xx Introduction Peninsule Indochinoise, 1988) and Le Campa et le Monde Malais (Paris: Centre d'Histoire et Civilisations de la Peninsule Indochinoise, 1991). 3. See Champa and the Archaeology of My Sern (Vietnam), ed. Andrew Hardy, Mauro Cucarzi and Patrizia Zolese (Singapore: NUS Press, 2009). 4. See Bennet Bronson, "Exchange at the upstream and downstream ends: Notes toward a functional model of the coastal state in Southeast Asia", in Economic Exchange and Social Interaction in Southeast Asia: Perspectives from Prehistory, History, and Ethnography, ed. Karl L. Hutterer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 1977), pp. 39-52. 5. Trän Quöc Vuang and Hä Vän Tän, Lieh sü che do phong kien Viet Nam [History of the feudal system of Vietnam], vol. 1 (Hanoi: Giäo due, 1960); see the discussion of this text in Bruce Lockhart's chapter in this volume. Sfjggg 'Silt; chapter 1 Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa" Bruce M. Lockhart Like the kingdom and civilization of Angkor, Champa was virtually unknown to the Western world until the advent of colonial rule in Indochina, at which point it drew the attention of French scholars. Historians, art historians, epigraphers, and archaeologists constructed — or reconstructed — a "chronicle" of a kingdom of Champa which remained largely unchallenged until well into the 1970s. At that point, however, a group of revisionist academics centered in Paris began to question the standard view of Champa in several important ways. Meanwhile, with the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-6, Hanoi-based scholars began to study the history and culture of Champa to assess its role in Vietnam's, past and to correct what they perceived as mistakes and distortions by writers during the colonial period and in the Republic of Vietnam (1955-75). The latter group in particular produced a nationalistic and Southern-centered narrative which went counter to that produced in the North under Party auspices. Champa and its history pose a thorny and awkward problem for Vietnamese scholars. The kingdom of Champa no longer exists, and its disappearance is the direct consequence of Vietnamese expansion and colonization. Although evidence of an ancient Cham presence has been found as far north as Quang Binh province, the group's present numbers 2 Bruce M. Lockhart Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa 3 in Vietnam are confined to small areas along the south-central coast (Binh Thuan and Ninh Thuan) and the Cambodian border. This situation is the result of gradual ethnic and cultural assimilation rather than any sort of genocide, but the fact remains that the present-day Cham are a mere remnant of what was once a regional power. Thus, the study of their past is a minefield of sensitive issues relating to Vietnam's historical relations with its neighbors and to old tensions among various peoples who are now part of a single multi-ethnic nation. Different assumptions — and agendas — have led various groups of scholars to significantly different conclusions about the history and composition of Champa. This paper will compare the "Champas" constructed by four groups: (1) French colonial writers, (2) scholars in the Democratic and Socialist Republics of Vietnam, (3) scholars in the Republic of Vietnam, and (4) recent revisionists in France. Finally, it will look at newer views of Cham history written by scholars in Vietnam over the past decade. Such a comparison will not only broaden our understanding of the different ways to approach Cham history, it will also shed light on the various historiographical and political agendas that influence the study of this aspect of Vietnam's past. THE "COLONIAL CHAMPA" French knowledge and understanding of the Cham evolved slowly, at roughly the pace of their colonization of Indochina. Until 1883^4, when they began talcing control of central Vietnam (then known as Dai Nam), their contacts with the Cham were limited to those clustered along the border between Cambodia and Cochinchina (the Mekong Delta), both already under French rule. This Cham community, almost entirely Muslim, sparked the interest of amateur and professional ethnographers among the colonial officers and civil servants. It was known that these Cham had distant kin along the coast and even more tenuous ties with the Malays and that the group on the Cochinchinese side of the border had fled Cambodia a few decades earlier after serving with Vietnamese occupation forces there during the 1830s and 1840s. French knowledge of earlier Cham history was much sketchier, however. Etienne Aymonier, the principal "expert" on the Cham at this time, believed that they had once occupied most or all of Cambodia, as well as the entire Vietnamese coast up to Tonkin, as far as the southernmost part of the Red River Delta. This latter assertion is already somewhat far off the mark, but Aymonier later made the even more exaggerated claim, supposedly based on Cham sources that their territory had once reached Cao Bang on the Chinese border!1 By 1882 the French were paying closer attention to the Dai Nam " * province of Binh Thuan, which adjoined their territory of Cochinchina. The extension of their control over the rest of the empire now seemed inevitable, and initially there were plans to annex Binh Thuan to their southern colony rather than leaving it part of the intended royal protectorate. (The 1883 Harmand Treaty signed between France and Vietnam incorporated Binh Thuan in Cochinchina, but this change was reversed by the final protectorate treaty the following year.) Within two years France had forced the Vietnamese to surrender their sovereignty, and the new protectorate became a reality. Aymonier rushed to Binh Thuan at the first opportunity and began making his way up the coast, much of which was terra incognita to the French at this point. His impressions of the Cham population in that region were generally negative: they were a "defeated and enslaved people", much of whose land had been lost to the Vietnamese, who continued to take it away from them. He noted the "striking contrast" between the oppressed Cham of Binh Thuan and their "proud" brethren from the Cambodian border region, who were considered as equals by their Khmer neighbors. Cham society and administration in Annam (the official name for the new protectorate spanning the central Vietnamese provinces as far north as Thanh Hoa), he said, had been degraded and corrupted by the "inept governance of their barbarous invaders", referring to the mandarins of Dai Nam.2 A more encouraging note was sounded by Charles Lemire, the newly installed Resident (French provincial representative) in Binh Dinh. Declaring his own sympathies for this "population [which is] so oppressed and so worthy of interest", he vowed that the colonial presence would be for them a "guarantee of effective protection under the [French] flag". Just as France had saved Cambodia from extinction as a nation, so would it enable the Cham to "escape certain and complete destruction" at the hands of the Vietnamese.3 The first scholarly interest in Champa and the Cham was primarily linguistic, with studies of the language and script. The pioneering research of the 1870s and early 1880s was based mainly on the communities in Cochinchina and Cambodia, where there were no Cham inscriptions, so that epigraphical study began only after the coastal provinces came under French control. Aymonier and his colleague Abel Bergaigne began collecting and deciphering inscriptions, and in 1888 the latter published a preliminary history of Champa based on this research. The pace of study accelerated with the establishment of the Mission Archeologique 4 Bruce M. Lockhart d'Indochine in 1898, which in 1900 officially assumed its permanent title of Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient (EFEO). By this point French scholars were engaged in archaeological surveys up and down the coast, which produced an atlas and Henri Parmentier's two-volume inventory of Cham architectural sites.4 During the same time Georges Maspero was synthesizing the findings of archaeological and epigraphical research with Chinese and Vietnamese chronicular sources to produce his masterful Royaume du Champa, initially published in a series of journal articles prior to the First World War and then in a revised monograph edition in 1928. Finally, French anthropologists were examining Cham culture, with particular emphasis on their religious beliefs; the first important publications both appeared in 1901 — Antoine Cabaton's Nouvelles recherches sur les Chams and Louis Finot's "La religion des Chams d'apres leurs monuments".5 These colonial French scholars started virtually from scratch as far as their knowledge of Cham history, culture and architecture was concerned. It was several years before any linguist was available who could decipher the Cham language, so that initial work on inscriptions focused on those written in Sanskrit. As the comments cited above reveal, there was an almost total state of ignorance as to the origins and geographical scope of Cham civilization; the first observers of the towers scattered across the central Vietnamese coast thought that they had been built by Cambodians. As scholars acquired the necessary linguistic tools, however, the momentum of their research picked up, and the acuity of their interpretations improved. The resulting corpus of French scholarship — there was virtually nobody researching Champa outside Indochina, with the notable exception of a handful of Indians who believed they were studying an ancient colony established by their ancestors6 — essentially constituted the received wisdom on Cham history, art, and culture for much of the twentieth century. An Indianized Perspective Perhaps the most significant aspect of the French approach to studying Champa was the determination to view it through the prism of Indian culture. The EFEO included a sizable contingent of Sinologists and Indologists, and many of the "first generation" of colonial scholars were — initially, at least — more comfortable with Chinese and/or Sanskrit than with the vernacular languages of Indochina. At the same time, the EFEO's explicitly stated assumption was that unlike India or Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa " 5 China, Indochina had no "separate race [or] original civilization worthy of being studied separately and owing little to outside influences". The colony was characterized as "the most extraordinary mixture of different civilizations and races, none of which seems to have its origins or its center in Indochina itself. According to this view, the Cham were of Malay (i.e., "external") origin but had acquired their religion and their civilization from India. This EFEO source goes on to affirm that "none of the civilizations of the [Indochinese] peninsula is indigenous [autochtone], and we would be unable to understand them without a knowledge of the [civilizations] out of which they came". These civilizations are then classified as "Indian" or "Chinese" based on the source of their main external artistic and cultural influence.7 This perspective had several implications. The first was that colonial scholars were most interested in, and paid the most careful attention to, the "Indian" aspects of Cham art, architecture, and religion. Initially, of course, this was due to their lack of linguistic expertise; Bergaigne's 1888 study of history and epigraphy, for example, relied mainly on Sanskrit inscriptions and Sanskrit terms gleaned from Cham-language inscriptions (which were written in an Indian-derived script and thus legible though not fully comprehensible).8 Even when several scholars had acquired the language, however, the Indian-centric approach continued to inform their work, particularly their study of religion. Bergaigne's discussion of this subject focuses exclusively on the worship of Buddha and Hindu deities to the total exclusion of indigenous, pre-Indian elements. The famous temple at Nha Trang dedicated to the important Cham goddess Po Nagar, for instance, is mentioned only in terms of the worship of Uma, Siva's consort. That this veneration of Uma was in fact the worship of the indigenous deity in another form seems to have escaped Bergaigne, who saw only the Hindu exterior and not the Cham substratum in the Uma cult. He goes on to mention a "Po Nagar inscription" near a different "Vietnamese" temple further down the coast but apparently fails to recognize the connection with the major religious center at Nha Trang.9 Within a few years, scholars began to perceive the synthesis of external and. indigenous beliefs more clearly. Cabaton's 1901 study, for example, includes a discussion of male and female Cham divinities, among them Po Nagar, along with former kings who have gradually been "divinised" by subsequent generations. His primary interest, however, seems to be identifying specific deities in terms of their Hindu counterparts — and Allah, who also appears in the non-Islamic Cham religious pantheon I 6 Bruce M. Lockhart — rather than studying these indigenous spirits in and of themselves.10 Jeanne Leuba, in a later work on Cham art history, also mentions the worship of Uma or Bhagavati at the temple in Nha Trang but sees Po Nagar, whose story is engraved on a nineteenth-century inscription there, as merely a "new legend" with which the Hindu goddess had been "crowned", rather than the reverse. She mentions Brahma and Vishnu but (correctly) perceives Siva as being the most widely venerated of the Hindu deities, stating also that at least one Cham ruler was assimilated to him as a "god-king". In general, though, she believes that "with the evolution of the Cham people, their [original Hindu and Buddhist] beliefs lost their purity and clarity"; the result of this centuries-long process is that the various deities are "mixed up together in a common cult".11 The Waxing and Waning of Cham Civilization Leuba's remark reflects the second implication of the French scholarly focus on Indian elements in Cham civilization: that the true flowering of this civilization occurred during the period when Indian influence was strongest, corresponding roughly to the first millennium CE. The EFEO history, for instance, says that the "classical" period of Cham art ended after the eleventh century, when Indian influence began to fade. Leuba views the use of Sanskrit in Cham epigraphy as a "definite index of the level of civilization", and Bergaigne appears to share this perspective.12 All of the admiring comments made by various scholars about the glories of Cham culture and art clearly refer to the Indianized past. Given that the vast majority of monuments, sculptures, and other works of art collected and studied by the French reflected some degree of Indian influence and were related to Hinduism or Buddhism, this equation of the glories of Cham civilization with its most Indianized forms is perhaps not surprising. What it implied, however, was that Cham civilization had little worth studying apart from its Indian elements, and this assumption had serious consequences for French perceptions. The scholars are virtually unanimous in their agreement that Cham civilization since that glorious period has fallen into a state of decadence and disarray. Bergaigne, for example, refers to the "complete fading and decline of this Indian civilization which remains the major event of [Cham] history". Devoted Indologist and epigrapher that he is, he notes with horror that after a certain point, Champa's Sanskrit inscriptions began to demonstrate "indications of barbarism" with "jumbled Sanskrit" and, worst of all, spelling errors. "[By this time] they were decidedly in a state of complete barbarism, and W*~ Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa" 7 -«" scholarly culture appears to have been snuffed out once and for all despite I he traces that it left behind" in some inscriptions.13 This state of degeneration was not, of course, limited to the Cham people's knowledge of Sanskrit, for it extended to their whole civilization. Leuba mourns the "sad decline" of Cham building skills, to such a point that by the time the French arrived, they had lost the secret of brick-m iking and were no longer capable of constructing the structures erected by their ancestors.14 The EFEO history contends that after the end of the "classical" stage of Cham art, architecture and sculpture alike "demonstrate nothing more ... than a long [period of] degeneration" as this increasingly embattled people could manage nothing more than "vulgar buildings ... and sculpture [worthy] of savages". To some extent, of course, these observations can be attributed to the quantitative decline in monuments "after the "classical age", when fewer and fewer durable monuments - _ were being constructed. At the same time, however, what occupies these scholars' minds is clearly the perceived qualitative decline, which meant that almost nothing of enduring value was constructed, with the notable exception of the Po Klaung Garai monuments in Phan Rang, built in the late thirteenth century.15 The third area in which this "decline" of Cham civilization manifested itself to French eyes was the state of religious beliefs. Having studied and admired the obvious strength of Sivaism and Buddhism during the earlier centuries of Cham history, the scholars were appalled at the level of syncretism which had taken place by the modern period, J hopelessly corrupting the "purity" of these world religions. Cabaton notes disparagingly that the Cham have effectively forgotten their Indian roots; even the priests of what is still called "Brahmanism" have "completely lost the memory of Indian civilization and even the name [of India]; in their eyes, the Hindu gods of the [old] monuments only stand for the images of their ancient kings; their worship, although Sivaite, is so filled with practices [from neighboring peoples] ... that even Siva's name, often uttered at the beginning of prayers, is completely unfamiliar to them". These prayers, he believes, represent "the last expression of Hinduism among a people too weak to renew themselves after having survived for so long, and who are disappearing as a race and as a religion". He deplores the generally poor, corrupted quality of Islam among the coastal Cham communities as well.16 Leuba also bemoans the corrupting influence of indigenous Cham beliefs and the "superstitions" of neighboring peoples, which have "stuck to the Sivaite base" of Cham Brahmanism "like barnacles attaching 8 Bruce M. Lockhart Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa " 9 themselves ... to a piece of driftwood". The end result is "a shapeless mixture of heterogeneous elements" with the names of Cham kings and divinities replacing Hindu gods in "an endless parade of a modern Brahmanical Olympus" of deities. That this syncretism was a primordial phenomenon of "Hinduization" rather than a more recent development does not seem to have occurred to anyone until the classic study by Paul Mus in the early 1930s.17 The Cham as Victims It is important to understand, however, that underneath these disparaging comments lay a genuine sympathy for the Cham people, and scholars directly blamed their cultural "decadence" on the fate they had suffered as a consequence of Vietnamese expansionism and assimilationism. The theme of a great people fallen from glory is pervasive throughout the French scholarship of this period, from a doctor's 1881 reference to "these unfortunate remnants [malheureux debris'] of the former empire" to Leuba's moving tribute to "this barbarian race of priests, warriors, and pirates" who have since fallen into a "state of misery and decrepitude". In most accounts the Vietnamese are clearly the villains, not just because their gradual conquest and colonization of Cham territory destroyed the old empire, but also because their rule has left their Cham subjects economically, intellectually, and culturally impoverished, not to say morally bankrupt.18 Aymonier, the first real chamisant among French scholars, was one of the earliest to clearly enunciate this theme. His observations on the Cham he encountered in Binh Thuan at the time of its annexation and the striking contrasts they presented with the communities straddling the Cambodian border have already been noted. He holds the Vietnamese, particularly the mandarins, directly responsible for the low state of the coastal Cham communities, ranging from the breakdown of the old irrigation systems to the decline of classical architecture. While recognizing that Champa's defeat at the hands of its northern neighbor was partially due to its own internal divisions and even acts of treason, he feels that the Cham are "far superior" morally to the Vietnamese and could ultimately have prevailed over them had it not been for what he perceives as China's powerful and nefarious influence behind the Vietnamese actions.19 Henri Parmentier, in his detailed study of Cham monuments, compares the fates of the northern and southern Cham regions. The former (comprising the area from Quang Binh down to Khanh Hoa) was "destroyed ... [to the extent that] the population and even the language disappeared", while the southern provinces (Binh Thuan and Ninh Thuan) managed only to "preserve a few traces of the original race, reduced to extreme misery under the conquerors' yoke".20 , ,; . The French thus viewed themselves to some extent as the protectors or even the saviors of the Cham people — as was also the case for the Cambodians and the Lao, who were seen to be in equal danger of completely vanishing as a people or at least as independent kingdoms. One of the most important tasks, even if they were unable to resurrect Champa as a kingdom, was to reconstruct its history, as it was — in the words of a French scholar writing decades later — no longer able to "provide for the preservation of its collective memory", so that foreigners would have to "discharge its history into the [collective] cultural heritage of [all] humankind".21 While Bergaigne and Aymonier made initial efforts in this direction during the nineteenth century, based largely on inscriptions, the bulk of the task was left to Georges Maspero and his Royaume de Champa?2 The "Maspero Narrative" Maspero's book, which remains the most detailed study in any language of Champa's history prior to the Vietnamese invasion of 1471, is based on Chinese and Vietnamese chronicular sources and Cham inscriptions. His narration of the complex relations between the successive Cham and Vietnamese polities (the latter generally known as Dai Viet) over the centuries is detailed and balanced, making it clear that certain conflicts were provoked by Dai Viet's expansionism and others by Cham irredentism and attempts to take advantage of its northern neighbor's moments of weakness. The book has been tremendously influential on Western views of Champa since Maspero's assumptions about its history were not seriously challenged for half a century. (The only other significant Western-language work to discuss Cham history, George Coedes's classic study of the "Hinduized states of Southeast Asia", essentially repeats Maspero's narrative.23) The most significant "givens" of Maspero's reconstruction of Champa are threefold: that it was predominantly Cham in its ethnicity, that it remained essentially a single kingdom throughout its history, and that for all practical purposes this history ended with the fall of the capital Vijaya (modern Quy Nhon) to Vietnamese invaders in 1471. That Champa was first and foremost the "kingdom of the Cham" is implicit in virtually all French scholarship. The proximity of various 10 Bruce M. Lockhart Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa " 11 highland peoples to the coastal areas, the linguistic and cultural ties some of them (notably the Rhade, Jarai, Roglai, and Chru) shared with the Cham, and the scattered archaeological evidence of a historical Cham presence in the Central Highlands were all clearly recognized. In general, however, the French perceived these upland groups as at best peripheral to Champa proper, and they only appear in the narrative as hostile "barbarians" mentioned in certain Cham inscriptions.24 "Champa" was defined in ethnic (Cham) and cultural (Indianized) terms, and the highlanders were disqualified on both grounds. Although it took some time for colonial scholars to determine the territorial extent of the original Champa, there seems to have been little doubt in their minds that it was historically a single kingdom. Maspero recognizes that the totality of Champa could be divided into several parts, which he calls circonscriptions. He notes that the southernmost of these regions, Panduranga (the modern provinces of Binh Thuan and Ninh Thuan), at one point served as the capital of Champa and "was often in a state of rebellion", but "was never an independent state" except during a brief period of Angkorean intervention in the late twelfth century. Inscriptions make it clear that "Champa" experienced several different changes of capital at various times, but Maspero assumes that these geographical shifts of power centers corresponded to the rise and fall of various ruling families, and he posits a succession of 14 separate dynasties dating back to the second century. The times when Panduranga was clearly an autonomous or even independent entity appear to him to reflect the temporary consequences of rebellion on its part or else foreign (Khmer) interference rather than any long-term geopolitical reality.25 For Maspero, the Cham historical narrative ends abruptly with the Vietnamese invasion of 1471, the fall of Vijaya, and the subsequent annexation by Dai Viet of Cham territory down through the modern province of Binh Binh. The concluding paragraph of his book begins, "it is here that the history of the kingdom of Champa comes to an end". Curiously, however, he acknowledges that the Ming Dynasty continued to receive envoys from, and grant investiture to, Cham rulers through the 1540s. He is also aware that an entity known as "Champa" continued to exist through the end of the seventeenth century, when its territory was invaded and annexed by the Nguyen Lords, a de facto independent dynasty ruling from PIu§.26 Moreover, two of his colleagues had earlier articulated somewhat different views of Cham history. Finot, in a 1903 article on inscriptions specifically from Panduranga, placed more emphasis on that ;gion as a semi-autonomous tributary of "Champa" rather than as one of * its provinces. Paul Pelliot also noted the Ming references to Cham rulers i {iter 1471. Most significantly, Maurice Durand (writing in 1907) was well *"* i ware of the existence of Cham royal archives documenting the activities f kings down through the nineteenth century.27 These points are closely jlated to the arguments of recent revisionist scholars like Po Dharma r (see below), but Maspero downplayed or ignored their implications; for him, Champa as such apparently collapsed with the walls of Vijaya in the fifteenth century. CHAMPA SEEN FROM SAIGON A second perspective on Champa is found in the writings of scholars living in the Republic of Vietnam (i.e., "South Vietnam") between 1955 and 1975. (Saigon was both the political capital of the country and one of its main intellectual centers.) It must be acknowledged that Champa and the Cham were not an important subject of study during this period, and most writings on the subject tended to rely heavily, if not exclusively, on colonial scholarship, with few new discoveries or insights. However, it is useful to look at this particular body of work because of the degree to which it contrasts with the scholarship being produced in Hanoi both then and subsequently. Two tendencies stand out in particular: a high degree of honesty regarding the historical fate of the Cham and a strong emphasis on the Nam tien process whereby the Cham and Cambodians in the Mekong Delta gradually came under Vietnamese rule. South Vietnamese28 scholars were quite open about the realities of history and the gradual absorption of the Cham people into successive Vietnamese polities. They recognized both the violent and sometimes assimilationist nature of Vietnamese expansion and its consequences for the Cham. This chapter will focus on two book-length historical works which include frank discussion of these issues. The first is Phan Khoang's history of southern Vietnam, the other a history of the Cham people by Dohamide and Dorohiem, both published in the mid-1960s. Phan Khoang's history essentially follows French scholars in its view of Champa as a kingdom, tracing its origins from the "Indianized" kingdom of Linyi {Lam Ap) in the late second century. He follows Maspero in recognizing that Champa can be divided into several different sections, one of which (Panduranga) was sometimes separate from the rest of the kingdom. In general, however, he treats Champa as a single entity, albeit I I 12 Bruce M. Lockhart \ one with numerous episodes of internal rivalries and even warfare. What is i'|; more significant is his frank discussion of the character of relations between |P; the Cham and the Vietnamese through the centuries. The main theme of !;: the book is stated clearly in its sub-title: "The 'Southward Advance' {Nam fieri) of the Vietnamese people". Khoang narrates in considerable detail the activities of the Nguyln Lords and their conquest and colonization of territories inhabited by the Cham and Khmer. His perspective is that of a social Darwinist whereby the weaker Cham nation had to give way to its stronger Vietnamese neighbor. "From the Ly Dynasty [1010-1225] onward, our dynasties all wanted to expand southward and forced Champa, which had yet to be civilized [khai hod, implying a definition of 'civilization' based on Chinese criteria] and was weaker than they were, to maintain the status of a barbarian vassal just as they did vis-a-vis China." The author goes on to observe that Champa's "shameful" setbacks, such as the death of certain of its rulers on the battlefield and the periodic destruction of its capitals, as well as its essentially "bellicose" nature and the needs of an "impoverished region", caused it to seek protection from China, thus further provoking the Vietnamese.29 Phan Khoang thus balances his recognition of Dai Viet's expansionist nature with a perception of Champa as being permanently fixated on warfare. He notes that in the tenth century, when the Vietnamese became independent from Chinese rule, their southern neighbor was "a strong country, rivaling our own". The Cham were "warlike and skilled in fighting, perhaps even more skilled than the Vietnamese", yet ultimately they "would be forced to abandon all of their land to us". This, he suggests, was because the Vietnamese, though "not as aggressive as [the Cham] were, were more clever and patient and were able to use many other stratagems besides warfare to encroach upon the enemy's territory". Since the Cham tended to fight back and resist when their land was taken from them by force, certain Vietnamese rulers learned that "imposing [their control] through the use of force was less effective than using people to penetrate [Cham territory]. Only this approach, however slow, truly led to the conquest of territory." He cites the example of Dai Viet's peaceful annexation of two Cham provinces in the fourteenth century through the marriage of a Vietnamese princess to the Cham king. This event notwithstanding, however, "Dai Viet's hegemonic and aggressive intentions appeared whenever they had the opportunity". Even when the Nguyen Lords attacked Champa, supposedly because of border incursions by the latter, Khoang thinks it more likely that Vietnamese expansionist ambitions were ultimately the main cause.30 i t-iv. Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa" 13 llllllP^r ~ , Khoang's text also paints a fairly graphic picture of the Cham's final /ears as a separate kingdom. In 1692, the Nguyen permanently annexed ifrhat was left of Champa. Although they initially abolished the Cham monarchy, the violent opposition of their new subjects to this move persuaded them to re-establish the king as a vassal ruler. Under the new arrangement, ethnic Vietnamese colonists were settled on Cham territory, —. * but under a sort of extraterritoriality whereby they were subject to Nguyln ' law and governed by Nguyln officials. Khoang traces the next century's „"j* , developments, culminating in the anti-Nguyen Tay Son movement which ■' lasted throughout the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Some Cham **5 lent their support to the rebels, and when the latter were eventually - defeated by the Nguyen (who then established a national dynasty in 1802), " "Champa was erased from the map".31 Phan Khoang's sense of national pride is strong and flavors his entire narrative. Although not unsympathetic to the fate of the Cham people, he is nevertheless convinced of the inevitability of their absorption by "us" Vietnamese. The Nam tien is for him a key event in Vietnamese history and one which can be explained but need not be defended, and certainly not concealed. At times he is even gleeful over Vietnamese successes, as when he is discussing the campaign against Vijaya in 1471 and exclaims, "We can see how fierce was the vitality of the Vietnamese people!"32 An equally Darwinian view characterizes the Nam tien section of a national history by Pham Van Son, one of the more prolific Southern historians between 1954 and 1975. Commenting on the first Vietnamese campaign against the Cham in the tenth century, he explains that the latter had established a "historical precedent" for this action with their own border incursions during the period of Chinese rule. Now an independent Vietnamese kingdom needed room to expand, and they faced the irresistible temptation of "immense expanses of land which had been left uncultivated because the natives were lacking either the capacity or the energy to fully exploit them". After explaining that the Cham had become so weakened by the late 1400s that defeating them was "hot as difficult or taxing" as it had been in the past, he notes with approval that Emperor Le Thanh Tong (r. 1460-97) followed a "divide-and-rule" policy by splitting the conquered territory into three parts, exclaiming, "who could doubt that the Vietnamese in the fifteenth century discovered the most insidious (sdu doc nhdt) method of colonialism?"33 A less triumphant but no less realistic perspective can be found in Nguyen Khac Ngu's study of Cham society, focusing on matriarchy and matrilineality. Although the brief historical sketch is only a small 14 Bruce M. Lockhart Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa 15 part of his book, it conveys a clear picture of the historical relationship between the Cham and Vietnamese kingdoms. In the last section, entitled "Champa faced with the strength of the Vietnamese people's southward advance", Ngu summarizes the military campaigns of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, after which "Champa consisted only of our towns and prefectures". Later in the book he makes the observation that after a succession of southward advances by the Vietnamese nation, the name of Champa — a large kingdom extending from the Deo Ngang [a mountain pass in Quang Binh] to the border of [the Mekong Delta region] — completely disappeared from the map. The Cham people survived, however, and their descendants continue to live together with us with Vietnamese names. Through various dynasties, Vietnamese rulers have in turn had many different policies toward the Cham, sometimes gentle and sometimes harsh. He cites the example of the contrast between Nguyen Emperor Minh Mang (1820-40) and his successor Thifu Tri (1840-7). While the father attempted to "assimilate" the Cham by forcing them to follow Vietnamese dress and customs, the son reversed this policy and "graciously permitted them to follow their old ways".34 Khoang's and Ngu's general picture of Champa and its historical relationship with the Vietnamese is also found in the history by Dohamide and Dorohiem, two brothers who seem to have come from the more orthodox Cham Muslim community in southwestern Vietnam.35 They also treat "Champa" as a single historical entity, and though they mention the close ties between the Cham and other Malayo-Polynesian groups such as the Jarai and Rhade, noting the "important role" of the lowland Cham in the highlanders' "administrative and social organization", they do not appear eager to include the other peoples within the kingdom's domain.36 While the authors pay more attention to specific Cham rulers than Khoang does, there is nothing particularly innovative about their approach to their people's past. The main difference between the two books is that while Khoang emphasizes the power of Vietnamese expansion in a positive way, the brothers are more concerned with affirming Champa's past glories and its retreat in the face of the Nam tien.ln many respects, then-perspective echoes that of French colonial scholars. Their introduction, for example, affirms that like every other people, the Cham have roots, a history of struggle, and a culture. However, the former situation is no longer true. The kingdom of Champa is now only a sort of illusion buried deep within a violent past. A few sites, most of which are ruined towers remaining on their former territory in central Vietnam, are now only the stately traces of ancestors from a heroic time. A succession of disasters has ř destroyed the Cham land, leaving nothing as it was, not even the people. ... After so often serving as a target for foreign invaders, the city of Chá Bán [Vijaya] collapsed and was left in ruins, so that it is now only a series of empty mounds. A few parts of it have been turned into fields, with the rubble of collapsed walls showing here and there ... symbolizing something which has remained after the vicissitudes of the Cham nation.37 They go on to trace the history of the period between the end of Chinese rule over the Vietnamese in the tenth century and the fall of Vijaya in 1471. Interestingly, they argue that the initial conflicts between the two kingdoms were due to Champa's "need to expand to the North, which was much more fertile". The result, however, was "the start of a dangerous movement backward in terms of the Cham people's development and existence". Beginning with the first forced territorial concessions to Dai Viét in the eleventh century, "Cham history was henceforth merely the retreat of Indian civilization in the face of Chinese civilization".38 The Cham authors characterize the Nam tién as a process of invasion and occupation on the part of the Vietnamese. Completing their narrative with the events of Minh Mang's reign, when the last Cham ruler was deposed following a rebellion against Nguyen rule, they describe this as the point when the Cham, having "lost their country" {mát nieác, a phrase which would resonate powerfully with Vietnamese readers), made one last attempt to "find an honorable way out in order to somehow salvage a bit of national pride". Now, in the twentieth century, the small remnants of the Cham people live a "quiet, modest life", with their heroic kings from the past now merely "ghosts" in their religious life.39 Dohamide and Dorohiem are concerned not only with the loss of Champa as a nation, but with the fate of its culture as well. Their conclusion repeats the observation that the historical confrontation between the Cham and the Vietnamese can be viewed as a "collision" between two different cultures. Cham civilization itself, they argue, extended beyond "the kingdom of Champa" to exercise "an important influence" on the Malayo-Polynesian-speaking peoples of the Central Highlands. Ultimately, however, as the Cham "lost their country, their land, and everything which they had preserved and upheld in their tradition", their culture, too, was to "suffer an unfortunate fate".40 16 Bruce M. Lockhart CHAMPA SEEN FROM HANOI41 Although the post-colonial Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) saw a prolific output of historical scholarship, Champa and Cham history did not figure prominently until after the reunification of the country as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) in 1976. As Northern-based scholars began to carry out fieldwork in the former Republic of Vietnam and to move into its educational institutions, historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists began to study the Cham people's past and present. This paper will focus on several aspects of Hanoi scholarship: Champa's position in the Vietnamese historical narrative, Champa as a kingdom in its own right, and the nature of Cham culture. Champa in the Vietnamese Historical Narrative Hanoi scholars' treatment of Champa's role in Vietnamese history has varied considerably over the last half-century. Let us first consider a series of key general histories of Vietnam. The first of these, which remains the most detailed Vietnamese history text to have appeared until roughly 1990, is the three-volume Lieh sü che do phong Men Viet Nam (LSCDPK, History of the feudal system of Vietnam), published in 1959-60 by a team of prominent historians. The text gives a very thorough account of the various conflicts between the Cham and Vietnamese over the centuries through in the late 1600s, which it takes as the end of Champa's existence as a country. The authors pull no punches regarding Champa's eventual fate, which they call an "extermination" (tieu diet, diet vong), though this clearly refers to the polity and not to the Cham as a people.42 Generally speaking, the LSCDPK text makes a clear distinction between those Vietnamese military campaigns which were defensive in nature and those which should be considered as "aggression". The Vietnamese invasion of the'980s, for example, is described as "self-defense" (tu vi) in response to Cham provocations; the same is true for Dai Viet's campaign in 1044 and a series of skirmishes in the 1380s, 1430s, and 1440s.43 Conversely, those campaigns which led to the permanent acquisition of Cham territory (including 1069, 1400-2, and 1471) are labelled as "aggression" (xäm luge) or "invasions" (xäm läng) on the part of the Vietnamese. According to the authors, the Ly rulers of the late eleventh century and Emperor Le Thanh Tong in 1471 were particularly guilty of moving from defense to offense — or, in more explicitly Confucian terms, from a "just/righteous cause" (chinh nghia) to an "unjust" one (phi nghia).44 Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa' 17 IS" For the period after 1500, the LSCDPK account is consistently critical jÉJyžíe"feudal" Vietnamese rulers and sympathetic towards the Cham for . ~ v^a-ttue, progressive loss of their remaining territory. The Nam tién is described r'jí»t'.,j*. a process of "murderous warfare and land-grabbing by the Nguyen eudalists targeting two weakened neighbors", notwithstanding the fact "tial it had the "objective result" of expanding Vietnamese territory. The ?r .t»xt discusses the colonization and subsequent assimilation of the Cham liy Vietnamese settlers in the seventeenth century which ultimately led jlto Champa's "being erased from the map". Those Cham who rose up ff against Vietnamese domination are characterized as nghia binh, a term f for rebels which has a Confucian connotation of someone fighting for a righteous cause. While the authors conclude somewhat lamely that the Cham eventually became part of the "great national family" (dqi gia dinh dán toe) of Vietnam, they emphasize that Champa's separate history must still be told.45 The next general history of Vietnam, which appeared only in 1971, gives a significantly different picture of the historical interaction between the two peoples. Discussion of invasions and other military campaigns is kept to a minimum, and there is none of the critical editorial comment found in LSCDPK. (Conversely, every campaign of Vietnamese resistance to Chinese attacks is chronicled in heroic detail.) The primary emphasis is on Vietnamese military actions as a response to Cham threats, and the negative terms like "aggression" and "destruction" have been replaced by "encroachment" (lán chiém). Successive Vietnamese land grabs are mentioned, but only briefly, and there is no real attempt to portray the Cham as either victims or heroic resisters. The more aggressive side of Vietnamese expansion southward is very much downplayed. Regarding the fate of the Cham, the authors conclude that In the struggle with nature and the social struggle, the Cham people were increasingly integrated with the people of Bang Trong and gradually became part of the Vietnamese nation. Champa's long history and rich ' culture flowed [chan hoa] into the shared history and culture of the Vietnamese nation.46 The next fairly comprehensive national history did not appear until 1997.47 The Cham have a fairly minor role in the narrative; brief mention is made of the tenth- and eleventh-century military campaigns, as well as the conflicts in the late 1300s and early 1400s. The important invasion of 1471 is completely ignored, and the final defeat and absorption of Champa in the seventeenth century garner a single paragraph. These developments are 18 Bruce M. Lockhart consistently portrayed as the result of Cham aggressiveness or provocation along Vietnamese borders, and they are significantly overshadowed by the extended accounts of campaigns against the Chinese and Mongols. Dai Viéťs territorial acquisitions in the eleventh, thirteenth, and fifteenth centuries are mentioned briefly without comment.48 By 2002, the picture of Vietnamese-Cham relations has shifted once again. The accounts of conflict between the two countries are more detailed than before, thus providing a less "sanitized" version than the earlier texts. The latter's uncritical stance is preserved, however; if anything, the image of the Cham as players on the regional geopolitical scene is even more negative. Champa is depicted as a constant threat to Vietnamese peace and prosperity. The authors place particular emphasis on the Cham readiness to "rely on the strength of a big power" (J thé nuóc lán) by allying with China against the Vietnamese. Dai Viet's territorial acquisitions are also mentioned in more detail, but again without any talk of "expansionism". For the early fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, these developments are covered in sections with the sub-headings "Protecting" or "Stabilizing the Borders and Expanding the [National] Territory Southward", giving an implicit imprimatur to the Vietnamese land grabs.49 Thus the depiction of Cham-Vietnamese relations in the core national histories published in Hanoi changed dramatically over time. Where the LSCDPK covered every incident and conflict in detail and condemned Vietnamese rulers for aggression whenever their response went beyond national defense to include territorial expansion, this perspective vanished by the 1970s, never to re-appear. The 1971 history played down or omitted as many unpleasant realities as it could, while by the turn of the century nationalism had clearly gained precedence over historical "political correctness", so that Vietnamese expansion at its neighbors' expense could now be consistently portrayed as self-defense. Moreover, texts linked to the former Republic of Vietnam and its historical narrative are being republished; Phan Khoang's account has already been reprinted, which is in itself an important development. Equally significant is the re-appearance of the classic national history by Trán Trpng Kim, which was first published during the colonial period and was widely used in South Vietnam until 1975. The first Hanoi edition, at least, was slightly bowdlerized where the history of Vietnamese aggression against Cambodia is concerned, but the details on the absorption of the Cham seem to have been left intact.50 Ultimately, of course, the historical reality of Champa's absorption by the Vietnamese cannot be completely glossed over, particularly in the 3HKVL Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa" 19 amswork of shorter and more focused articles. Various writers have used M&}d"ifferent formulas and euphemisms to discuss this delicate subject. One 8S§^ acknowledges that Vijaya "was conquered and annexed by Dai Viet" in |4" while for another it "joined the territory of Dai Viet". The latter author, however, is perhaps more comfortable with his assertion that "on 'v^ l,am of integration into the Vietnamese community of ethnic groups, f*.