A short history of champa people. The kingdom of Champa was a Cham kingdom located in what is today central and southern Vietnam from approximately the 7th century through to 1832, before being conquered and annexed by Vietnam. The kingdom was known variously as nagara Campa ( Sanskrit: नगर चम्पा, Khmer: ចាម្ប៉ា) in Cham and Cambodian inscriptions, Chăm Pa in Vietnamese (占城 Chiêm Thành in Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary ) and Zhàn chéng in Chinese records. The Cham people of modern Vietnam and Cambodia are the remnants of this former kingdom. They speak the Cham languages, a subgrouping of Malayo-Polynesian closely related to the Malayic and Bali–Sasak languages. Champa was preceded in the region by a kingdom called Lin-yi (林邑, Middle Chinese *Lim Ip) or Lâm Ấp (Vietnamese) that was in existence from 192 AD; the historical relationship between Lin-yi and Champa is not clear. Champa reached its apogee in the 9th and 10th centuries. Thereafter, it began a gradual decline under pressure from Đại Việt , the Vietnamese polity centered in the region of modern Hanoi . In 1832, the Vietnamese emperor Minh Mạng annexed the remaining Cham territories. Mỹ Sơn , a former religious center, and Hội An , one of Champas main port cities, are now heritage listed.
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 12:17:48 +0000