The Cham of Vietnam: History, Society and Art

The Westward Expansion of Chamic Influence in Indochina: A View from Historical Linguistics

348 The Westward Expansion of Chamic Influence in Indochina: A View from Historical Linguistics Gérard Diffloth This paper explores the historical impact of the Chamic languages (Cham, Jarai, Rhadé, etc.) on their immediate neighbours by examining Chamic borrowings into certain Mon-Khmer languages in Vietnam and Laos. It is possible to draw on a map the westward outer limit of this influence. Two different regions must be distinguished, corresponding to two historical branches of Mon-Khmer: the Bahnaric branch in the South and the Katuic in the North. In the Bahnaric languages, Chamic influence is extensive and still active today, spreading into what is now eastern Cambodia but not much into southern Laos. In the Katuic languages, by contrast, Chamic influence is no longer active; it is probably more ancient, and it does extend to parts of southern Laos. The words borrowed suggest trade, but only to a small extent. Better represented are everyday words concerning the weather, human anatomy, animals and food items and animistic notions. This would imply contacts on a relatively equal basis, not domination by ruling commercial or administrative elites. Before proposing new perspectives, we should acknowledge the role that linguistics has already played in the reconstruction of Cham history. It was only with the help of classical epigraphists trained primarily in Sanskrit — but who also had knowledge of Austronesian languages such c฀h฀a฀p฀t฀e฀r฀ 15 15 ChamViet.indd 348 1/17/11 11:36:27 AM Chamic Influence in Indochina 349 as Modern Cham, Old Malay and Old Javanese — that the Old Cham inscriptions ever became intelligible.1 Translating these ancient inscriptions not only provided additional factual information, it also gave a living voice and an ethnic context to the ancient monuments. Without this, we would only understand the Sanskrit side of the Cham story, that is, the official statements couched in a somewhat anonymous formal and religious language. With their help, however, we have been able not only to connect the inscriptions to the living Chamic-speaking societies of today, but also to provide an even more ancient, prehistoric link across the sea to the rest of the Austronesian-speaking world. This contribution was fundamental, and the philological work on the Old Cham language must continue today. There is another branch of linguistics which is now opening new perspectives in Chamic studies, namely comparative-historical linguistics — the comparison of the languages themselves and the reconstruction of the prehistory of entire language families such as Austronesian and Mon-Khmer, with or without the help of written documents. As a matter of fact, most of the new materials we are now using come from societies which do not write, and our reconstructions stretch many centuries or even millennia into the past, ages before the arrival of writing on the scene. Even the Old Cham inscriptions, precious and useful as they are, do not play a really central role in these new studies; the documents we use are the living languages of today. This has a great advantage over the work of historians and archaeologists who, of necessity, study documents that are unique pieces preserved by sheer chance — dead objects that need interpretation, since they can no longer speak to us directly. By contrast, in modern comparative linguistics our main instrument is the spoken word. Far from being unique documents, words can be repeated many times and confirmed by any number of people; the speakers can be questioned and their answers endlessly refined. More importantly, these words cover each and every aspect of human activity, not simply the few topics that were selected by ancient rulers or their followers for inscriptions or other texts which escaped blind destruction. Of course, there is also a process of selection involved with linguistic documents, but in principle at least, the quantity and the quality of such documents are limited only by the amount of time available to the researcher, and by his or her own skill and imagination. As historical linguists, therefore, we occupy an unusual position in the historical sciences: we have direct access to an unlimited wealth of documents that are fully alive, and we are also able to use these documents to navigate up and down the silent millennia of prehistory. Sometimes we are even 15 ChamViet.indd 349 1/17/11 11:36:27 AM Gérard Diffloth 350...