í ViJaya gradually lost its historical role"." Several writers follow the 1971 ■*! te\t in using the graceful term chan hoá, suggesting a process of mixing nd expanding or overflowing, to describe the process whereby Champa - * - nd its culture became part of the "greater Vietnamese family" — a favorite * ffhřasc to denote the multi-ethnic nation of Vietnam.52 Significantly, there has been a general lack of attention to the ourteenth century, when the Cham and Vietnamese kingdoms maintained a? relative equilibrium with several decades of stalemate involving campaigns initiated by both sides, including notably a series of full-scale Cham invasions of Dai Viet in the 1370s. Luang Ninh, who authored a chapter on early Cham history in the 1983 text mentioned above, actually claims elsewhere that there was no Cham-Vietnamese warfare until these dramatic events, which is patently untrue.53 When unpleasant historical realities must be confronted, they are usually explained in Marxist terms as conflicts between "feudal ruling classes" (giai cáp thóng tri phong Men) over the heads — and presumably against the wishes — of their respective "working peoples" (nhán dán lao dóng), who are said to have enjoyed "intimate solidarity". This solidarity enabled the two peoples to unite against common enemies, whether foreign (the Mongols in the thirteenth century) or domestic (the Nguyen Lords during the Táy Son rebellion in the late eighteenth century).54 Lé Ván Háo, who devotes an entire article to the question of historical relations between the two peoples, concludes that "there was a deep, wide, and long-term process of integration and attachment between the Vietnamese and the Cham in the history of the nation; it was also a peaceful, voluntary, and intimate process of exchange and complementation of culture between Vietnam and Champa". He goes on to cite as an example the widely acknowledged influence of Cham performing arts on Vietnamese culture, attributing this to the presence of musicians and dancers from Champa brought to the Dai Viet court during the eleventh century and before. He tactfully neglects to mention, however, that these agents of "cultural exchange" were essentially war booty or that the interesting links between the famous Bac Ninh folk songs known as quan hp and Cham music were most probably due to the presence of Cham prisoners-of-war resettled 20 Bruce M. Lockliart in Red River Delta villages.55 A similar perspective is found in one of the earliest studies of Cham influences in Vietnamese culture. Although the author, Le Van Chucmg, acknowledges that "the limited political viewpoint of feudalism" had caused certain "negative actions" between Vietnamese and Cham (a delicate reference to the military campaigns and territorial concessions), he argues that these were outweighed by the positive contacts between the two peoples. The spiritual and cultural values they shared were able to "overcome the [barriers between] the feudal ruling classes".56 This perspective is by no means unique to these two authors. "Cultural exchange" (giao Imi van hod) is in fact one of the most frequent euphemisms for the complex consequences of the Vietnamese Nam tien. It covers everything from religious beliefs (such as the ethnic Vietnamese veneration of the goddess Po Nagar and certain Cham influences on Vietnamese mediumship) to agriculture, with the suggestion that highlanders with ties to the Cham may have acquired wet-rice cultivation techniques as a result of the "large-scale migration" of outsiders into the central coastal region adjoining their upland territories.57 This cloaking of the cultural impact of expansion and colonization under the benign label of "exchange" is one of the most important assumptions underpinning the foundations of the "Hanoi Champa" perspective. One of the few comprehensive studies to deal with the Vietnamese southward expansion and its consequences in any detail is a history of ethnic Viet migration published in the early 1990s. The book is interesting in that it combines the diachronic perspective of Southern historians like Phari Khoang with the rather benign and euphemistic tone of post-197 5 scholarship. While the text avoids the still "politically incorrect" term Nam tien, "migration" is in effect a trope for expansion. The Vietnamese acquisition and colonization of Cham territory is shown as a more or less inevitable phenomenon which was crucial for Vietnam's historical development. There are several references to the interaction between Cham and Vietnamese cultures in the context of "coexistence" (cong at, which literally means "to inhabit the same [territory]") between the two peoples.58 Particularly interesting is the authors' insistence that from the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries there was a gradual withdrawal or retreat southward by most of the Cham population in areas bordering Dai Viet, so that by the time the Vietnamese arrived to "take control" (tiep qudn, usually used when a company or piece of territory changes hands), the newly acquired territories were virtually abandoned. (The picture of territory wf^z Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa" 21 - ;iying abandoned or unused is frequently evoked to justify the colonization '^J;-* of the Khmer lands in the Mekong Delta, but it is normally not found in "accounts of the Central region.) This image is reinforced by references to the Cham having "left behind" various architectural structures such as lln ise at My Son. Readers are reassured, however, that the Vietnamese vjnhabitants of these territories have not forgotten the "pioneering labors" of the "previous owners" (tien chit), as they continue to venerate the latter's memory in annual ceremonies.59 The Hanoi perspective, then, shows the gradual onset of a "willful amnesia" following the initially honest and critical treatment of the early DRV years. Military campaigns and territorial annexation were more or less "air-brushed" out of the picture in the 1960s and 1970s, subsequently to reappear in the 1980s as defensive actions and peaceful extensions of the national territory. Colonization became "migration", annexation led to \ - "coexistence", and assimilation was glossed over as "cultural exchange". It " • should be noted that several authors discussing these historical and cultural issues have explicitly criticized earlier foreign scholars who would "distort" them for their own divisive agendas. Maspero, for instance, is attacked for having "created for us a complete separation, a hostile confrontation between Cham and Vietnamese". Because of this "academic sorcery" (do thugt khoa hoc), it has allegedly been impossible to obtain an accurate picture of relations between the two peoples in history.60 Le Van Hao, quoted above on the history of Cham-Vietnamese relations, also targets "imperialist and colonialist scholars" who "distorted" the issue for their ' own purposes. Contrary to the alleged distortions, he says, history shows that the two peoples have "experienced a long process of integration and attachment in the nation's history".61 The transition of the Cham from neighboring power to ethnic minority is thus presented in as positive a light as possible. Ethnic solidarity has always been a key theme of Party propaganda and scholarship, of course, and historical narratives are carefully crafted to minimize or ignore evidence of ethnic tensions. At the same time, it can be suggested that the unwillingness to show Dai Viet as an aggressive or expansionist power conforms to the consistent attempt to portray Vietnam as the perennial victim rather than the agent of aggression. It is much easier to discuss the well-worn theme of "resistance to foreign aggression" (chong ngoai xdm) than to look at times when the reverse was true, and the post-1960s texts clearly reflect this agenda. It is only very recently that scholars have started to talk somewhat more frankly about the absorption of Champa — mainly in shorter, 24 22 Bruce M. Lockhart focused articles rather than the longer general texts just mentioned. However, they have maintained the previous practice of minimizing the aggressive and bellicose aspects of Dai Viet's territorial expansion and making reference to the Cham continuing to "harass" {quay rdi) the border areas.62 A particularly interesting article attempts to define and contextualize the concept of 'Nam Hen" — one of the very rare instances where the term actually appeared in SRV scholarship until very recent times (see the concluding section of this chapter). The author argues that official chronicles have presented an overly militaristic picture of the southward expansion and that if should be understood mainly as a process of co-existence among different ethnic groups, with particular emphasis on their joint efforts to open up more land for cultivation and habitation. This "side-by-side struggle" in turn led to the familiar "cultural exchange". The article concludes with a rather Darwinian perspective on how the "weakening" and "declining" Cham culture had to give way to the stronger and healthier Vietnamese civilization, resulting in the hybrid "Viet-Cham" culture of the Central region.63 The Kingdom of Champa Champa as a kingdom did not loom large in twentieth-century SRV scholarship, any more than it did for DRV writers before 1975. There were few articles and no books whatsoever specifically on Cham history (as opposed to archaeology or art history); the implications of this fact will be discussed below.64 Until very recently, the picture of the historical entity known as Champa did not differ significantly from the colonial view in its assumptions of an essentially unitary kingdom ruled by the ethnic Cham. In keeping with Marxist doctrines, Champa has frequently been portrayed as a "feudal" kingdom with clear class differentiation and, in addition, a sort of caste structure attributable to the influence of Brahmanism. The writers who analyze these phenomena emphasize the dominant role of the political and religious elite, who are believed to have owned most of the land — and a sizable share of the population as well.65 The one exception to this general dearth of scholarship is the section devoted to Champa in a 1983 history text. The chapter by Luang Ninh entitled "The Cham People's Struggle for Independence [and] the Formation, and Development of the Ancient Kingdom of Champa" is sandwiched in between chapters narrating the advent of Chinese rule over the ancestors of the ethnic Vietnamese and the first resistance against that rule. Interestingly enough, although this seems to be by far the most detailed study of Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa" 23 mm ^frClui l history in Hanoi scholarship, it is based almost entirely upon the f*n§'cin and upland regions as well, while Nguyen Duy Hinh rejects the idea of iaSSf attributing its origins exclusively to Malayo-Polynesian speakers coming i i trn the sea, believing that "Mon" (-Khmer?) elements were also i ? important.79 ' y» ' These attempts to de-emphasize the coastal character of Sa Huynh civilization are complemented by a rather diverse set of arguments in favor of a broader interpretation of Cham culture. Several writers ; , i- believe that it should not be viewed as exclusively Malayo-Polynesian insofar as that implies a solely maritime orientation. Nguyln Xuan NghTa, for instance, criticizes the French for concluding that the Cham are best understood as an Austronesian group tied most closely to the ' sea. Rather, he makes the peculiar argument that "first and foremost ; ' the Cham have close links to the mountain race; the sea race appeared : . ' subsequently". Taking a somewhat different tack, Phan Xuan Bien suggests , that Cham culture represents an adaptation to the entire environment of ■ central Vietnam, not merely to the sea, and that where maritime elements ; are present, they are connected to the coastal areas and not just to the "distant islands" from where the Malayo-Polynesian peoples are believed ~ to have migrated.80 Other writers are less concerned with the "sea element" in Cham civilization than with its position within a broader regional cultural space. In the article just quoted, for example, Bien emphasizes that Cham culture is not just "Indian[ized]" or "Muslim" or even "Malayo-Polynesian", but all \ of those and more. Two scholars writing on ethnic and cultural issues speak in terms of a common "Austroasiatic" cultural base that would include not only those peoples traditionally classified as such (e.g. the Kinh [ethnic Vietnamese], Khmer, Khmu, etc.) but the Austronesian groups of central Vietnam as well, including the Cham. Both authors stress the localizing character of this common culture, as does Bien. (Note that this term could be "Austro-Asian" rather than "Austro-Asiatic", as the distinction is lost in the Vietnamese term "Nam A".) In a comment reminiscent of the Dutch scholar J.C. van Leur's "thin and flaking glaze", Phan Lac Tuyen observes that if one "removes the veneer of Brahmanism" from Cham culture, the "Austroasiatic" base is quite evident.81 Thus the Cham are being firmly "repositioned" within the context of mainland Southeast Asia, with minimal influence from China, India, or, presumably, the maritime sub-region. 28 Bruce M. Lockhart THE "REVISIONIST CHAMPA" During the 1980s and 1990s, a group of scholars in France effectively revived Cham studies as a field of research, and the fruits of their labors have proposed some significant alterations to the view of Champa elaborated by their colonial predecessors, in several respects. First, by re-evaluating and utilizing Cham-language manuscripts, they have chronicled the final decades of Champa's existence as the kingdom of Panduranga and focused attention on a period of history which had been virtually ignored by previous scholars. Second, they have recast "Champa" as a multi-ethnic, multi-centered kingdom rather than a unified coastal polity ruled exclusively by ethnic Cham. Finally, they too have, in a sense, "repositioned" Champa, taking it out of the shadow of its Vietnamese neighbor and emphasizing its important role in the world of insular Southeast Asia. Panduranga Fittingly enough, the bulk of this revisionist research has emerged from the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient, whose early generations of researchers were almost single-handedly responsible for the "colonial Champa", and from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. The key figure has been Po Dharma, a Cham from Vietnam who has long expatriated himself in France. Together with Pierre-Bernard Lafont, he has demonstrated the value of a collection of Cham archival manuscripts from the southernmost region of Panduranga, documents which were long rejected as fables by the colonial generation of historians because their lists of kings did not correspond to those found in the epigraphy of Champa and chronicled in Maspero's work. Po Dharma has concluded that these lists represent a separate ruling line associated with Panduranga after the fall of Vijaya in 1471, and thus he has reconstructed several centuries of Cham history during the period when "Champa" had shrunk to these southern provinces. He has also pinpointed the definitive end of the Cham monarchy during Minh Mang's reign, when the last vassal ruler was deposed in 1835. Thus the assumption of Maspero and subsequent writers that for all practical purposes, the kingdom of Champa ended with the 1471 Vietnamese invasion has been demonstrated as invalid.82 Moreover, Po Dharma has come to the even more significant conclusion that well before 1471 Panduranga had already gained de facto independence from the northern territory ruled from Vijaya. The periodic Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa" 29 jWfe inflicts between Panduranga and the rest of Champa are well-known, but JtSjI&he assumption has been — following Maspero — that the former was no t^SjiSf* more than a sort of rebellious province which only occasionally succeeded ,iFs? i'1 gaming autonomy. Po Dharma, however, finds that the Panduranga chronicles list separate rulers dating back to roughly 1200, when one of ,«f*, these interregional conflicts was taking place, aggravated by Angkorean intervention. Noting that later names on these lists are corroborated by i|l both Vietnamese and European sources, he suggests that from the thirteenth >;f century onward, there was no longer a single "Champa", but rather two |. mgdoms: Vijaya and Panduranga. Once Vijaya had fallen to Dai Viet in ihe fifteenth century, Panduranga was all that remained.83 In a subsequent article, he takes this argument a step further. Not mly did Panduranga remain autonomous for centuries, he believes, it j was actually only one of five "principalities" in a sort of "confederation". | jjk Vijaya, long perceived as the capital of Champa for much of its history ; " prior to 1471, was only the residence for the reigning overlord or "king j of kings" whose own power and territory happened to be supreme at ; the time. Thus the shifts of power center up and down the coast over i the centuries before Vijaya's fall represent the waxing and waning of j particular components of Champa, not changes in the capital of a unified ' country. Maspero and other colonial scholars interpreted Vijaya's fall and the end of Sanskrit and old Cham epigraphy as "indications of the > collapse of the country", whereas in reality only certain components of i Champa were annexed by the Vietnamese, while the remaining members i of the "confederation" (Kauthara and Panduranga) survived. Kauthara was then completely absorbed in