Concept

Chams

Summary
The Chams (Cham: ꨌꩌ, Čaṃ) or Champa people (Cham: , Urang Campa; Người Chăm or Người Chàm; ជនជាតិចាម, ) are an Austronesian ethnic group in Southeast Asia, and indigenous people of Central Vietnam. The Cham people are largely Muslims in Vietnam and predominantly Buddhist Cambodia. From 2nd century to 1832, the Cham populated Champa, a collection of independent principalities in what is now central and southern Vietnam. The Cham people speak the Cham language and the Tsat language (the latter is spoken by the Utsul, a Cham sub-group on China's Hainan Island), the two Chamic languages from the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian family. For a long time, researchers believed that the Chams had arrived by sea in the first millennium BC from Sumatra, Borneo and the Malay Peninsula, eventually settling in central modern Vietnam. The original Cham are therefore the likely heirs of Austronesian navigators from Taiwan and Borneo, whose main activities are commerce, transport and perhaps also piracy. Austronesian Chamic peoples might have migrated into present-day Central Vietnam around 3 kya to 2.5 kya (1,000 to 500 BC). With having formed a thalassocracy leaving traces in written sources, they invested the ports at the start of important trade routes linking India, China and Indonesian islands. Historians are now no longer disputing in associating the Sa Huynh culture (1000 BC–200 AD) with the ancestors of the Cham people and other Chamic-speaking groups. Patterns and chronology of migration remain debated and it is assumed that the Cham people, the only Austronesian ethnic group originated from South Asia, arrived later in peninsular Southeast Asia via Borneo. Mainland Southeast Asia had been populated on land routes by members of the Austroasiatic language family, such as the Mon people and the Khmer people around 5,000 years ago. The Cham were accomplished Austronesian seafarers that from centuries populated and soon dominated maritime Southeast Asia. Earliest known records of Cham presence in Indochina date back to the second century CE.
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Related publications (1)

Devout Landscape Migrant Placemaking through the Afterlife in Huế, Vietnam

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The settlement history of Huế is one of constant demographic shifts, political turmoil, and natural vulnerability. A borderland and battleground during Vietnam’s invasion of Champa Kingdom, the North-South Civil War between two Vietnamese clans Trịnh - Ngu ...
2021
Related concepts (27)
Champa
Champa (Cham: ꨌꩌꨛꨩ; ចាម្ប៉ា; Chiêm Thành 占城 or Chăm Pa 占婆) was a collection of independent Cham polities that extended across the coast of what is present-day central and southern Vietnam from approximately the 2nd century AD until 1832. According to earliest historical references found in ancient sources, the first Cham polities were established around the 2nd to 3rd centuries CE, in the wake of Khu Liên's rebellion against the rule of China's Eastern Han dynasty, and lasted until when the final remaining principality of Champa was annexed by Emperor Minh Mạng of the Vietnamese Nguyễn dynasty as part of the expansionist Nam tiến policy.
Cambodia
Cambodia (kæmˈboʊdiə) or Kampuchea (ˌkæmpʊˈtʃiːə; កម្ពុជា, UNGEGN: kampuciə), officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country in the southern Indochinese Peninsula in Southeast Asia, spanning an area of , bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the north, Vietnam to the east, and the Gulf of Thailand to the southwest. The capital and largest city is Phnom Penh. Cambodia has been inhabited since prehistoric times. In 802 AD, Jayavarman II declared himself king, uniting the warring Khmer princes of Chenla under the name "Kambuja".
Vietnam
Vietnam (Việt Nam, vîət nāːm), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's fifteenth-most populous country. Vietnam shares land borders with China to the north, and Laos and Cambodia to the west. It shares maritime borders with Thailand through the Gulf of Thailand, and the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia through the South China Sea.
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