panduranga du Fonds de la Société Asiatique de Paris (1984). A series of articles entitled Études Cham also appeared in the BEFEO. Po Dharma published in 1982 two works on the history of Panduranga in the nineteenth century.1 Research has also resumed in Vietnam, first in Saigon, at the Institute of Archeological Research. On the other hand, a certain number of authors also published in Vietnamese in local journals articles of unequal values on the historical issues related to Vietnam-Cham relations in the past or on the civilization of present-day Chams. Since 1975 the ethnological study of Chams has developed well. Two collo- quia were devoted to this ethnic group, a bibliography has been compiled by Phan Văn Quỳnh and Lý Kim-Hoa. Finally a number of articles has been published either in book form in Hanoi or in xerox copies in Hồ Chí Minh City.
Studies of Archeology, Epigraphy, and Art
Publications on Champa’s archeology and art are few. It should not be surprising for Cham monuments, statues, and sculpture cannot rival with those left behind by the ancient Khmer, either in sheer number or in importance. Thus, re- searchers tended to interest themselves first in Cambodia and then in Champa.
It was between 1887 and 1907 that C. Lemire with ten articles and C. Paris and L. Finot, with three articles each, attracted researchers’ attention to the monuments of Champa, the first inventory of which was made by E. Lunet de la Jonquière in his Atlas Archéologique de l’Indochine. Monuments du Champa et du Cambodge, published in 1901 and by L. Finot in an article published in the same year. Eight years later, H. Parmentier who had just completed prospecting the country and the campaign for the search and restoration of monuments which had allowed him to write fourteen notes to BEFEO and to theBulletin de la Commission Archéologique de l’ Indochine, and published in two volumes l’Inventaire descriptif des monuments Cam de l’Annam (1909–1918), a basic work for the study of this architecture. Later on, Parmentier and Nguyễn Văn Tố, among others, published notes on Cham statuary and the so-called Cham “treasures.”
These publications naturally attracted the researchers’ at- tention. First, H. Parmentier, who had installed a Cham sculpture museum in Danang, then Corat-Remusat who advanced the hypothesis related to the chronology of this art which contradicted those expounded earlier by Parmentier, and P. Stern who published in 1942 L’Art de Champa (Ancien Annam) et son évolution expanded the hypothesis formulated in 1934 by G. de Coral Remusat. This book remains a reference for the chronology of Cham monuments although people have had, since then, to modify the chronological position assigned to some monuments. Later, P. Dupont and J. Boisselier, among others, published several studies on Cham statues. But it was in 1963 that Boisselier published a fundamental work (La statuaire du Champa Recherches sur les cultes et l’iconographie) which presented a comprehensive description of this statuary and studied the cults through historical, epigraphic, and icono-graphic data and which revealed the relations between Champa and India, China, and other regions of Southeast Asia, a work which was completed or revised in several articles, the last of which was published in 1984. All those publications offer a global but precise view on the art of Champa which, in the past few years, was the object of study of researchers in Hanoi.
Epigraphic and paleographic studies have suffered much because of Champa’s vicinity with Cambodia. Less richer than Khmer epigraphy, for there were only 206 inscriptions in old Cham and in Sanskrit discovered in Champa compared to more than 1,000 epigraphies in Cambodia, Cham inscriptions attracted very few epigraphers. Even those, who, at one time, had devoted a part of their time to research on Champa, like L. Finot, had to abandon for the benefit of Khmer epigraphy which offered them richer and more accessible materials.
It was in 1815 that E. Aymonier directed the researchers’ attention to the inscriptions of Champa. In 1888 A. Bergaigne published in the Comptes rendus de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres a note on two inscriptions in Sanskrit discovered in Khánh-Hoà. Later studies on Cham epigraphy were developed thanks to the works of A. Barth, A. Bergaigne (Inscriptions sankscrites du Champa et du Cambodge, 1893), E. Aymonier, E. Hubert, and L. Finot. But the death of the former and the change of orientation of L. Finot, who published his last study on Cham inscriptions in 1918, gave a mortal blow to Cham epigraphy. As a matter fact, since that date, except a list of Cham inscriptions published by G. Coedès in 1923, the only publications were an article on Cham inscription by P. Mus in 1928 and a discussion on V‚ Canh stela. Nevertheless, it was not because of lack of materials since 125 inscriptions and the part written in Old Cham of the seven bilingual epigraphies were always waiting for study. Unfortunately, unlike old Khmer, old Cham needs specialists for its study.