the seventeenth century, leaving only Panduranga.84 A Multi-Ethnic Champa Perhaps the most startling and even tendentious aspect of the revisionist Champa is the argument that it was not purely "Cham". In fact, it is contended that the term "Cham" itself is invalid as an ethonym, as it is ! ; not an indigenous term and has merely been created based on the genuine name "Champa", which alone appears in the inscriptions.85 Several scholars prefer to use the term "Champa", which they spell "Campa" in French, as both a noun and an adjective. The term "C(h)ampa", moreover, is expanded to include several different ethnic groups, on the grounds that its territory extended into the Central Highlands to encompass upland peoples such as the Jarai, Rhade, and Bahnar. One author places the "territorial 30 Bruce M. Lockhart If center" of "Champa" somewhere around the Highlands town of Pleiku, well away from the coastal centers.86 Bernard Gay has summarized the revisionist arguments in favor of a multi-ethnic polity. He notes that previous scholars' rejection of the Panduranga chronicles' validity necessarily distorted their perspective on Champa's history. Modern Cham texts show that several kings and high-ranking dignitaries were not ethnically Cham, but were of highland origin, notably Roglai and Chru. Gay also argues that derogatory references to "kirata" (considered to be a pejorative term for the highlanders) in Cham inscriptions actually refer to any rebel who opposed the ruler of Champa, without any particular ethnic connotation. In addition to these new conclusions, he also cites the presence of Cham ruins in the Central Highlands and historical legends of Cham rule stretching as far west as the Mekong River in the modern-day Lao province of Champassak. He does not believe, however, that the highlands were "colonized territory", but rather a place of refuge and resistance for the lowlanders when the coastal regions faced a threat from external enemies. In a paper from the same conference, Tarn Quach-Langlet also refers to the upland region's importance as a place of refuge and notes that the forest products gathered by the highlanders complemented the agricultural production of the lowlanders.87 Repositioning Champa in Southeast Asia French scholars' "repositioning" of Champa within Southeast Asia has taken place along two different but closely related axes. The first is largely the work of the late historian Jacques Nepote, who almost single-handedly took on what he perceived as a Vietnam-centered view of Champa's rise arid fall. In Nepote's opinion, the Vietnamese are little more than another "Sinicized [literally, 'Han-ized'] ethnic group" like the Cantonese, and Vietnam's historical role was essentially to act as a strategic bulwark protecting China from the Cham, whom the Celestial Empire had never succeeded in stabilizing, let alone pacifying. He portrays Vietnam, which he prefers to call "Tonkin" or the "Tonkinese state", as having long been a sort of cultural and economic backwater, bypassed by regional trade routes between China and the Malay Archipelago which directly contributed to Champa's prosperity. When Dai Viet experienced its first awakening of a genuine national identity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it "transformed the Chinese policy of pacification of the Southern barbarians [i.e., the Cham] into systematic conquest, the Nam Tien".™ Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa" 31 .,■?:. In two subsequent long articles, Nepote again takes up the gauntlet * on behalf of the Cham. He attacks the tendency to consider Cham history Mainly in relation to the Vietnamese and Khmer empires, as well as even more serious assumption that since the Cham were eventually Ibsorbed by their neighbors, "for all eternity they were the potential losers, so that historical writing is thus nothing more than the confirmation of this ailure". Framing his arguments in both cultural and geopolitical terms, he fees the protracted conflict between Dai Viet and Champa as one between ; two Asias: one "imperial" and "yellow", following a "Chinese model"; the ' 'other "feudal" and "brown", "leaning toward Indianization".89 Well before the Vietnamese brought an end to Chinese rule, Champa was already a puissance majeure rooted in a world that was alien to both of its northern neighbors; south of the Deo Hai Van (the Pass of the Clouds between Hul and Da Nang), he argues, was "a tropical world where Northerners [i.e., Vietnamese] feel foreign and are treated as such". In the fifteenth century the Cham entered a "Vietnamese-Islamic" period wherein they followed the rest of Southeast Asia in jettisoning the last remnants of classical Indianized culture.90 While Nepote's rhetorical excesses are intended primarily to pull Champa out of Vietnam's shadow, other scholars are intent on re-placing it firmly within the Malay World. It has long been known, of course, that linguistic, cultural, and later religious ties connected the Cham to other Austronesian-speaking peoples to the South and Southeast, connections which were naturally strengthened by Cham involvement in regional maritime trade. An academic reorientation was already evident at a 1987 Copenhagen conference where the various aspects of "revisionist Champa" were showcased; papers presented there included "Champa in Malay literature" and "Historical and literary relations between Champa and the Malay World". A few years later, a separate conference — held at Berkeley, but predominantly with European scholars — was devoted to the theme of "Champa and the Malay World".91 Even more significantly, the EFEO has opened a research center in Kuala Lumpur which has been actively publishing on Champa, with a particular emphasis on trilingual (French-Malay-Cham) editions of various literary works. DISCUSSION To analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each of these "Champas" would require an entirely separate paper. Instead, what I wish to do is to examine J 32 Bruce M. Lockhart the four perspectives in terms of their historical and political context, in an attempt to discover the underlying agendas which inform the fundamental assumptions of each perspective and, in some cases, directly stimulate the research in question. I will also try to show the interconnectedness of the different perspectives. The "Champa" constructed by the early generations of French scholars has little to surprise us given the general nature of colonial scholarship. French and Dutch historians and archaeologists in particular thought in terms of great "kingdoms" and "empires" — Funan, Chenla, Angkor, Srivijaya, Sukhothai, Dai Viet — and Champa was deemed qualified to take its place among their ranks. Its main attributes were what appeared to be a centuries-long history as a relatively unified entity and an Indianized classical civilization manifested through elegant Sanskrit and Sanskritized Cham epigraphy, imposing architectural monuments, and statuary corresponding to recognizably Indian themes. Thus it could be fitted into the framework of what Coedes called "les etats hindouises", all of them equally vanished into the distant past, and studied through the same lens. This lens showed (in the early decades of colonial historiography, at least) a long-ago "Hindu colonization", the evolution of a single kingdom with an Indianized ruling class, and an essentially lowland population with some "barbarian" tribes scattered along its periphery. This once-proud kingdom, however, like so many of its neighbors had left its glorious past far behind, and all that remained were scattered communities of "unfortunate remnants" eking out a miserable, pitiful existence among the decaying ruins of the monuments built by their ancestors, whose classical culture they had hopelessly polluted and corrupted with indigenous elements and whose elaborate art forms they could no longer even imitate. (In a similar vein, the first Frenchmen to explore Angkor are supposed to have expressed disbelief that such a wonder could have been built by the forefathers of the Khmers they saw around them.) The main cause of this decline, as the French saw it, was Champa's progressive loss of its territory to Vietnamese expansionism. Thus the Vietnamese emerged as the main villains in the tale, a theme which is particularly explicit in the writings of nineteenth-century observers and by no means absent from those of their successors. The French worked hard to portray themselves as the "protectors" of the various non-Vietnamese peoples in Indochina. Restoration work on sites in Cambodia and the former territory of Champa was clearly intended to preserve the heritage of these civilizations which would have presumably been completely "swallowed up" by the Vietnamese had not Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa" 33 |p|ization checked the twin processes of expansion and assimilation. By iffaloging and preserving monuments and other works of art, the French fe"rescuing" whole civilizations whose own members were no longer ll§able of doing so. Similarly, by granting a certain degree of autonomy HJq thCentral Highlands and parts of upland Tonkin, the French portrayed themselves as a sort of buffer between local ethnic groups and the threat ^excessive Vietnamese encroachment. (These peoples, however, lacking ^classical civilization like that of the Cham or Khmer, were relegated jBime category of Man or Moi — common Vietnamese designations for barbarians", something the lowland groups clearly were not.) ^ek/jfc. Aymonier is a particularly salient example of this mentality. As French Historian Charles Fourniau has shown, this first colonial chamisant was iflfpbperahng with a dual agenda. On the one hand, he was at the forefront of ' 7 a campaign by colonial interests in Saigon to detach the coastal provinces , - (particularly Birth Thuan and Khanh Hoa) from what remained of the Empire of Annam and incorporate them into the colony of Cochinchina. Phe Cham, it was reasoned, would presumably benefit more from direct French rule than from continued governance by Vietnamese mandarins under the protectorate. At the same time, Aymonier envisioned the area inhabited by the Cham as a buffer between the Vietnamese-dominated egions to the north and the more ethnically mixed areas to the south.92 Post-1954 Vietnamese historians had widely varying reactions to the findings of Aymonier and his colleagues, depending on whether they were in the North or the South. In the case of DRV scholars, and those writing in the SRV since 1976, we can understand the construction of the "Hanoi Champa" in at least two ways. First, the emphasis in Marxist ■■ historiography has been on "multi-ethnic" history, studying Vietnam's past not merely in terms of the ethnic Vietnamese, but in terms of all of the different ethnic -groups who have supposedly been part of this history. "Multi-ethnic" history is quite different from "ethnohistory", however, and in some ways virtually antithetical to it. From this perspective, a specific group's history is only important insofar as it shows how that group became a part of "the great multi-ethnic family of Vietnam", by either migration or integration or a combination of the two. The focus is on these groups' interaction with the Kinh, depicted in such a way as to show the "friendly relations" and "solidarity" among them, usually manifested in common struggles against external invaders or Vietnam's own "feudal" rulers. Such an approach is clearly reflected in the corpus of material studied for this paper; little attention is paid to the history of Champa itself except as it relates to relations between the two peoples 34 Bruce M. Lockhart and the (wonderfully euphemistic) process of "cultural exchange". This tendency has only recently begun to change, as will be discussed in the concluding section. A second characteristic of "multi-ethnic history" is that the traditional polities of those minority groups which had some kind of supra-village socio-political structure are generally studied mainly in terms of that structure ("feudalism", land ownership, ruling hierarchy, etc.), not as players on the historical or geopolitical stage. As we have seen, there has been relatively little work done on Champa's history since 1975. I would argue, moreover, that until very recently there has been a subtle attempt to divorce the modern Cham community from their "Champa" past so that they would view themselves mainly as part of the "family" of the Vietnamese nation. (The blurry distinction between "Cham culture" and "Champa culture" would seem to point in this direction.) During this same period scholarship on the Khmer minority in the Mekong Delta suggests that a similar process has been taking place for the history of that group. In essence, it is claimed that since the end of the Angkorean period, the Mekong Delta Khmer have evolved separately and independently from those in Cambodia and were not part of any "nation" until the Nam tien led to their eventual absorption into Vietnamese territory.93 The "Hanoi Champa" perspective is to a large extent a reaction against both colonial scholarship and colonial policy, concerning not only the Cham but upland peoples as well. As mentioned above, "colonialist and imperialist" scholars have frequently been castigated for allegedly painting a false, distorted picture of Cham-Vietnamese tensions in history — though this rhetoric has largely faded away in recent years. This is part of a broader claim that colonial and post-colonial ethnic tensions in Vietnam were due mainly to French and American maneuverings. In essence, colonial scholars in particular are accused of having overemphasized and even fabricated tensions between the Cham and the Kinh and between the latter and the highlanders to buttress the French "divide-and-rule policy". This interpretation of the relationship between French ethnography and colonial policy is not completely baseless, of course. Consider for example, Bernard Bourotte's well-known study on the history of the "Populations Montagnardes du Sud-Indochinois"; it is certainly no coincidence that this was exactly the name of the "state" briefly created by the French in the 1940s as part of their efforts to frustrate attempts to reunify a Vietnam fragmented by colonial rale.94 The "Hanoi Champa" perspective is also tied to more recent political developments. During the Second Indochina War, a movement Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa " 35 frierged which linked Cham, Khmer, and various highland minorities struggle for greater autonomy from the Saigon government and (in Highlanders' case) against the encroachment of lowlanders onto lands falitionally farmed by tribal groups. This movement took several different ^ms at different points in time, but the best-known structure was called 'FULRO (Front Uni pour la Liberation des Races Opprimees). Remnants this organization continued to cause problems for the Hanoi govern-^g¥meiit well after the fall of the Republic of Vietnam and the subsequent leunification of the country. Active resistance ended in the early 1990s '}S - will) the resettlement of FULRO remnants in the United States but the JjSp.oiganization continues to be linked to sporadic unrest in the Central Highlands.95 FULRO has been especially threatening to both the old and new legnnes because it is equally anti-government, anti-Communist, and .r,'l anti-Vietnamese. Post-1975 scholarship on the Cham and the highland minorities makes frequent reference to the movement, naturally blaming it on the machinations of pre-1975 political forces (a claim which ;*~ conveniently ignores the fact that its rise posed severe obstacles to the •V American and South Vietnamese prosecution of the war).96 Thus it is • necessary to keep the forces of ethnonationalism in check by presenting as favorable a picture as possible of inter-ethnic relations and emphasizing the Cham's longtime status as a member of the Vietnamese multiethnic community. A second concern which underlies the "Hanoi Champa", I believe, is the fear of possible influence from Islam extremism on the Cham communities. During the 1960s and 1970s, serious tensions and even violence occurred between Cham adherents of a more orthodox variety of Islam (living mainly along the Cambodian border) and the coastal Cham Bani, who follow a brand of Islam which has been heavily syncretized with indigenous beliefs. One of the key protagonists was the Cham Muslim Association of Vietnam, which emerged as part of a wider awakening of Islamic consciousness among certain