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102 Anne-Valérie Schweyer Chapter 9 The Birth of Champa Anne-Valérie Schweyer Abstract This paper proposes a long-overdue synthesis of the data on Linyi and Champa from the 3rd to the 7th century. It first explores “Linyi” as it is presented in Chinese texts and estimates its origins and territory in the present-day Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Huê provinces. It then focuses on the technically advanced Xitu kingdom in the Thu Bon Valley, and its first famous king, Bhadravarman, at the end of the 5th century. Finally, after comparing the epigraphic use of “Champa” at My Son and “King of Champa” outside of My Son, the paper suggests that Linyi, “city of the Lin”, and Champapura, “city of the Cham”, were both ancient kingdoms of Central Vietnam. Introduction This paper will attempt to illuminate what was meant by “Linyi” and “Champa”. If it can be shown that there were polities on the lower middle coast of today’s Vietnam before the words “Cham” or “Champa” appear in inscriptions, then we should be able to clarify the precise birth date of “Champa”. We must rely on Chinese texts and archaeological and epigraphic traces. Researching these sources tends to define the Cham area as a mosaic of different territories rather than a unified territory strung along the coast. Thus, Linyi and Champapura were distinct territories, among others, that had existed since Austronesians first settled the coastal valleys of Vietnam. Linyi in Chinese Texts The territory of the Chams is generally seen as a succession of alluvial plains open to the sea and separated by natural barriers. Each coastal area seems to have housed a kind of kingdom. Chinese sources provide the only evidence of the situation prior to “Indianization” and the first appearance of inscriptions in the region before the end of the 5th century. There is, however, a divergence between the use of the term “Linyi”, employed in Chinese texts from the 3rd century and 749, and the first appearance of the name “Champa”. Campā first occurs in 658 in the Cham inscription C.96 in My Son, and then in 667 in the Khmer inscription K.53 in Kdei Ang, Prey Veng. The manner in which the Cham identity was forged therefore needs to be re-examined. A linguistic study shows that the Chams were among the navigators of prehistoric Southeast Asia (Vickery 2005: 15). The history of Champa might have commenced in the 3rd century when the Chinese first spoke of a political entity named “Linyi”, even though no allusion is made to its ethnic identity or language. The Chinese text attaches the adjective Kunlun to these southern “barbarians”, meaning “people of the south of black colour and crinkled hair” (Stein 1947: 230, 259). These first occupants recorded by the Chinese are considered today to be not aboriginal but Austronesian navigators who landed on the coast of present-day Vietnam at the beginning of the Christian era and inserted themselves into the mainland Mon-Khmer linguistic culture. Arriving by sea, probably in small numbers, these newcomers naturally brought along their own traditions, beliefs and technology. For the Chinese, a border demarcates what 102 Connecting Empires hi res combin102 102 8/24/2012 9:46:07 PM 103 The Birth of Champa can be considered within and without of a territory, a social space submitted to one authority and social order. The few extant Chinese texts suggest this notion was an early one and that Linyi was seen as such a political entity. Linyi or the “city of Lin” makes its appearance in history under the Han Empire (AD 206–20) as a political entity constituted within the commandery of Rinan “south of the sun” (Taylor 1983: 30) — a territory situated on the lowlands south of the Ngang pass (“Gate of Annam” in French Indochina). Such a remote province must have had but a tenuous link to the imperial court. Chapter 28 of the Qian Han shu, compiled in the 1st century CE, states that Rinan was divided into regions, of which “the most southern was called Xianglin”. Xianglin may be equated with Linyi for xiang ‒ “elephant” and lin ‒ “forest”, while lin ‒ “forest” and yi ‒ “town” (Stein 1947: 209, 241). Xianglin, capital of Rinan, is therefore the town “of the elephant bush” (Demiéville 1951: 348), and the region called “province of elephants” (Cadière 1902: 55). In China, the elephant symbolizes distant southern territories (Schafer 1967). The name “Linyi” was also in circulation...

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