If epigraphy attracted few researchers, the paleography of Cham inscriptions still has fewer research, since articles dealing with this discipline were extremely rare. If, thanks to J. P. Vogel, the former has a publication in 1918, it was only in 1932 that appeared a publication dealing with the latter (La paléographie descriptive du Champa) in which R. C. Majumdar developed the hypothesis that North India was the source of the Indianization of Southeast Asia, which was refuted three years later by K. A. Nilakanta Sastri in L’Origine de l’alphabet du Champa in which he defended the theory that Cham alphabet originated from South India. One had to wait until 1961 to see the publication of a note on Cham paleography, precisely Sur la paléographie de l’inscription de V‚-canh by K. Bhattatiarya.
In Vietnam, between 1955 and 1975, the Institute of Archeo-logical Research in Saigon published regularly in its Revue articles on the relations between Cham monuments and “the treasures of the Cham kings.” Since 1975, Hanoi has undertaken the study of the influence of Cham art on Vietnamese art and published articles on Cham statuaries.
Studies of History
At the end of the nineteenth century, archeological discoveries and the access to epigraphic documents incited the researchers to attempt a history of Champa. A. Bergaigne, in 1868, in an article entitled L ’ancien royaume du Campa, dans l’Indochine, d’après les inscriptions tchames, then three years later, E. Aymonier in Première étude sur les inscriptions tchames, an article which completed the preceding article, gave the first perspective on this history to which L. Finot (Mélanges Kern, 1903 and BEFEO I to XV) and P. Pelliot in Textes chinois sur Panduranga and Deux itinéraires de Chine en Inde à la fin du VIIIe siècle, have given rectifications, complements and clarifications.
This first updating of knowledge was followed, between 1910 and 1913, by three articles in the T’oung Pao in which G. Maspéro attempted to paint a history of Champa from the origins to the fifth century, mainly based on Chinese materials. This work, which was revised and seriously edited, was pub- lished again (Le Royaume de Champa) in 1928 which, in spite of its insufficiency, remains the only reference work extant on the history of Champa for that period.
One year before, in 1927, R. C. Majumdar had published in Lahore his Ancient Indian Colonies in the Far East, Champa, the first book of which was devoted to history.
In 1944, G. Coedès published the first synthesis of Champa’s ancient history, viewed in the framework of other Indianized countries of Southeast Asia. But it was the third edition of the work, published in 1964, which give us the best knowledge of the history of that country until 1471.
Three years after the publication of the first edition of this book, R. Stein published a very important study of the origins of Champa: Le Lin-Yi, sa localisation, sa contribution à la formation du Champa et ses liens avec la Chine (Han Hiue, Bulletin du Centre d’Études Sinologiques de Pékin, II, 1) in which he showed that the formation of primitive Lin-Yi and its initial development took place within and at the expense of Je-Nan and that “the affiliation of Lin-Yi to Champa is confirmed not only by history but also by linguistics.” This study was complemented in 1958 by an article by Wang Gungwu (The Nanhai Trade, “A Study of the Early History of Chinese Trade in the South China Sea” JMBRAS, XXI, 2) which deals with commercial routes as well as the external trade of Lin-Yi and Champa at the beginning of their history.
If the history of Champa since the beginning to the fall of Vijaya (1471) now begins to be known, the period after this had only aroused in the past few years only a few casual studies, based on foreign sources such as Spanish and Portuguese (C. R. Boxer and P. Y. Manhuin), Dutch (W. J. M Buch) and Japanese (N. Peri). As for books dealing with the internal history of Champa after the fifteenth century or its relation with Vietnam, they have been, until the past few years, almost non-existent. Doubtless, one should assign the cause for this situation to E. Aymonier, who has written and repeated that the chronicles written in “modern Cham” were without historical value, for he had noticed that the list of kings in those chronicles did not correspond to the list established through epigraphic docu- ments. But in a dissertation at the E.P.H.E. entitled“Les chroniques du Panduranga des origines à 1822,” Po Dharma demonstrated that the list of kings in the chronicles written in modern Cham did not correspond to that found in the epigraphy because the former was a list of the kings who reigned after the fifteenth century in the south of the country while the latter was a list of kings who had reigned in the north before the fifteenth century. It is now impossible to deny the value of the chronicle written in modern Cham, as we demonstrated in an article published in 1980. Pursuing his research on the chronicles written in modern Cham and on the Vietnamese Annals, Po Dharma also showed in his work entitled “Le Panduranga (Campa) 1822– 1835. Ses rapports avec le Vietnam (1987) that Champa continued to exist as a socio-political entity until 1832, which contradicted what has been written so far by historians of Champa and Vietnam.