sectors of the Cham community. An important element of this awakening was increased ties to Muslim countries, notably Malaysia. One post-1975 writer, Phan Van D6p, discusses these developments in some detail. He blames the "Americans and puppets" for having supported the Association's efforts to propagate reformist Islam in Cham Bani areas and thus "block the influence of the Revolution among ... Cham compatriots". Part of their strategy, he says, was the encouragement of a "Malay-izing trend" in the study of the Cham people's ethnic origins, language, and civilization; the "imperialists" hoped thus 36 Bruce M. Lockhart to re-orient the Cham toward the Association and the influence of Malay Islam.97 It seems quite likely that the fear of a possible re-forging of these ties, particularly since Vietnam has joined Malaysia and Indonesia in ASEAN, is partially behind the downplaying of the Cham's historical and cultural ties to the Malay world and the attempt to link them more closely to groups living further inland. By contrast, South Vietnam's scholars were generally much less likely to seriously question the "received wisdom" from their European predecessors — many of whom, of course, had been their colleagues and teachers as well. Certain French conclusions were rethought and rejected, particularly those regarding the pre- and proto-historical periods of Vietnam's past, where much of what Vietnamese had traditionally accepted as fact had been treated by colonial scholars as myth and legend. For many other historiographical issues, however, including the history of Champa, Saigon scholars continued to rely heavily on French research and conclusions. Intellectuals in South Vietnam saw the Nam tien and its consequences as a matter of national pride. Though recognizing their ancestors' responsibility for Champa's decline and eventual disappearance from the map, they viewed this as an inevitable occurrence and, indeed, one which had been necessary for the evolution of the stronger and more powerful Vietnamese nation. They were obviously secure enough in the correctness of their views that they felt no need to gloss over unpleasant historical truths; the realities of the past were recognized by all and did not have to be sugar-coated or masked with platitudes about traditional Cham-Vietnamese friendship or "cultural exchange". Works such as Phan Khoang's massive history of southern Vietnam chronicled the expansion of the Vietnamese and the contraction of Cham territory in much more detail than any Hanoi scholarship. Particularly significant is the history of Champa published in Saigon in 1965 by the brothers Dohamide and Dorahime, for two reasons. First, it stands in stark contrast to the bulk of Hanoi historiography on Champa, which is authored by ethnic Vietnamese.98 Second, in many respects the book's perspective echoes that of French colonial scholars in its plaintive description of Champa's fate, as typified by the quotation from its introduction given above. Such ideas would be unthinkable from the pen of DRV or SRV writers. Indeed, for most South Vietnamese scholars the historical fate of Champa as a nation was not at all problematic, and thus there was no need to construct a new "Champa" significantly different from the one "bequeathed" to them by the French. This "colonial Champa", after all, was itself based on interpretations of their own Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa" 37 jlbnicles and of Cham epigraphy which they saw no reason to question, pfprnerely recast the Vietnamese victories and conquests and gradual Snization of Champa in a more favorable light. Champa could be d on its own terms and was indeed considered an interesting topic ^historical research.99 Finally, we come to the "revisionist Champa", which is in a sense ^response to all three of the existing constructions. It should first be that to some extent, the revisionists are also obliged to gloss over some unpalatable historical evidence to argue their case for a multi-ethnic ASiK.Cluinpa with highlanders and lowland Cham enjoying equal status. A jEp1 hlsl0"'cal cham presence in the highlands is attested by archaeological e\iduice and by the oral traditions of several ethnic groups as well. y^Ifowcvcr, the latter sources also suggest that highlander-Cham relations ^ \sue much more complex — and at times more violent — than the S~ revisionists assume.100 While there is no reason to doubt Gay's and Po Dharma's conclusion (based on the chronicles) that some non-Cham rulers ' did occupy the throne of Champa, to assume from this that the Cham and " the highlanders were always "one big happy family", so to speak, would , be only somewhat less ludicrous than the "Hanoi Champa's" sanitized - view of the Nam tien.m The revisionists' main "target", of course, is the Champa of Maspero and his colleagues, with its assumption of a single, shifting political center and a predominantly lowland Cham population, as well as the belief that Cham history essentially came to an end in 1471. In a broader sense, Jacques Nepote also criticizes the colonial government for its "indifference" toward the fate of the Cham people, which he attributes to a sort of "Jacobinism" unconcerned with issues of cultural differences and historical legitimacy, along with an obsession with archaeology and museums which ignored the needs of surviving minority populations.102 It is thus the duty of this generation of researchers to complete the unfinished task of their predecessors by fully reconstructing the history of Champa and affirming its important role in the region's past. The second objective is to break the hold of the "Vietnam-centered" perspective of Cham history, particularly as it is manifested in post-1975 scholarship. Much of the work coming out of France appears to be a direct slap in the face to Vietnamese attempts to downplay the significance and consequences of conflicts with the Cham and of the Nam tiin, and ultimately the importance of Champa itself as a historical entity. This is intended to counter what is perceived as Vietnam scholars' "hegemony" in the discourse of writing Indochina's history, whereby ethnic conflicts 38 Bruce M. Lockhart become mere disputes between "feudal" rulers and the colonization of Cham and Khmer territories by Vietnamese settlers becomes "cultural exchange". While most scholars do not go as far as Nepote, who comfortably speaks of "ethnocide" in reference to the fate of the Cham, there is nevertheless a strong feeling that they are working to keep the more dramatic and unpleasant aspects of Champa's past from being buried.103 Finally, it is possible to see the "revisionist Champa" as a reassertion of the "spirit" of the French-sponsored "highland state" and the post-colonial FULRO movement. The emphasis on the historical ties between the Cham and the highlanders is, in a sense, a reconstruction of the shared non-Vietnamese (and even anti-Vietnamese) identity which characterized both of these two entities. By "grafting" the Highlands onto the historical Champa, however, the revisionists are shifting the center of gravity from the former to the latter. This agenda, of course, goes directly against the Party's attempt to reconstruct a "multi-ethnic" national history integrating both the ethnic Viet and the minorities into a single narrative of peaceful coexistence. CONCLUSION: THE LATEST TRENDS This chapter was originally written as a paper for a workshop in 1999 and then revised and updated after the 2004 conference. In just the last several years, however, the direction and tone of Vietnamese-language studies of Champa have shifted dramatically. For the sake of brevity, this final section will only highlight the main developments in this latest phase of the historiography of Champa. The first important development was the appearance in 2004 of a comprehensive history of Champa, to the author's knowledge the first such book to appear since 1975. Authored by Luang Ninh, who contributed the chapter on Champa to the 1983 history discussed above, the book cites — and to a limited degree engages with — more recent scholarship on the Cham, notably the argument that "Champa" was in fact composed of a number of smaller polities. Ninh seems somewhat agnostic on this particular theory, recognizing the existence and significance of different regions which enjoyed varying degrees of autonomy but without completely abandoning the idea of a "kingdom of Champa". He acknowledges the long-term tensions between the Cham and the Vietnamese but tends to blame them on the former, particularly the "military adventurism" (phieu luu quart su) and "ambitions" of particular Cham rulers. The "new situation" Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa" 39 B|fi arose after Dai Viet's conquest of Vijaya in 1471, he argues, was _S|he result of any Vietnamese desire to "annex" (thon tinh) Cham llj-itory, but rather was due to their need to keep their borders peaceful. IfeCham are portrayed as largely responsible for their own decline in a ^itive which shares some of the social Darwinism of Phan Khoang's "^festudy104 Ninh's study, although in some respects still linked to earlier works in ^ierms of its perspective and assumptions, is particularly significant for its jpTcveptance of the Nam tiin as a valid theme in Vietnamese history. After aaffifoic 1653 campaign by the Nguyen Lords against Panduranga, he says, (lhampa "was no longer an obstacle to the Nam tiin of the Vietnamese people".105 This theme emerges even more clearly in recent scholarship on Jpftguyin (first as Lords of the Dang Trong kingdom known to the West jgis "Cochinchina" and then of imperial Dai Nam after 1802), particularly Sfhe'ir conquest and absorption of Cham and Khmer territories to the South. ^The Nguyen were long reviled by Hanoi historians as corrupt, feudal plutocrats who sold out the country to the French. Since the mid-1980s, % however, the shift away from more rigidly ideological historical discourses t* "which has occurred within the broader context of dot mai (renovation) ft;" has given rise to a re-assessment of the NguySn which has dramatically 7. changed their image in Vietnamese historiography.106 jf Initially the rehabilitation of the NguySn focused largely on their domestic policies, but the most recent development in this process is an upsurge in scholarly interest in the Nam tiin, which was largely the work ; of that particular ruling family, since much of the southward expansion of Vietnamese territory took place after 1600, under their effectively . independent kingdom of Dang Trong. Several volumes of conference proceedings have been published which discuss in detail the various strategies used by the Nguyln to annex and control Cham and Khmer territories. The general tone of this scholarship is one of triumphalism, and the Nguyen are given full credit for expanding their kingdom's borders and thus making an important long-term contribution to the survival and prosperity of the Vietnamese people. Although the reality of territorial conquest is acknowledged, there is greater emphasis on the peaceful . coexistence which evolved between the Vietnamese settlers and their Cham and Khmer neighbors.107 The re-appearance of the Nam tiin narrative — and, indeed, its revalidation as part of historiographical discourse — are highly significant. They suggest that the squeamishness which Party historians once felt towards this particular aspect of Vietnam's historical evolution is no 40 Bruce M. Lockhart Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa " 41 longer present. At least two other factors would seem to be relevant to this issue. First of all, as the Republic of Vietnam recedes further into the past and the South is more firmly integrated into the nation-state, there is more space for a specifically Southern-oriented form of nationalist historiography to assert itself. Most of the pre-197 5 works published in Saigon have now been reprinted and are available in bookstores, suggesting that their regional focus and local sensibilities are no longer politically incorrect. (Moreover, Southern universities have re-emerged as centers for the production of knowledge in their own right after an initial period of domination by Hanoi-based institutions.) Second, at least some of this new scholarship seems to be reacting to irredentist sentiments in Cambodia, and the papers from these conferences which discuss Vietnamese expansion into Khmer territory are at pains to emphasize the allegedly peaceful process by which this expansion took place. While Cham irredentism or separatism are virtually non-existent in present-day Vietnam, given that the Cham and Khmer are the two main ethnic groups affected by the Nam tien, it is not surprising that their respective histories are now being linked together. Thus Champa, though no longer existing as a territorial unit, nevertheless remains a "contested space" for various groups of scholars. For the Vietnamese, the various extant monuments and other relics of the vanished kingdom are now a proud part of the collective heritage of the Vietnamese nation,108 just as the Cham themselves now constitute one of the 54 groups in the "greater family" of that multi-ethnic nation. The efforts at preservation thus focus on Cham sites as part of the "national heritage", downplaying their significance as reminders of what has been lost. Others, however, are equally determined to keep alive the memory of Champa as a separate entity with its own proud history and tragic fate and to contest the Vietnamese construction of their history.109 The centuries-long battle for control of Cham territory has now given way to a battle for control of the Cham past. Notes I have benefited greatly from the insightful comments of Nora Taylor, Momoki Shiro, and Michael Vickery, though the paper would have been much stronger had I taken all of their suggestions into account. In addition to the library of the National University of Singapore, I have been fortunate to have access to the libraries of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore and the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient in Hanoi. On the history of the Cham in Cochinchina, see Inspector Labussiere, "Rapport sur les Chams et les Malais de l'Arrondissement de Chaudoc", Excursions et Reconnaissances (henceforth ER) 6 (1880): 373. Aymonier's remarks on the scope of the former Cham kingdom are in his "Chroniques des anciens rois du Cambodge" {ER 4 [1880]: 156) and "Notes sur TAnnam (Le Binli Thuan)" {ER 24 [1885]: 271). Another official, writing in 1880, believed that the "cradle" of the old Cham kingdom was "in the heart of • Lower Cochinchina" (E. Peyrusset, "Le chemin de fer de Saigon ä Phnom . Penh", ER 2 [1880]: 178). I. Äymonier's first impressions are found in his December 1884 "Lettre au Gouverneur de la Cochinchine" {ER 22 [1885]: 250-5) and "Notes sur l'Annam" (pp. 199-340). The comparison between the two groups of Cham is in the earlier article, p. 253; on the lowly state of the Cham in Binh Thuan, see the second article, pp. 215 (loss of land), 216 (defeated people), ■.and 230 (barbarous invaders). Other favorable comments on the Chäu Doc t Cham can be found in Peyrusset, "Chemin de fer", p. 178 and Labussiere, "Rapport sur les Chams", p. 375. . Charles Lemire, "Les tours kiames de la province de Binh Binh (Annam)", ER 32 (1890): 216. . Etienne Lunet de Lajonquiere, Atlas archeologique de l'Indochine, monuments du Champa et du Cambodge (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1901) and Henri Parmentier, Inventaire descriptif des monuments cams de l'Annam (Paris: Leroux, 1909, 1918). .; This summary of early French scholarship on the Cham is based on "L'Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient depuis son origine jusqu'en 1920" {Bulletin de .l'Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient [henceforth BEFEO] 21 [1921]) and Pierre-Bernard Lafont, "Les recherches sur le Campa etieur evolution", in Le Campa et le Monde Malais (Paris: Centre d'Histoire et de Civilisations de la Peninsule Indochinoise, 1991), pp. 7-25. See, for example, R.C. Majumdar, Champa, History and Culture of an Indian Colonial Kingdom in the Far East, 2nd-16th century A.D. (Delhi: Gian Publishing House, 1985 reprint). "Ecole Francaise", pp. 3, 44. The term "Indochine" itself, of course, represents the French perspective of the region as the meeting place of the two great civilizations, and "La Peninsule Indochinoise" was the operative term for all of mainland Southeast Asia from Burma to Vietnam. A brief discussion of French perspectives on the Indianization of Southeast Asia and their impact on Indian scholars is in Susan Bayly, "French anthropology and the Durkheimians in colonial Indochina", Modern Asian Studies 34, 3 (2000): 597-602. Abel Bergaigne, "L'ancien royaume de Campa dans lTndo-Chine d'apres les inscriptions", Journal Asiatique 1 (1888): 5-105; his comment on linguistic tools is on p. 11. 