Читать книгу The Art of Champa - Jean-François Hubert - Страница 4

10. The Cham Temple of Po Klaung Garai, c. 1920.

11. Collection in the main room of the Cham Museum in Tourane, 1922.

Someone visiting Vietnam today, exploring Phan Thiet, Phan Ri and Phan Rang or even Chau Doc, coming across people who are sometimes curiously dressed, would find it difficult to believe that they, the Chams, occupied practically two thirds – in length – of modern Vietnam. In the tenth century, the Khmer Empire and Champa were the main powers of continental South-east Asia, while, to the north, Dai Viet was nothing but a very young kingdom after having been a province of the Chinese Empire for over a thousand years.

Our sources for knowledge of the history of Champa are both textual and archaeological.

For one, there are Chinese and Vietnamese texts (the Annals), the accounts of travellers (from Chinese and Arab to Occidental missionaries and Marco Polo), Cham manuscripts (notably those kept at the Inventory of Archives at the Asiatic Society of Paris), epigraphy (about 210 inscribed stones – written between the fourth and fifteenth centuries at times in Sanskrit, at times in old Cham, sometimes in both languages – have been recorded). Many of them are still waiting to be translated, a complicated task, as it requires a real knowledge of the general history of the country that pure linguists do not have.

There are also archaeological vestiges, the original Cham towers, from Hoa Lai to Chien Dan, from My Son to Po Klaung Garai and so many others, still with us despite the ravages of time and the terrible destruction due principally to the second Vietnam war.

Then one could add to these sources the memory of the Vietnamese Chams, eighty thousand in the provinces of Binh Thuan and Ninh Thuan in central Vietnam, fifteen thousand in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and Chau Doc (An Giang province) close to the Cambodian border, as well as their hundred and fifty thousand “fellow citizens” in Cambodia who survived the barbaric Khmer Rouge. The Chams of central Vietnam are of Brahmanical heritage (Ahirs, or Kaphia or Chuh, Chams), the others follow a particular Muslim cult (Bani Chams). To these two groups must be added the three hundred thousand inhabitants of the High Plateaus who belong to the Austro-Asian language group (Mnongs, Naas and Stiengs) or the Austronesian language group (Jarais, Rhades, Churus, Ra-glais) who participated wholly in Champa’s history, the inhabitants of the plains – those called the Chams – evidently not having been the only inhabitants of the Cham country.

Champa appears in Chinese texts as of the second century. It spread over territories that stretched from north to south, from the Gate of Annam (Hoanh So’n) practically to Ho Chi Minh City (Baigaur in Cham) between the eighth and tenth centuries, and it reached west as far as the Mekong, as witnessed by the Khmer site in Laos, Vat Phu, the stele of Vat Luang Kau or the Prasat Damrei Krap of Mount Kulen in Cambodia, or the expedition led by Doudart de Lagrée that, going through Bassac in 1883 noted that the peoples there still remembered the Chams.

If written proof of the early presence of Chams on the High Plateaus were needed, one could refer to the inscriptions of the Kon Klor temple in the valley of Bla near Kontum that have been dated to 914, that mention the construction by a local chief by the name of Mahindravarman of a sanctuary dedicated to the god Mahindra-Lokesvara, or to other inscriptions such as those of the Yang Prong temple (late thirteenth-early fourteenth centuries), or to the temple of Yang Mum (late fourteenth-early fifteenth centuries)…

The history of the Champa, its beginnings remaining incompletely understood, is made of victories and defeats but also of an inexorable destiny that, of a brilliant and complex civilisation, left only crumbling temples – structures of great originality that are difficult to apprehend – and a decimated and dispersed people. The Chinese Annals report an uprising in 192 AD of people living south of the Chinese command post in Renan (Nhat Nam in Vietnamese), today’s Hue, who founded a state called Lin Yi that began by enlarging toward the north to the Gate of Annam and later encompassed Hindu principalities toward the south. From 192 to 758 the texts always used the term Lin Yi; only in 758 did the name “Huan Wang” come into use. In 875, the entity was designated as “Chiem Thanh”, the Sino-Vietnamese transcription of Champapura or “City of the Chams”.

12. Dancer, High-relief, Sandstone, Height 84 cm, Thâp-Mam style, 12th – 13th Century.

Epigraphy offers two inscriptions in Sanskrit, one dated to 658 that was found in central Vietnam in Quang Nam (C96, stele found near My Son E6), the other dated to 668 that was found in Cambodia (the Kdei Ang inscription), that use the term “Champa” for the first time. A description of primitive Lin Yi, its religion, its language or languages, its inhabitants – this all remains under study.