If the modern history of Southern Champa began now to take shape, the contemporary history of its people, who played an important role in the F.U.L.R.O. in the course of the second Vietnam war and during the five-year existence of the Khmer Republic, has resulted in but two brief articles.
Studies of Language
If J. Crawford published in 1852 the first list of Cham words which he compared to their Malay equivalents in a Grammar on the Malay Languages, with a Preliminary Dissertation, it was H. Kern (Taalkundige Gegevens ter Beapling Van Het Stamland der Malish-Polynesich Volken) and E. Kuhn(Beitrage Zur Sprachenkund hinterindiens) who were in 1889 the first linguists to be really interested in that language, and included it in a study of common vocabularies in Malayo-Polynesian languages. In 1905 A. Cabaton, in an article published in the Journal Asiatique (“Dix Dialectes Indochinois recueillis par Prosper Oden’ hal”) introduced a classification of the Indochinese languages based on lexical similarities. He grouped them in three families: Mon-Khmer, Tai and Burman-Tibetan, and Malayo-Polynesian. He classified Cham and related languages under the latter category. The following year, in Introduction (p. vi) to the Dictionnaire Cam-Françaiswhich he published with A. Aymonier, A. Cabaton wrote: “We must definitely follow Dr. Kern, Kuhn, and Nieman and include Cham to the Malayo-Polynesian language family.”
The same year, W. Schmidt, who conducted a research on the Austro-Asiatic language family and its relationship with the Malayo-Polynesian language family which he called, for the first time, Austronesian, published in 1907–1908, first in German then in French, an article which has become famous, Mon-Khmer people, a hyphen between the peoples of Central Asia and Austronesia. In this article, he classified Cham and related languages under the Austroasiatic language family. This classification (which originated a quarrel among linguists) was followed by J. Pryzluski who, in his article on the Austroasiatic languages published in Les Langues du Monde in 1924, included Cham to the Mon-Khmer languages and who, in his contribution to the publication Indochine (1931), classified again Cham among the Austro-asiatic languages, while recognizing himself that this classification is somewhate “erratic” (p. 51). He was also followed by T. A. Sebeok who, in 1942, in “An Examination of Austro-asiatic Language Family,” published in Language No 18, included Cham to the Mon-Khmer group. R. Salzner retook this classification in 1960 in his Sprachenatlas des Indopazifischenraumes. In 1963, H. L.Shorto, J. M. Jacobs and E. H. S. Simmonds in their Bibliographies of Mon-Khmer and Tai Linguistics, still included Cham in the Mon-Khmer bibliography, while stating that this group has more affinities with the Malayo-Polynesian family. If it has followers, the classification by W. Schmidt has seriously been contested since its inception. Thus, G. Maspéro in his Grammaire de la langue khmère, published in 1915, opposed to Schmidt and linked Cham and related languages to the Malayo-Polynesian family. In Un empire colonial français: l’Indochine (1932), he also classified the Cham language in that family. In 1952, the new edition of Langues du monde, in its prefatory note to “Langues de l’Asie du Sudest” and in an article “Les Langues Malayo-polynésiennes,” he reiterated those views which were also those adopted by G. Coedès (Les états hindouisés d’ Indochine et d’Indonésie). Later on, S. I. Bruk (Karta Naradov Indokitaia, 1959) then A. Capell (Current Anthropology 3, 1962) have also adopted that classification like David L. Blood, who, in 1962 (A Problem in Cham Sonorants) and again in 1967 (Phonological Units in Cham) noted, as did previ- ously H. K. J. (B.K.I. no 113) in 1957, that Cham was a Malayo-Polynesian language in its lexicon although its phonology and grammar contain many elements common to the Mon-Khmer languages. Finally, in 1966, A. G. Haudricourt in an article devoted to the examination of problems arising from the genetic relationship of Austroasiatic languages with Cham (The limits and connections of Austro-asiatic in the Northeast), rejected the idea that Cham belongs to the Austro-asiatic family and included that language to the Austronesian languages.
