Đại Việt and Champa: Panduranga, Kauthara, and Indrapura

Most travellers to Vietnam will, at some point, visit a Cham tower or view Cham artefacts in a museum. These treasures were left behind by the Cham people of the now-vanished kingdom of Champa. They are unique, exquisite, and deeply mythical. The people who built and carved these beautiful works once inhabited central Vietnam and the northern part of the south, a territory stretching over 1,000 kilometres from north to south. Today, with a population of fewer than 200,000, the Cham people live primarily in Ninh Thuận, Bình Thuận, and various provinces across the Mekong Delta.

Champa’s history is broadly divided into three eras: the First Era (5th to 10th centuries), the Second Era (10th to 15th centuries), and the Third Era (15th to 19th centuries). This book focuses on the First Era, exploring the three great houses of Gaṅgārāja, Vicitrasagara, and Ujora across three key locations. The first house is associated with Simhapura (modern Trà Kiệu in Quảng Nam province). The second house is connected with Virapura and Po Nagar in Panduranga and Kauthara (present-day Lâm Đồng and Khánh Hòa provinces (formerly Ninh Thuận, Bình Thuận and Khánh Hòa)). The third house is linked with Indrapura and the Đồng Dương Monastery in Đà Nẵng City (formerly Quảng Nam province). The volume also presents a comprehensive overview of Champa, a structural description of the Cham towers, and maps of Cham ruins in the Quảng Trị and Huế City (formerly Quảng Bình, Quảng Trị and Thừa Thiên-Huế provinces).

To gather material for this volume, the author visited most of the sites mentioned in the book and referenced Cham inscriptions alongside Chinese and Vietnamese historical works. Dr Anne-Valérie Schweyer—Research Director at the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research), an epigraphist, and a world-leading scholar in Champa studies—reviewed the text and provided the foreword. She concludes:

“Through his travels, Tan Pham unravels the history and art of the Cham kingdoms from the time of their creation to their apogee, while at the same time making their present-day presence visible. It is a great pleasure to follow in his footsteps, which lead to a better understanding of a glorious part of Việt Nam’s history.”

This book is Volume 3B of the series, A Traveller’s Story of Vietnam’s Past. It continues the narrative from Volume 1, The Bronze Drums and The Earrings, and Volume 2, One Thousand Years: The Stories of Giao Châu, the Kingdoms of Linyi, Funan and Zhenla. The book has 384 pages and features 235 figures and illustrations.