What is better known is the history of the country from the eighth century to, on one hand, the end of Hindu Champa in 1471 when Vijaya fell, and, on the other hand, the period from 1471 to 1832: a slow irregular decline that, from the loss of Kauthara to the annihilation of Panduranga, led to the historically exact conclusion that Champa, as a state, no longer existed. From 1832 on, it was thus part of the conquering, structured, Vietnamese nation, inscribed in frontiers that barely changed until our times with the integration of the Mekong delta.

In the eighth century, then, Champa stretched from the Gate of Annam in the north to the Donnai basin in the south. Probably organised as a confederate state, it was divided into what seem to be principalities, consisting of alluvial plains scored by mountain chains plunging into the sea, called, from north to south, Indrapura, Amaravati, Vijaya, Kauthara and Panduranga. The history of Champa is not only that of the Viet-Cham couple: The country had relations with China of which it was a vassal, to which it paid a tribute and to which it sent ambassadors; with Cambodia, which rapidly (as of the ninth century) became warlike as they did with the Malay world, principally Java, or with the Dai Viet. All these relations were multiple: belligerent, commercial but also matrimonial and, above all, unstable. From the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, Cham civilisation was mainly Hindu (without forgetting Buddhism – essentially in sculpture – from the end of the ninth and the beginning of the tenth centuries), which is to say that it borrowed from India its cults, principally that of Shiva, its language, Sanskrit, its social structure (four classes) and its concept of royalty. An aristocratic elite guaranteed the political, economic and social systems. As for the population, it was composed of farmers, pioneers in aquatic rice cultivation (the variety of rice with a short growth cycle – 100 days – that was born in Champa acted as an important factor in agricultural progress once introduced to southern China in the thirteenth century); merchants who exported sandalwood, cinnamon, rhinoceros horns, elephant tusks; ceramic artisans, specialists in glazing especially from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries as witnessed by the productions of Go Sanh whose site is near An Nhon, but also sailors who, from the two great ports Tai Chiem (Hoi An region) and Thai Nai (in Binh Dinh) traded or pirated them depending on the period and the demand…

It goes without saying that this social framework was continuously weakened from top to bottom by the various offensive or defensive combats that the Chams had to wage. The first were against the Chinese who tried several times to enlarge their empire toward the south from conquered Annam (“the pacified south” was the highly condescending Chinese name for the Vietnam of those times) and who, to do this, undertook battles that were often victorious. For example, we know that about 446, Tra Kieu, the Cham capital, was devastated by the Chinese general Tan Hezhi who pillaged statues of gold worth a total of 100,000 taels of pure gold, or about 3.6 tons of metal… The second were against the Javanese who destroyed the Po Nagar temple in Nha Trang in 774 and another temple near Vira Pura (the “heroic city”), meaning probably near Phan Rang in the south in 787. But what were only attempts became, as of the tenth century due to the unendurable population increase of the north, a slow but steady devastating southerly push, which culminated in the annihilation of Hindu Champa as witnessed by the destruction of Vijaya by the Dai Viet in 1471.

13. Brahman, High-relief, Sandstone, Height 72 cm, My Son E1 style, 7th – 8th Century.

A Brahman is a member of the highest of the four classes (“varna”, meaning “colour” in Sanskrit) of Brahmanical India. Priests responsible for sacrifices are chosen from this class. Granted numerous privileges, they devoted themselves to the study of the Vedas and other sacred texts as well as to religious ceremonies. This sculpture is one of the elements of a pedestal that, given the size of the blocks, must have been the support for either a monumental linga (such as the one in the centre of the My Son E1 temple) or a no less monumental divinity. The niche occupied by the Brahman has a threshold decorated with a rosette and garlands. Notice the wide, lowered arcature topped by a rosette and completed by mouldings. The Brahman is in anjali and wearing a sampot that hangs very low (almost to his ankles) and held by two belts. The mukhuta is shaped like a hood with a diadem bearing three large rosettes. The long ears are enhanced with jewellery.

14. Map of Champa indicating archeological sites.

15. The principal Cham sites (towers, ruins…)

16. Head of Vishnu, Sandstone, height 25 cm, Khmer art, 9th – 10th Century.

In fact, in the year 1000, given the threat of the tyrannical Dai Viet who were independent after gaining freedom from Chinese occupation, the Chams moved their capital city, leaving Indrapura (destroyed in 982) for Vijaya, much further south, in the territory that is today the province of Binh Dinh. What followed were only battles, most often lost. In 1044, the Viets took Vijaya and killed the monarch; in 1068 they captured the Cham king Rudravarman III who, a year later, exchanged his freedom for lands that became, under the reign of the Viet sovereign Ly Thanh Tong, the provinces (“chau” in Viet) Dia Ly, Ma Linh and Bo Chinh, definitely amputating the kingdom of Champa of its northern part.