The disagreement over the classification of Cham is today solved and nobody doubts its affiliation to the Austronesian languages, in spite of its Austroasiatic substratum.2
The speech of present-day Chams in certain parts of Vietnam raises another question. Is it monosyllabic or disyllabic? According to an inquiry in a village near Phan Rang, around 1960 and published in Anthropological Linguistics (IV, 9, 1962), Doris Blood stated that for Cham words with two or, more rarely, three syllables—the language strongly tends toward monosyllabism, but added “Scholars tend to maintain full pronunciation of words in their speech.” As a general rule, the speech of non-scholars is characterized by the loss of the preliminary syllable, a fact that we ourselves could observe.
One could not close this paragraph without mentioning that a few authors described Cham as a tone language but never gave evidence for this assertion, for there are no phonemic tones in Cham as there are in Vietnamese. It seems that this error originated from l’Introduction (pp. xii–xiv) of the Dictionnaire Cam-Vietnamien-Français (1971) in which the authors talked about four tones while he referred to the intonation particular to the Phan Rang, Phan Rí region where the Cham people were educated in Vietnamese schools, intonation which is not to be found elsewhere, neither in the Châu-Đốc region nor among the Chams in Cambodia, except in interrogative sentences which are always characterized by a higher register.
Studies of Literature
It was in 1887 that A. Landes published Contes Tjames, the first anthology of Champa’s oral literature. Three years later, E. Aymonier published Légendes historiques des Cham, an annotated translation of a manuscript written in modern Cham. Then only five pretty short texts and six tales were published by E. M. Durand. Then little by little the idea arose that the lack of publications was due to the scarcity of Cham literature. It was written by P. Mus inIndochine (vol. I, p. 194) that “a few skeletic hymns, a few pages of rather interesting cosmogeny, a royal chronicle almost lacking of facts, a funeral ritual, all written in Cham, were all that this literature could offer so far, and collected at the very moment when it just began to disappear. It did not include the tales, much more lively, but written in vulgar language.”
This judgment did not correspond to reality for one could find in each village inhabited by Cham people many manuscripts as evidenced by the inventory of this literature that G. Moussage began to compile in 1975 in the region of Phan Rang and that he could not, unfortunately, completed because of the events. One is more surprised by this judgment as the libraries of the Asia Society and the EFEO in Paris have had in stock since the beginning of this century a wealth of Cham manuscripts. Two catalogs entitled Catalogues des manuscrits cam des bibliothèques françaises andSupplément au catalogue des manuscrits Cam des bibliothèques françaises (1977; 1981) which had been published by our research team, are evidence of the importance of the two sources, the second of which contains many more microfilms. Finally, the important gathering of Cham manuscripts, carried out during the American war in Vietnam and the findings of which were housed in the Echols Library in Cornell University, confirmed that the judgment we have so far on this literature must be revised entirely, considering the number of manuscripts extant on the one side and the quality and importance of the content of those manuscripts on the other.
If the manuscripts recorded in the inventory consist mainly of technical texts—history, religion, customs and manners, magic, etc.—they also offer many texts that are purely literary: epics, poetry, legends, tales, maxims, and riddles. Po Dharma in an article published in 1982 in a Japanese review, Shiroku, gave a general perspective of this literature. Three important texts have also been studied: Pran dit Pran lam, the Cham version of Ramayana, which was the object of study of two articles published by G. Moussay, who also translated and studied Akayet diva mano (which developed a theme identical to the Malay Hikayat dewa mandu). Another epic, Inra Patra, the equivalent of which exists in Malay, was also translated and studied. While these works were carried out in France, a book entitled Truyện Cổ Chàm, which contained Vietnamese adaptation of 28 Cham tales, was published in Hanoi in 1978.
Although there is only a small number of published texts and studies on Cham literature, it is no longer possible to think that this literature offers very little interest, since the value and importance of many of its epics and the vitality of its popular literature has been demonstrated.
