The Birth of Champa

Author: Anne-Valérie Schweyer

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 and we should be able to clarify the precise birthdate 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, which had existed since Austronesians first settled the coastal valleys of Vietnam.

Read in here: https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/file/index/docid/828812/filename/AVS_Birth_of_Champa_2012.pdf