42 Bruce M. Lockhart 9. Ibid., pp. 64-70 and 77-8. 10. Antoine Cabaton, Nouvelles recherches sur les Chams (Paris: Publications de l'Ecole Francaise d'ExtrSme-Orient, 1901), pp. 8, 15-21. Louis Finot's 1901 BEFEO article on Cham religion shares a similar focus on the identifiably Hindu and Buddhist elements; see "La religion des Chams d'apres leurs monuments", BEFEO 1 (1901): 12-33. 11. Jeanne Leuba, Un royaume disparu: Les Chams el lew art (Paris and Brussels: Van Oest, 1923), pp. 64-5 (Po Nagar and Uma, Siva) and 67-8 (mixing of beliefs). Both Finot and his colleague Parmentier also appear to have viewed Po Nagar as an avatar of Uma rather than vice versa; see Finot, "La religion des Chams", p. 15, and Henri Parmentier, "La sanctuaire de Po-Nagar a Nhatrang", BEFEO 2 (1902): 17-54. 12. "Ecole Francaise", p. 70; Leuba, Royaume disparu, p. 30; Bergaigne, "Ancien royaume", p. 12. 13. Ibid., pp. 13^1; see p. 9 for the observation on the decline of "Indian civilization" in Champa. 14. Leuba, Royaume disparu, pp. 72-3; quotation from p. 52. 15. "Ecole Francaise", p. 70. Nora Taylor has discussed this concept of alleged post-classical "decadence" in "The Sculpture of the Cham King Po Rome of Panduranga", an unpublished paper from a 1989 Cornell University seminar. 16. See Cabaton, Nouvelles recherches, pp. 4-7 on Islam, 7-9 on Brahmanism (quotation from p. 7), and 121 on the Hindu prayers. 17. Leuba, Royaume disparu, pp. 149 (barnacles) and 165 (Olympus). See Finot, "Religion des Chams", p. 12, for similar remarks. Mus' article on Cham syncretism has been published in English as India seen from the East: Indian and indigenous cults in Champa, tr. I.W. Mabbett and D.P. Chandler (Clayton, Vic: Monash University, 1975); the original article, "Cultes indiens et indigenes au Champa", appeared in BEFEO 33, 1 (1933): 367^-10. 18. Dr. Vantalon, "Rapport sur la vaccination en Cochinchine pendant l'annee 1880", ER 7 (1881): 291; Leuba, Royaume disparu, p. 99. Leuba is eloquent in her sympathy for the Cham, who she believes resemble Gypsies, being - "brothers of our brown Bohemians in the West". This, she thinks, explains why "the sudden feeling of an impossible brotherhood draws one to these sad, fallen beings at the very first contact, like the obscure call of a shared Aryan origin in the depths of time" (p. 82). For an excellent contextualization of such views in terms of colonial-era French social science, see Bayly, "French anthropology", pp. 586-97. 19. Aymonier, "Notes sur l'Annam", pp. 229-30 (irrigation), 271 (monuments), 271-2 (Cham vs. Vietnamese). 20. Parmentier, Inventaire descriptif, v. 1, p. ix. Aymonier also commented on the generally impoverished state of the coastal Cham, though he felt that their ethnic Vietnamese neighbors were hardly better off; see, for example, Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa' 43 lis "Lettre au Gouverneur", p. 253, where he also refers to the "iron yoke" of the Dai Nam mandarins. líčques Népote, "Champa: Propositions pour une histoire de temps long", part 1, Péninsule 26 (1993): 3. See Bergaigne, "Ancien royaume"; Aymonier, "Premiere etude sur les inscriptions tchames", Journal Asiatique, 8'ime série 17 (1891): 1-86; and gjjeorges Maspero, Le royaume de Champa, rev. ed. (Paris and Brussels: Van jlijest, 1928). As mentioned above, the first version of the Maspero text was ibriginally published serially in the journal T'oung Pao between 1910 and 1913. George Coeděs, Les états hindouisés d'Indochine et ďlndonésie (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1964) and The Indianized states of Southeast Asia, Walter Vella (ed.) and Susan Brown Cowing (tr.) (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1968). Michael Vickery's chapter in this book provides a detailed fp deconstruction of the narrative provided by Maspero and Coeděs. 24. See, for example, Maspero, Royaume, p. 158, concerning epigraphic evidence of Cham-highlander conflict in the mid-twelfth century. ,25. The various geographical circonscriptions are mentioned in ibid., pp. 24-5, >*v >r with Maspero's comments on Panduranga's status found on p. 25, note 4. ^tí|::For a discussion of periods of revolt and division, see pp. 137 and 165. A Í, list of the 14 dynasties and their rulers as Maspero reconstructed them is on §*< pp. 244-55. . v - É26. Ibid., pp. 240-1; quotation from p. 240. 27. See Louis Finot, "Notes ďépigraphie: Panduranga", BEFEO 3, 4 (1903): 630-48; Paul Pelliot, "Textes chinois sur Panduranga", BEFEO 3, 4 (1903): 649-54; and Maurice Durand, "Notes sur les Cham XI: Les archives des derniers rois chams", BEFEO 7, 3-4 (1907): 353-5. Durand was apparently more convinced by this discovery than he had been two years earlier, when he was still very skeptical about the list of Cham kings in a purported "royal is- chronicle" which ended in 1822; see his "Notes sur les Chams", BEFEO 5, 'A-. 3-4 (1905): 368-80. .28. For many Western scholars the use of the terms "North Vietnam(ese)" and "South Vietnam(ese)" has become problematic, given the movement of people (including academics) between regions and the questionable suitability of these terms to designate national entities. I take note of these objections, but I do not feel that they invalidate the usage of such labels if properly qualified. In this paper "North" and "South Vietnamese" will refer to scholars working in the political and intellectual environments controlled by the governments in Hanoi and Saigon respectively, regardless of their place of origin within Vietnam. 29. Phan Khoang, Viét sie: Xú Bang Trong 1558-1777: Cuóc Nam tién cůa dán tóc Viét Nam [Vietnamese history: Dang Trong, 1558-1777, the southward advance of the Vietnamese people] (Saigon: Khai Tri, 1970), pp. 45-6. The 44 Bruce M. Lockhart term Dang Trong refers to the territory ruled by the Nguyln family from the mid-sixteenth through the late eighteenth centuries, which began with the region around present-day Hue and Da Nang and expanded down to the Mekong Delta. This effectively independent kingdom was known to Europeans as "Cochin China", a name which then denoted a much larger expanse of territory than it did under colonial rule, when "Cochinchine" was limited to the Mekong Delta area. 30. Ibid., pp. 120-1 (Vietnamese rulers' strategy), 122 (marriage), 385 (Nguyen). Even the attempt at marriage diplomacy, which had provoked violent objections from some members of the Vietnamese court, was not fruitful over the long run. The Cham ruler died not long after his marriage to the princess, who was then expected to fulfill the duty of a faithful widow and join him in being cremated on the funeral pyre. However, a special envoy was dispatched from Dai ViSt who helped her make her escape. 31. Ibid., pp. 389-93; quotation from p. 393. 32. Ibid., p. 120. The concept of the Nam tiin has recently been problematized and even rejected by several scholars, notably Keith Taylor in his article "Surface orientations in Vietnam: Beyond histories of nation and region" {Journal of Asian Studies 57, 4 [1998]: 949-78). While I agree with Taylor's fundamental argument that an overly linear or excessively teleological perspective on the Nam tien should be rejected, the fact remains that the southward expansion of the Vietnamese people and their colonization and absorption of Cham and Khmer lands — however piecemeal the process — were genuine historical phenomena. 33. Quotations from Pham Van Son, Viet sir tan hien [Revised history of Vietnam], vol. 3 (Saigon: Khai Tri, 1959), pp. 291-3. 34. Nguyen Khac Ngtt, Mdu he Cham [Cham matrilineality] (Saigon: Trinh Bay, 1967), pp. 27 {our towns) (emphasis added) and. 117 (assimilate). 35. At the very least, they were clearly affiliated with the Cham Muslim Association of Vietnam (Hiep hoi Cham H6i giao Viet Nam), which was associated with Sunni Islam rather than the more syncretic version of the faith prevalent among coastal Cham. 36. Dobamide and Dorohime, Dan toe Cham luac sit [A brief history of the Cham people] (Saigon: The authors, 1965), p. 17. 37. Ibid., pp. 14-5. 38. Ibid., pp. 41, 50. Ibid., pp. 109 (national pride) and 111 (quiet life, ghosts). Ibid., pp. 114 (collision) and 115 (culture). In fact, this section of the paper includes scholars writing on Champa in all parts of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) after 1976. The use of the term "Hanoi" indicates that their scholarship tended to reflect the prevailing historical line of the Party. 39 40 41 Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa" 45 143. 46 ;47 I See for example, Tran Quöc Vucng and Hä Van Tän, Lieh sie che dö phong kiin Vi$t Nam [History of the feudal system of Vietnam] (henceforth LSCDPK), vol. 1 (Hanoi: Giäo due, 1960), pp. 144, 305; and Phan Huy Le, Lich sit che do phong kien Viet Nam^ rev. ed., vol. 2 (Hanoi: Giao due, 1962), p. 191. LSCDPK, vol. 1, p. 246 (980s), 448-54 (14th century); vol. 2, pp. 184-7 (early 15th century). Ibid,, vol. 1, p. 304 (1069), 473 (early 1400s); vol. 2, p. 188 (1471). Phan Huy Le et al, Lieh sie che dö phong kiin Viet Nam, vol. 3 (Hanoi: Giäo due, 1960), pp. 101 (erased from the map), 103 (great national family), 129 (murderous warfare). Üy ban Klioa hoc Xä hpi, Lieh sie Viet Nam [History of Vietnam], vol. 1 (Hanoi: Khoa hoc Xä hoi, 1971), p. 294. In 1983 the first volume of a projected eight-volume series appeared, :.,. covering prehistory and the period of Chinese rule: Phan Huy Le et al, Lich sic Viet Nam [History of Vietnam] (Hanoi: Dai hoc vä Giäo due Chuyen nghiep, 1983). It was reprinted in 1991, but no further volumes of this particular series seem to have appeared. This text will be discussed below. The 1997 histoiy describes itself as the first complete text to appear since the Lieh sü Viet Nam of the 1970s: Truong Hüu Quynh et al, Dai cuong lieh sie Viet Nam [General history of Vietnam] (Hanoi: Giäo due, 1997-8), vol. 1, p. 5. 48. Ibid., pp. 118 (10th century), 135-6 (11th century), 247 (13th century), 250. (14th century), 253 (Ho), 349 (1600s). 49. Nguyln Danh Phi6t et al, Lich sic Viet Nam th£ .ky X - däu thi ky XV [History of Vietnam from the 10th to early 15th centuries] (Hanoi: Khoa hoc Xä hoi, 2002), pp. 242, 409; Cham reliance on Song and Ming power is mentioned on pp. 152 and 250 respectively. These themes are also found in a recently published military history of Vietnam The volume covering the period of independence through the end of the Ly dynasty depicts the Cham as a more or less constant threat, and the section of the book focusing on Vietnamese-Cham relations during this period is entitled "Pushing back the threat of invasion and protecting the southern borders of the Fatherland"; Vien Lich sir Quän sir Viet Nam [Vietnamese Institute of Military History], Lichsü quän sie Viet Nam [Military history of Vietnam], vol. 3 (Hanoi: Chinh tri Quoc gia, 2003), pp. 180-98. Trän Trong Kim, Viet Nam sie luge [Summary history of Vietnam] (Hanoi: Vän hoä Thong tin, 1999). The reprint of Phan Khoang's book was published by Van hoc in 2001. Luong Ninh, "Dao Höi voi nguoi Cham a Viet Nam" [Islam and the Cham in Vietnam], Tap chi Nghien cieu Lieh sü [Journal of Historical Research] (henceforth NCLS) 1 (1999): 53; Le Dinh Phung, "Däu tich 50, 51 46 Bruce M. Lockhart ván hoá Chám pa: nhung phát hién mói á tinh NghTa Binh" [Traces of Champa culture: new discoveries in Nghia Binh province], Tap chí Kháo có hoc [Journal of Archaeology] (henceforth KCH) 2 (1989): 62 (both quotations). 52. See, for example, Lé Ván Háo, "Vái suy nghí vě quá trinh hoá hop vá gán bó Viét Nam-Champa trong lich sů dán tóc" [Some thoughts on the process of integration and attachment between Vietnam and Champa in the nation's history], NCLS 3 (1979): 47, 51, 53. Luang Ninh, "Các di tich vá ván dé lich sů Nam Champa" [The sites and historical issues of South Champa], KCH 2 (1999): 78. 54. The class-based analysis can be found in Lé Ván Háo, "Tim hiéu quan hé giao liru ván hoá Viét-Chám qua kho tang ván nghé dán gian cůa nguoi Viet vá nguoi Chám" [Examining Vietnamese-Cham cultural exchange through the folk art and literature of the Vietnamese and Cham], Tap chi Dán tóc hoc [Journal of Ethnology] (henceforth DTH) 1 [1979]: 48; Lé Van Háo, "Vái suy nghí", p. 48; and Lé Van Chuóng, "M6i tirong quan kháng khít Viét-Chám qua mot so sir kién lich sir, nhac vu, dán ca" [The close Viet-Cham connection seen through some historical events, music and dance, and popular songs], in Ban Thtr ký Ngánh Sů các Tručrng Dai hoc [University History Secretariat], Sů hoc: Thóng háo Khoa hoc cůa Ngánh Sů các Trieáng Dai hoc [History: Academic Bulletin for University History] 2 (1981): 212-20. The Mongols are mentioned in Lé Ván Háo, "Vái suy nghí", p. 49: On Cham support for the Táy Son, see p. 50 of the same article and p. 48 of "Tim hiéu". A French scholar has argued convincingly, however, that Cham could be found on both sides in the Nguyén-Táy Son conflict: Jacques Népote, "Champa: Propositions pour une histoire de temps long", part 2, Peninsule 27 (1994): 111. George Dutton's important study of the Táy Son also suggests that initial Cham support for the movement gradually broke down: George Dutton, The Táy Son uprising (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006), pp. 205-8. 55. Lé Ván Háo, "Vái suy nghí", p. 51. The connection between Cham forcibly resettled in Dai Viét and the quan ho is discussed by Trán Quóc Vucmg, Theo dóng lich sů [Following the flow of history] (Hanoi: Ván hoá Thóng tin, 1996), p. 245. (See also his chapter in this volume.) Lé Ván Háo acknowledges the "POW factor" in "cultural exchange" but says that we need to go beyond such phenomena (p. 48). 56. Lé Ván Chuóng, "Mói turong quan". Chučmg claims that because both ethnic groups were part of the "great Vietnamese family", "any feeling or pain felt by the Cham was experienced by the Viet, and vice versa" (p. 214). 57. Nguyen Due Toán, "Quan hé Chám-Viét trong lich sů qua tin nguong dán gian" [Cham-Vietnamese relations in history (as seen) through popular beliefs], DTH 4 (1994): 58 (religious beliefs); Nguyen Xuan NghTa, Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa' 59. 60. Mót so ttr liéu vé quan hé ván hoá Chám, Raglai Thuán Hái vá các dán ■f tóc miěn núi Nam Táy Nguyen" [Some data on cultural ties among the Cham and Raglai of Thuán Hái and the highland peoples of the southern Central Highlands], in Ngu&i Chám o Thuán Hái [The Cham in Thuán Hái], ed. Vién Khoa hoc Xa hói tai Thánh phó Hó Chi Minh and Ůy ban Nhán dán Tinh Thuán Hái (Thuán Hái: Só Ván hoá Thóng tin, 1989), p. 236 (agriculture). DSng Thu et dl., Di dán cůa nguai Vi$t tů thé ký X děn giůa thé ký XIX [Ethnic Vietnamese migration from the 10th to the mid-19th centuries] (Hanoi: Trung tám Nghién cťru Dán só vá Phát trién, 1994), pp. 56-7, 87; on the historical necessity for migration, see pp. 32, 113, 166-7. I am grateful to Andrew Hardy for providing me with a copy of this important book. Ibid., pp. 43-5 and 59 (withdrawal of Cham population), 54 (memory of original inhabitants). Nguyén Duy Hinh, "Thů bán vě quan he Viet-Chám trong lich sů" [A discussion of Vietnamese-Cham relations in history], DTH 2 (1980): 17. ■-61. Lé Ván Háo, "Vái suy nghí", p. 47. 62. An excellent example is Ngó Ván Doanh, "Thánh HÓ — cůa ngó Cháu Thucmg Nguyén (Táy Nguyén) cůa Cham pa" [Thánh Ho — Champa's gateway into the Central Highlands], NCLS 3 (2001): 55-60. 63. Huýnh Cóng Bá, "Hiéu them vé khái niém 'Nam tién' tů' trong cóng cuoc khai khán Thuán-Hoá hói trung thé ký" [A better understanding of the concept of "Nam tién" from the agricultural exploitation of Thuán-Hoá in the pre-modern period], NCLS 4 (2002): 33-5; Bá explicitly characterizes this culture as evolving from "Cham-Viet" to "Viet-Cham", reflecting the change in its dominant element. A similarly Darwinian perspective on this issue is found in Huýnh Quóc Thang, "Khánh Hoá: Vůng dát hói hru van hoá dac trung cůa Phirang Nam" [Khánh Hoá: A distinctive area of cultural exchange in the South], NCLS 10 (2004): 32-7. 64. The index for the first 40 years of Nghién cůu lich sů, the main journal for historical scholarship in both the DRV and SRV, lists a grand total of four articles on Champa; see Tdng muc luc Tap chí Nghién cůu lich sů (1954-1994) [General index to Historical Research} (Hanoi: Vién Sů hoc, 1995). 