Ethnographic and Sociological Studies
Ethnographic and sociological studies on the Cham ethnic groups are few compared to what has been conducted on the other ethnic groups who inhabited ancient Champa (Jarai, Stieng, Rhade etc.). The first ethnographic work on the Chams was published in 1880 by A. Reynard. It was followed in the same year by an article by A. Labuissière on the Chams of Châu Đốc and by another follow-up article by Bouillevaux the following year. Other notes were written by E. Aymonier in 1885, Zaborowski in 1895, and D. Grangean in 1896. The first scientific study was published by A. Cabaton (Nouvelles recherches sur les Chams, 1901) who was to write later other articles on the Cham in Vietnam and in Cambodia. In 1903 E. M. Durand published an article on the Cham-bani (Muslim Chams in the Phan Rang region) which was followed by other studies on the so-called Brahmanist Chams. Later, many other works, which people no longer refer to, were published. We had to wait until 1930 to see the publication of Au pays du droit maternel in which M. Ner stressed the matriarchal and matrilocal character of the social organization of the Chams in Phan Rang and until 1941 to see the publication of Les Musulmans de l’ Indochine française in which the author presented a general study of the Chams and Malays in the west of South Vietnam and Cambodia. After the Second World War, except for an article entitled Contributions à l’ étude des structures sociales Cam du Vietnam (1964) and Minority Groups in the Republic of Vietnam edited by the US Department of the Armed Forces in 1966 which presented a Cham chronology besides politico-military considerations of this people, all the ethnographic and sociological studies were carried out by Vietnamese researchers and published in Vietnamese. Between 1955 and 1975, the most prolific writers were Nguyễn Văn Luận, Dohamide and Dovohiem who were interested practically only in the Muslim Chams of the Châu Đốc and Saigon regions. Since 1975, ethnological studies of the Cham have resumed, as evidenced by the publication of articles and, in 1978 in Ho Chi Minh City, a collection of 250 xerox pages which contained nine studies devoted to the Chams and their culture.
With regards to the ethnic groups inhabiting the mountainous regions of the ancient kingdom of Champa, they were the object of many studies. First, the explorers like Captain Cupet (Mission Pavie, tome III), Dr. A. Yersin, J. Hammand (from 1877 to 1887), P. Neil (1880–1881), A. Gautier (1821), and many others among whom H. Maitre who published Les Jungles Moi in 1912 which remains a classic work for ethnographers. Then many scientific studies on the Bahnar ethnic groups by J. E. Kemlin and Guilleminet, followed by books and many articles on the Rhades by B. Jouin, A. Maurice, extensive articles on the Stieng by H. Azemar and T. Gerber, many books and articles on the Ma by J. Boulbet and on the Mnong Gar by G. Condominas, books and articles on the Sre by D. Quegunier and J. Dourves and on the Jarai by Dourves and ourselves, and articles on the Mnong of the Haut Donnai by Huard and A. Maurice. Books on customary laws of the ethnic groups who had played a role in ancient Champa were also published. Nri with his Recueil de coutumes Sre du Haut Donnai by J. Dournes in 1951, Coutumier Stieng by T. Geber (1951), le Coutumier des Bahnars du Kontum, by P. Guilleminet in 1952, Recueil de Coutumes Rhades du Darlac by D. Antomarchi in 1940 and Toloi Djuat: Coutumier de la tribu Jarai by ourselves in 1963. Finally, the ethno-history in two volumes (Sons of the Mountains and Free in the Forest) on the inhabitants of the mountain regions of ancient Champa were published by G. C. Hickey in 1982.
Studies of Religion
Researchers on religion focused on the cults practiced in the ancient times as well as in the contemporary period. The cults practiced in the past are known partly through epigraphy, for each inscription generally made allusion to the religion of those who ordered the inscription made or referred to a divinity, partly through archeology, in particular by statuary. The cult practiced formerly by the Chams were inventoried by L. Finot in 1901 in La religion des Chams d’après leur monuments, a summary study written after a first examination of monuments extant, then by Boisselier in 1963 in his work on the statuary who studied the cults based on historical, epigraphic, and iconographic data. Those authors have shown that two great religious currents have existed and even coexisted in Champa: Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism. Hinduism existed very early as evidenced by the discovery of the statues of Siva, Bhrama, Vishnu, Krishna, and beautiful lingas as well as by excavation (excavation conducted at the sanctuary of Po Nagan in Nha-trang). As in India, where it was partly constituted by native materials, Hinduism in Indochina has also drawn from the local religious materials as proved by Paul Mus in his important article L’Inde vue de l’Est: Cultes indiens et indigènes du Champa (1933) in which he demonstrated how the inhabitants of Champa have turned Hindu cults into the cult forms that are their own today. Le catalogue du musée Cam de Tourane, published by Parmentier in 1919, showed that Champa practiced Hinduism and also Mahayana Buddhism, the evidence of which was found in the excavations of Đồng-Dương, published by Parmentier in 1903 and 1904, site where later on a magnificent Buddha statue of the Amaravati style was discovered and was studied by V. Rougier in 1911 and P. Dupont in 1954 and 1959, among others; the site where, as was shown by L. Finot in 1925 in Lockecvara en Indochine, an epigraphy which confirms the implant of this particular aspect of Mahayana, was discovered.
