Chams II

Who Were the Chams?

By the sixth century the Chams had been building temple-kingdoms along the Vietnamese coast for three hundred years, and the pressure from the north was becoming permanent. The Vietnamese, expanding south from the Red River delta under their own momentum after shaking off Chinese rule, pressed into Cham territory with a persistence that would eventually consume the kingdom entirely. But that process took centuries, and the Chams of this middle period were far from passive victims. They fought back, raided Vietnamese territory, formed alliances with the Khmer, and continued to build temples of extraordinary beauty while their political world slowly contracted.

This was a Champa defined by resilience. The capital shifted southward more than once as northern territories were lost, but each new center reproduced the same pattern: a harbor, a hinterland, a temple complex in the hills, and a king who claimed Shiva's blessing.

Homeland and Way of Life

The Cham coastline remained their world: narrow plains backed by mountains, short rivers ending in harbors, a landscape that favored small independent kingdoms over centralized states. Indrapura, near modern Da Nang, served as capital for a time. Vijaya further south took over when Indrapura fell to Vietnamese pressure. Each capital reproduced the same urban pattern: a walled citadel, a port district, and a temple complex set apart in the hills or a river valley.

Daily life for most Chams meant rice farming on the coastal plains and fishing along the shore. The mountains behind the coast supplied eaglewood, cinnamon, and other forest products that remained the backbone of Cham export trade. A farmer harvesting rice in a narrow paddy between the mountains and the sea, with temple towers visible on the ridgeline above, lived in a landscape where the sacred and the practical occupied the same line of sight. Wet-rice agriculture supported the population, but the sea and the forest generated the wealth that built the temples and armed the soldiers.

Warfare, Power, and Limits

Cham warfare in this period was a two-front affair. Vietnamese pressure from the north was chronic and ultimately irresistible, each generation losing a little more territory. But the Chams also fought the Khmer to the west and conducted naval raids that could reach as far as the Chinese coast. Cham naval power remained formidable: fleets of war vessels that struck fast, looted, and withdrew before a coordinated response could form. The sack of the Khmer capital Sambor Prei Kuk in the seventh century demonstrated that the Chams could project force overland as well as by sea when sufficiently motivated.

The fundamental problem was demographic. The narrow coastal strip could not support a population large enough to match the Vietnamese, who drew on the vast agricultural surplus of the Red River delta. Every major defeat cost the Chams territory they could not afford to lose, and every peace was temporary. The Chams compensated with fortification, naval mobility, and alliances, but the arithmetic was against them.

Beliefs, Customs, and Society

Hindu worship continued to define elite Cham culture, but Buddhism gained ground during this period. The monastery complex at Dong Duong, built in the late ninth century, represents the most ambitious Buddhist construction in Cham history, its scale rivaling the Hindu foundations at My Son. The two traditions coexisted, and a Cham king might patronize both without difficulty. A sculptor carving a Buddhist bodhisattva at Dong Duong worked in a style that blended Indian iconography with the rounded faces and flowing drapery characteristic of Cham art, producing images that belong to no tradition but their own.

Matrilineal customs persisted. Women held property, and succession sometimes followed the female line even in royal families. Cham textiles, particularly cotton and silk fabrics with intricate woven patterns, were trade goods in their own right. Music and dance were central to temple ritual, and Chinese visitors noted the elaborateness of Cham court performances. A dancer performing before a linga shrine at My Son, her movements prescribed by centuries of ritual tradition, enacted a devotion that was simultaneously artistic, religious, and political.

Contacts, Conflicts, and Legacy

Cham merchants maintained their position in the South China Sea trade network throughout this period. Arab and Persian traders joined the older Indian and Chinese commercial communities at Cham ports, and Islam began to appear among coastal trading populations, though it would not become the dominant Cham religion until much later. The eaglewood trade remained lucrative, and Cham ports continued to function as waypoints on the maritime route between China and the Indian Ocean.

The temple towers that the Chams built along the coast, brick structures with carved sandstone decoration, remain the most visible legacy of this period. My Son accumulated new foundations through the centuries, each king adding to the complex as an act of piety and political assertion. The towers that survive, damaged by time, war, and vegetation, still project an architectural confidence that belies the kingdom's political fragility. The Chams built for eternity on a coastline they were slowly losing, and the towers outlasted the kingdom that raised them.