65. See Phan Lac Tuyén, "Nóng nghiép có truyén cůa nguoi Chám a Thuán Hái" [The traditional agriculture of the Cham in Thuán Hái], DTH 1 (1990): 33; and Lé Ngoc Canh, "Nguoi Chám vá xú só Champa" [The Cham and the land of Champa], DTH 2 (1992): 55 (this article was originally published in NCLS). The first article on Champa ever to appear in NCLS referred to the Cham ruler as "the supreme slave master/owner" and to Cham 48 Bruce M. Lockhart Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa" 49 officials as "lower-level slave masters/owners": Bio Duy Anh., "Tinh hlnh nuóc Chiém Thánh tnróc vá sau thé ký X" [Champa's situation before and after the tenth century], NCLS 51 (1963): 27. The writer, one of Vietnam's most prominent historians, saw no evidence for more than two classes in Cham society: slaves and slave-owners. 66. Phan Huy Lé et al, Lieh sů Viět Nam, pp. 284-333. 67. Nguyen Xuän Nghia, "Möt sö tu liéu", pp. 225-32; on Cham overlordship and solidarity with highlanders against invaders (in this case, the Mongols in the thirteenth century), see also Chu Thai Son, "Däu vát ván hoá Cham trén dát Tay Nguyen" [Traces of Cham culture in the Central Highlands], DTH 3 (1990): 73. An archaeological study, of Cham sites in the Central Highlands can be found in Luong Thanh Son, "Yang Prong — Tháp Cham a Bäk Lák" [Yang Prong — a Cham tower in Bäk Läk] (DTH 3 [1991]: 28-32). 68. William Southworth, "The origins of Champa in central Vietnam: A preliminary review", Ph.B. diss., SOAS, 2001; a summary of his findings is in Southworth, 'The coastal states of Champa", in Southeast Asia: From Prehistory to History, ed. Ian Glover and Peter Bellwood (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), pp. 209-33. 69. Trán Ký Phuong, "Góp phän tim hiéu vé nén vän minh cůa vuong quóc có Champa tai miěn Trung Viet Nam" [A contribution to understanding the civilization of the ancient kingdom of Champa in Central Vietnam], Tap chí Nghi&n cúu vá Phát trién [Journal of Research and Development] 37 (2002): 63-74 and 38 (2002): 71-8; Trän Ký Phuong, "Buóc däu xác dinh danh hiéu các tiéu vuong quóc (?) thuóc mién Bäc vuong quéc có Chiém Thanh [Champa] tai mién Trung Viet Nam khoáng giira thé ký 11 vá 15" [A preliminary identification of the names of the small kingdoms (?) of the Northern region of the ancient kingdom of Champa in Central Vietnam around the 11th.to 15th centuries], paper presented at the Second International Conference of Vietnamese Studies, H6 Chi Minh City, July 2004. Phuong suggests that Maspero's view of Champa as a single, centralized kingdom was overly influenced by the particular strains of nationalism and government centralization which prevailed in France between the World Wars ("Góp phán tim hiéu", part 1, p. 70 note 12). 70. Nguyen Htm Thöng, "Vimg dät Bäc miěn Trung: Nhüng cäm nhän buóc däu" [The northern part of Central Vietnam: Preliminary feelings], DTH 4 (2004): 3-11. 71. Champa and the archaeology of My Son (Vietnam), ed. Andrew Hardy, Mauro Cucarzi and Patrizia Zolese (Singapore: NUS Press, 2009). 72. Ngö Van Doanh, Tháp co Champa — sie that vá huyén thoai [The ancient towers of Champa — fact and legend] (Hanoi: Van hoá-Thong Tin, 1994), pp. 222-5. Similar perspectives can be found in Bang Van Bái, "Các di tich Cham — ván dé báo tón vá phát huy" [Cham sites — preservation and ( development], Tap chí Nghién cúu Dong Nam Á [Journal of Research on . Southeast Asia] 21 (1995): 4-7 and Liru Trán Tiéu, "Nghién cúu, báo tón P' vá phát huy các di tich vän hoá Chám trong su nghiep phát trién vän hoá jjt cúa dät nuác" [Researching, preserving and developing Cham cultural sites L within the context of the country's cultural development], in the same issue, t PP- 1-3- j73. Phan Xuän Bién et al.,Ván hoá Chám [Cham culture] (Hanoi: Khoa hoc Xä hoi, 1991), p. 10. slA. Ngö Vän Doanh, Ván hoá Champa [Champa culture] (Hanoi: Van hoá-Thong tin, 1994), pp. 28-9 (divisions), 180 (Indian elements) and 188 (popular culture). 75. Phan Xuän Bién et al, Ván hoá Chám, pp. 13 (ancient vs. modern culture), 96 and 99 (ceramics), and 141 (architecture). >76. Ibid., pp. 376-7 (three factors) and 381 (exchange). 77. Chů Vän Tän, "20 näm sau phát hiěn mói ö Long Thanh — möt län ntta nhin lai Sa Huýnh" [Twenty years after the new discoveries at Long Thanh — rethinking Sa Huýnh once again], KCH 1 (1997): 34; see also Pham Due Manh, "Suy nghi vé 'khöng gian vän hoá' cůa Sa Huýnh vá vé Sa Huýnh" [Thoughts on Sa Huýnh and the Sa Huýnh "cultural space"], KCH 3 (1985): 31-46. 78. Ibid., p. 40. 79. Phan Xuän Bién, "Vän hoá Cham: nhüng yéu té bán dia vá bán dia hoá" [Cham culture: indigenous and localized elements], DTH 1 (1993): 8; Nguyen Duy Hinh, "Thů bán", p. 21. See also Nguyen Him Thöng, "Vüng dät Bäc". Nguyěn Xuän Nghla, "Möt sö tu lieu", pp. 221-2, 240 (quotation); Phan Xuän Bién, "Vän hoá Cham", pp. 9-10. Phan Lac Tuyén, "Nöng nghiep", p. 33; see also p. 27 and Nguyén Búc Toán, "Böi nét ve tin nguöng dän gian Cham so sánh vor tin ngu&ng cůa các dän töc Nam Báo ä Viét Nam" [Some features of Cham popular beliefs in comparison with the beliefs of Austronesian peoples in Vietnam], DTH 1 (1999): 67, 70. 82. Po Dharma, "Le déclin du Campa entre le XVT et le XIXe siěcle", in Le Campa et le Monde Malais, pp. 47-63. On the chronicles, see Pierre-Bernard Lafont, "Etudes Cam HJ: Pour une rehabilitation des chroniques rédigées en cam moderně", BEFEO 68 (1980): 105-11. ' 83. Po Dharma, Le Panduranga (Campa) 1802—1835: ses rapports avec le Vietnam, vol. 1 (Paris: EFEO, 1981), pp. 60-1. 84. Po Dharma, "Etat des demiěres recherches sur la date de ['absorption du Campa par le Vietnam", in Actes du Séminaire sur le Campa (Paris: Centre 80. 81 50 Bruce M. Lockhart d'Histoire et de Civilisations de la Péninsule Indochinoise, 1988), pp. 59-70. Kauthara was the region centered around Nha Trang, now the provinces of Phú Yen and Khánh Hoä. 85. "Avant-propos" In Actes du Séminaire, p. 5. 86. Népote, "Champa: Propositions" (1993), p. 7 fn. 87. Bernard Gay, "Vue nouvelle sur la composition ethnique du Campa", ia Actes du Séminaire, pp. 49-58 (quotation from p. 53); Tam Quach-Langlet, "Le cadre géographique de l'ancien Campa", in the same volume, pp. 36, 42. For a nuanced critique of this multi-ethnic perspective, see Trän Ký Phucmg, "Góp phán tim hiéu", part 1, p. 71 note 14. 88. See Jacques Népote, "Quelle histoire, pour quels Viétnamiens?", Péninsule 11-12 (1985-6): 7-26; quotations are from pp. 13 (Cantonese), 16 (bulwark), 15 (backwater), and 18 (policy transformation). 89. Népote, "Champa: Propositions" (1993), pp. 5-6. Ironically (and perhaps unconsciously), Nepote's argument echoes early colonial writings which also conceived the fall of Champa as the defeat of an "Indie" polity by a "Sinic/ Confucian" one (Bayly, "French anthropology", p. 595). 90. Ibid., p. 15 (two Asias); "Champa: Propositions" (1994), pp. 77 (Děo Hái Ván), 93 (puissance majeure), 105 (de-Indianization). 91. The proceedings of these conferences have been published as Actes du Séminaire sur le Campa and Le Campa et le Monde Malais (see citations in previous notes). 92. Charles Fourniau, Annam-Tonkin 1885-96: Lettrés et paysans viétnamiens face ä la conquěte coloniale (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1989), pp. 65-7. 93. Mac Duong, "Ván dé dän cu vá dán tóc r> Dong bang Song Círu Long" [Issues of settlement and ethnicity in the Mekong Delta], in Mac Duong et al, Ván dé dán tóc á Dong bang Song Cim Long [The ethnic issue in the Mekong Delta] (HO Chi Minn City: NXB Khoa hoc Xä hoi, 1991), p. 30; for similar arguments, see also Ngö Due Thinh, "Ngučri Khome Dong bang Song Cůu Long lá thánh viěn cůa cóng dóng các dán tóc Viét Nam" [The Khmer of the Mekong Delta are members of the Vietnamese community of ethnic groups], NCLS 3 (1984): 26-32. 94. See Bernard Bourotte, "Essai d'histoire des populations montagnardes du Sud-Indochinois jusqu'a 1945", Bulletin de la Société des Ětudes Indochinoises, nouvelle série 30, 1 (1955): 11-116. Good discussions of French policy toward the Highlands are in Gerald Hickey, Sons of the Mountains: Ethnohistory of the Vietnamese Central Highlands to 1954 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982) and Oscar Salemink, The ethnography of Vietnam's Central Highlanders, A historical contextualization (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003). Both authors acknowledge the French role in stimulating Highlander ethnonationalism, but Salemink tends to see the latter more as an artificial construction of colonial policy, whereas Hickey Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa' 51 1 ŠSŠ ■"Ur"' • gives more credit to traditional Highlander grievances against lowland c Vietnamese as a factor in generating a collective identity. á95. The most thorough discussion in English of FULRO during the wartime years is in Gerald Hickey, Free in the Forest: Ethnohistory of the ; Vietnamese Central Highlands 1954-1976 (New Haven: Yale University . Press, 1982). A more recent account is Po Dharma, Du FLM au FULRO: Une lutte des minorités du Sud Indochinois, 1955-1975 (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2006). 96. See, for example, Nguyen Tuan Triét, "Phong tráo dáu tranh chóng dé quóc xám luac cůa dóng báo Chám ó tính Thuán Hái" [The struggle i./ movement against imperialist aggression of Cham compatriots in Thuán Hái ,. ■ ■ province], in Ngudi Chám o Thuán Hái, p. 339. The Party has often chars', acterized FULRO as a "reactionary" movement, suggesting that it is anti-Communist rather than separatist and thus sidestepping many of the real issues — although this perception has changed in the past few years with the resurgence of protests in the Central Highlands in which FULRO remnants have apparently played a role. South Vietnamese writers seem to have been rather : more realistic about the causes of the movement. The somewhat iconoclastic historian Ta Chi Dai Truómg, for example, discussed in some detail the "downside" of the Nam tién for the Cham people and criticized Vietnamese-centered approaches to writing national history. He pointed out that the fact that FULRO saw itself as "the representative of the former Cham empire" showed the dangerous consequences of such a view of history. Ta Chi Dai Tntong, "Vi tri cůa Dai Viet, Chiern Thanh, Phu Nam trong lich sů Viét Nam" [The position of Dai Viet, Champa, and Funan in Vietnamese history], Tap chi SuDia [Journal of History and Geography] 4 (1966): 101. Nguyén KhácNgu also commented that the rise of the "separatist" FULRO was directly attributable to "misunderstandings between minorities and the authorities" (Mali hě Chám). 97. Phan Ván Dóp, "Ton giáo cůa nguř/i Chám b Thuán Hái" [The religion of the Cham in Thuan Hái], in Ngudi Chám ó Thuán Hái, pp. 258-95 (quotations from pp. 292-3). For similar remarks, see Mac Duong, "Ván dé dán cu", pp. 64-6, and Phan Ván Dóp and Nguyen Viét Cuong, "Nguoi Chám ůr Dóng bang Song Cůu Long" [The Cham in the Mekong Delta], in Mac Bučmg et al, Ván dé dán tóc, pp. 307-9. 98. Dohamide and Dorohime, Dán tóc Chám. None of the authors cited in the "Hanoi Champa" section seem to be Cham, with the possible exception of Phan Ván Dóp. The name "Dóp" has a very un-Vietnamese ring to it, yet in a collection of conference papers where several contributors are explicitly identified as "Cham", he is not: Kinh té-ván hoá Chám [Cham economy and culture] (Hó Chi Minh City: Vien Dáo tao Mó rpng, 1992). 52 Bruce M. Lockhart Colonial and Post-Colonial Constructions of "Champa 53 99. Saigon journals such as Sů Dia (History and Geography) and the post-colonial continuation of the Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises contained numerous articles on various aspects of Cham history. 100. See, for example, Bourotte, "Essai d'histoire"; Jacques Dournes, "Recherches sur le Haut Champa", France-Asie 24, 2 (1970): 143-61; and Jean Boulbet, Pays des Maa' Domaine des Génies (Nggar Maa' Nggar Yaang), essai d'ethno-histoire d'une population proto-indochinoise du Viet Nam central (Paris: Publications de l'Ecole Franfaise d'Extreme-Orient, 1967). Dournes's study anticipates some of the later arguments of the revisionists, though his main focus is the close relationship between the Cham and Jarai. 101. In this respect, it is interesting to note the evident hostility toward the Cham found in a "History of the Dega people" written by exiled FULRO remnants. Though the document's grasp of Vietnamese and Cham ethnohistory is questionable, the theme of Cham hegemonism is clear. It also contends that FULRO was weakened by Cham and Khmer Krom (the Cambodian minority in the Mekong Delta) who "took advantage of the situation by using the Dega people to claim the territory of the Central Highlands from Vietnam". See The Montagnard Foundation, "Supplemental materials for a presentation made to the United Nations Workshop on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Geneva, July 19-30, 1993", downloaded from . It is likely that the Highlander exiles have experienced fragmentation into groups with different loyalties. 102. Népote, "Champa: Propositions" (1994), p. 113. 103. Ibid., p. 118, and "Champa: Propositions" (1993), p. 16. 104. Luong Ninh, Lich sů vuong quoc Champa [History of the kingdom of Champa] (Hanoi: Dai hoc Quóc gia Hanoi, 2004). On Cham rulers' ambitions and "adventures", see pp. 108, 133, and 220; the reference to peaceful borders is on p. 183. 105. Ibid., p. 215. 106. For a detailed discussion of these developments, see Bruce M. Lockhart, "Reassessing the Nguyen dynasty", Crossroads 15, 1 (2001): 9-53. 107. See Ůy ban Nhán dan Tinh Thanh Hoá and Hói Khoa hoc Ljch sů Viét Nam, ed., Ký yéu Hoi tháo Khoa hoc Chúa Nguyěn vá Vuong triéu Nguyen trong lich sů Viét Nam tů thé ký XVI dén the ký XIX [Proceedings of the Conference on the Nguyen Lords and the Nguyen Dynasty in Vietnamese history from the 16th to 19th centuries] (Hanoi: Thé Giói, 2008) and Hoi Khoa hoc Lich sů Viét Nam, ed., Mot só ván dé lich sů vung dát Nam Bó den cuói thé ký 'XIX [Some issues in the history of the Mekong Delta region through the end of the 19th century] (Hánpi: Thé Giói, 2009). 108. This is a frequently held view; see, for example, Cao Xuán Phó, Táp ánh dieu khác Cham/Cham sculpture album (Hanoi: Khoa hoc Xa hoi, 1988). 109. The brothers Dohamide and Dorohiem, now living overseas, recently published a book entitled Bangsa Champa: tim ve mot coi nguon each xa [The Champa nation: in search of distant roots] (California: Seacaef and Viet Foundation, 2004). I have not had a chance to see this book, but it is likely to be much more nationalistic intone than anything published inside Vietaam such as, for example, Inrasara, Van hod-xa h£>i Cham: nghien cuu vd doi thoai [Cham culture and society: research and dialogue], 3rd ed. (Hanoi: Van hoc, 2008). The proliferation of websites on the Internet, notably that of Champaka () also provides opportunities for contesting voices. IHlilp^' lli!llsP^v' ©2011 Trän Ky Phrrang & Bruce M. Lockhart Masarykova univerzita ~] wroRckä fakulte. Üstfedni knihov.na f \pf\\.t. 1 &*-?Jfra--f6 ! Sign. \ . ■___________ j Syst.c. J Published by: NUS Press National University of Singapore AS3-01-02, 3 Arts Link Singapore 117569 Fax: (65) 6774-0652 E-mail: nusbooks@nus.edu.sg Website: http://www.nus.edu.sg/nuspress ISBN 978-9971-69-459-3 (Paper) All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher. National Library Board Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data Symposium on New Scholarship on Champa (2004: Singapore) The Cham of Vietnam: history, society and art / edited by Trän Ky Pmrang & Bruce M. Lockhart. - Singapore: NUS Press, c2011. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-9971-69-459-3 (pbk.) 1. Champa (Kingdom) - History - Congresses. 2. Champa (Kingdom) -Civilization - Congresses. 3. Champa (Kingdom) - Antiquities -Congresses. I. Lockhart, Bruce McFarland, 1960- II. Trän, Ky Phucng. m. Title. This volume is dedicated to the late Prof. Trän Quöc Vupng. DS559.92.C5 959.703 - dc22 The above image shows Prof. Vuong doing his field research in northern Vietnam. (Photograph by Nguyln Hftu ThiSt) OCN489086445 Cover. Front: Kala-Makara, a sculpted small arch of the foundation base of My Son Al temple, early 10th century. (Photograph by Trän Ky Phuong) Back: (top left) Cham cemetery. (Photograph by Thänh Phän) (bottom right) The temple of Gedong Songo 1, Central Java. (Photograph courtesy of Akiko Oyama) Typeset by: International Typesetters Pte Ltd Printed in Singapore by Mainland Press Pte Ltd