The Chams also regularly had to fight the Khmers, defeated in 1074 and 1080, but victorious in 1145 when they took Vijaya. Combat between Khmers and Chams carried on for, all told, almost 150 years (from 1074 to 1220).

Other than the Viets, Khmers, and Javanese, the Chams were subjected to Mongol assaults: in 1238 Sagatou, coming out of conquered China (the Mongols had installed the Yuan dynasty there that ruled China until the arrival of the Mings in 1368), decided to invade Champa. Refusing any confrontation, the Chams took refuge in the mountains where, for two years, they waited for the occupiers to withdraw. If to all this are added the fratricide struggles of the second half of the twelfth century between the allied principalities of Amaravati and Panduranga and that of Vijaya, it is easy to understand the fragility in which Champa found itself at the beginning of the fourteenth century. But does the fragility of a state justify the frivolity of a sovereign? Can passionate love take the place of politics? In 1306, the sovereign Jaya Simhavarman III proposed to the king of Dai Viet – who accepted the offer – the provinces of O and Li in return for the hand of his daughter, princess Huyen Tran; thus, the entire region between the Lao Bao col and the Col of Clouds, between Hue and Tourane became – peacefully, for once – Vietnamese territory. It must be added that this Cham sovereign died less than a year after the arrival of the princess and that this territory, despite several attempts, was never recovered. All to the contrary: as of 1307, the names of districts were changed and O became Thuan (“submission”) and Li became Hoa (“transformation”). Gentle omens… Nevertheless, a respite of several dozens of years was offered by another monarch, Che Bong Nga, who, having come to the throne about 1360, undertook a whole series of successful military campaigns that brought him as far as the capture of Thang Long (today’s Hanoi) and allowed him to deal with all the Viet counterattacks and even kill their king, Tran Due Tong, who unwisely attacked Vijaya in 1377, the year that the Chams recaptured Thang Long. In 1380, Nghe An, Dien Chau and Thanh Hoa were pillaged. In 1382, 1383 and 1389, Che Bong Nga accumulated victories and raids, until he was killed by the Viets in 1390. His successor, Jaya Simhavarman Sri Harijatti, was unable to maintain his hold over the region north of the Col of Clouds that he reconquered. At the end of his reign in 1400, the decadence of Champa was already inscribed. At the northern frontier, Dia Viet mobilised enormous military forces. Within the borders, Sanskrit culture, an indispensable support for both Hinduism and Mahayanism, was not renewed and died out (the last Sanskrit inscription in Champa can be dated to 1252) as regular and direct relations that Champa kept with India were interrupted by Muslim invasions of India at the end of the twelfth century. In addition, and this is a classic historical fact, the Hindu elite that held its legitimacy in the gods no longer inspired the confidence of their inferiors since concretely the Khmers, the Chinese and above all the Vietnamese appeared in the long term as superior warriors, due to their victories, and therefore in the eyes of the Chams (ruled and even rulers) as the representatives of better political systems. As of the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Viets took the principality of Amaravati (that, today, is the south of Quang Nam and the north of Quang Ngai). In 1471, having got over one more Chinese invasion in 1407 and its subsequent devastating occupation – the Chinese destroyed everything that had any element of “Vietnaminity” – and having suspended their “Nam Tien”, the Viets recaptured the principality, in far more drastic fashion: the Cham capital Vijaya was conquered by King Le Thanh Tong who razed the city, beheaded 40,000 people, deported 30,000, and imposed on the Chams what the Chinese had done to the Viets sixty years earlier by systematically wiping out all traces of “Chamity”. In 1471, the Chinese world imposed itself locally on the Hindu world that had dominated the eastern part of Indochina since the fourth century AD. It was in Vijaya, that year, that the frontier marker between the Chinese world and the Indian world was established in the name “Indo-China”.

17. Mukhalinga, Sandstone, height 48 cm (without tenon), Preangkorian art, 7th Century.

Both works are covered in marine concretions. The most recent is unique in Cham sculpture, while the older one manifests a similar inspiration.

The disappearance of Hindu Champa was more than just nominal: the Viets, faithful to their soldier-farmer concept, cultivating the land that one protects and protecting the land that one cultivates, preferred to ensure the stability of a conquered territory before invading another; therefore, the occupation stopped at the Cu Mong col whereas victorious troops had already reached Mount Thac Bi, considerably further south. A military chief in Vijaya, Bo Tri Tri, became the vassal of Dai Viet and was given responsibility for Kauthara, Panduranga and all of the related west (the High Plateaus); the limits of a new Cham kingdom were defined, whose sovereign even obtained the investiture of the Chinese emperor in 1478.