The cults practiced in modern times was first inventoried and presented in 1891 by E. Aymonier in Les Tchams et leur religions, then in 1901 by A. Cabaton in his Nouvelles recherches in which he discussed, among other things, the divinities and religious festivities of the Chams, and finally in 1931 by P. Mus in his article Religion des Chams. These ethnic groups shared the practice of cults called by the authors as Brahmanic while these had only a few links with the cult of this name and also Muslim practitioners who divide themselves into orthodox (Chams of Cambodia and west of South Vietnam) and Cham-bani of the Phan Rí region who have a very sketchy knowledge of that religion.
One of the first authors to mention the religious facts called Brahmanism was D. Grangean in 1896. He was followed by E. M. Durand who, in his Notes sur les Chams, studied the ceremonies and rituals (in particular abiseka) as well as the sacerdotal cast of baseh, while H. Délétie and Nguyễn Đình Hoè– were interested in the goddess Thi‘n-Y A-Na and her cult. H. Maspéro interested himself in the Prière du bain des statues divines chez les cam (1919). Later, A. Sallet pored over the beliefs in genie-dispensing epidemics, P. Mus in his Compte-rendu de mission chez les Cam du Sud Annam (1929) on religious ethnography, and H. Baudesson, in 1932, on superstitions, a work which during thirty years was not practically followed by any study on the Brahmanist Chams.
Islam, the introduction of which into Champa has been discussed since E. Huber published a “Note sur un témoignage de l’islamisation du Campa” dans les Annales des Song in 1903, P. Ravisse deciphered two inscriptions in Arabic in the elev- enth century in 1922, and A. Cabaton purported hypotheses (“Indochine” in Encyclopédie de l’Islam), seems to be implanted in Champa in the sixteenth century, as suggested by P. Y. Manguin (L’Introduction de l’Islam au Campa) in 1979. This Islam has been rarely studied since it has aroused during the first forty years of this century only a few articles worth mentioning, one written by E. M. Durand and the others by A. Cabaton (Notes sur l’Islam dans l’Indochine Française) in 1906 and Les Chams musulmans de l’Indochine française) in 1907, another by Lazard in 1907 and two by M. Ner in 1941.
It was only around the 1960s that several Vietnamese researchers in Saigon took interest again in Cham contemporary religion. It was first Nghiêm-Thẩm who, in articles written in Vietnamese, made a synthesis of the religions of the inhabitants of the ancient territory of Champa. Then Nguyễn Văn Luận, in articles written in Vietnamese, studied from 1968 to 1974 the so- called Brahmanic rites and beliefs, as well as the practices of the Muslim Chams in the west of South Vietnam and Saigon. Finally, Dohamide and Dohemien published a few notes on Islam and on the religion of the Cham in Châu Đốc. Since 1975, Lý Kim Hoa has studied the popular beliefs of the Cham in the Phan Rang area and Hoàng Sĩ Quí studied the transformation of ancient Sivaism into a modern cult.
As one may have noticed, publications on Champa and its civilization are less numerous than those on Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. This is due to the fact that Champa offers less possibilities in research than the neighboring countries. The study of its history and culture entails more difficulties which may have been encountered or still have to encounter than in research on the other great cradles of the civilization of the Indochina peninsula.
Notes
- For publication before 1989, see P.B. Lafont and Po Dharma, Bibliographie Campâ et Cam. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1989.
- For languages related to Cham and spoken in the an- cient mountainous territory of Champa, R.S. Pittman in 1957 for Jarai, then D. Thomas for Jarai, Rhade and Chru, have shown that they belong to the Malayo-polynesian language family.
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