However, while this new kingdom was labelled Cham, if the former system is taken into consideration, it was no longer Hindu. On the contrary, ideologically it rested on a very complex base that drew from the animism of southern peoples supplemented by later Indian additions and, from the seventeenth century, Islam, the religion of the Prophet that, although it was present in the region as from the twelfth century, only truly took root then in the ports and cities. As we will see, it is obvious that classic Cham statuary was no longer of the same type as well as growing rarer from the sixteenth century on. But changing style does not mean no longer existing: the Chams were not only not annihilated but rebelled against the Nguyen, princes of the south, in conflict with the Trinh, princes of the north, all under the supposed authority of the late Le sovereigns. In 1594, they also assisted the sultan of Johore to combat the Portuguese from Malacca. However, the Nguyen soon crushed Cham ambitions. In 1611, the entire northern part of Kauthara to Cape Varela was conquered, transformed into the frontier province Tran Bien and populated with 30,000 prisoners, former partisans of the Trinh. The Nguyen refused to pay the taxes due the Le for the territories that the Nguyen controlled and they also refused to pay homage. The submission of Champa thereby became a source of legitimacy: entrusted with a real “mandate from the heavens”, they added new territories and vassals. Later, in 1653, the frontier was drawn in the Cam Ranh region after a war in which the Cham king Po Nraup committed suicide; only a single of the five original provinces, Panduranga, remained Cham. It was progressively broken up: the Nguyen, beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century, took over a part of what still was at that time the Khmer delta; in 1658 the region that today is Bien Hoa was occupied and for the first time the Viet danger thus came from the south as well, meaning that any attempt by the Champs at reconquest ran the risk of being strangled. In 1692 an endeavour to win back what had been Kauthara by the king Po Saut was severely repressed by the Nguyen: Panduranga was turned into a Viet county named Binh Thuan of which, cleverly, the administration was entrusted to the brother of the defeated king though with a Viet mandarin title. This therefore marked the end of Champa as an independent country. However, following a Cham revolt the next year, the Nguyen lord re-established Panduranga with full rights. The monarchy was restored, with a nominated king, Po Saktiraydaputih, who owed an annual tribute to the Nguyens. This slowly but surely progressively rubbed out Champa or what was left of it; judicial exception was granted to the Viets who lived in the country: the Binh Thuan prefecture administrated them directly, even within the borders of Panduranga. This privilege of jurisdiction as well as administration led, within the Cham country, to the existence of an increasing number of zones where the Chams were bereft of rights since Viet immigration to lands left uncultivated – won and lost by the Chams or simply purchased by the Viets – meant that the political, economic, social and therefore cultural influence of the Viets rapidly increased, at the expense of the Chams’. Po Dharma even used the expression “real puzzle” to describe the Panduranga of his day.

18. Kut, Sandstone, height 80 cm, Yang Mum style, ca. 15th Century (detail).

19. Sitting Lion, Nearly free-standing, sandstone, height 30 cm, Chien Dan Style, 10th – 11th Century.

From the end of the eighteenth century until 1832, the Chams withered away more and more quickly. First, the Tay So’n revolted against the Nguyen in 1771 which turned Panduranga-Champa into the favoured battleground, as it was of strategic interest to the two opponents. Until 1801, fighting raged, with its accompanying devastation. Then, despite the remittance of a small autonomous zone between the bay of Cam Ranh, the region of Ba-ria and high Dong-nai that was given to Po Sau Nun Can, brother in arms of the emperor Gia Long (formerly Nguyen Anh who had bested the Tay-Son in 1802) the final blow was dealt by the son and successor (1820) of Gia Long, Emperor Minh Menh. He chose one of his henchmen to govern this zone and thereby regained control of it little by little, even in the face of opposition by Le Van Duyet, a faithful follower of Gia Long and viceroy of Gia Dinh Thanh. At his death in 1832, Minh Menh eradicated all remaining opposition, encompassed Panduranga in his hegemony and tied it administratively to the circumscriptions of An Phuoc and Hoa Da in the Binh Thuan province.

In 1832 Champa was at its definitive end, although there were a few tragically repressed outbursts such as that of 1833-34 during the Holy War (jihad) led by the Muslim religious dignitary, the Katip Suma, and that of the fight for independence of Ja Thak Va, to which his death in 1835 put an end.

Then began, after the one set off by the fall of Vijaya, the second decline of the Chams. This time, not only the elite but the entire population was concerned. Everything, under Viet auspices, had to disappear, including habitations: the Chams were dispersed in hamlets belonging to Viet villages and only later identified as one of the 54 minorities of the Viet country…