Champa

Champa is a collection of independent Cham polities that extended across the coast of what is today central and southern Vietnam from approximately the 2nd century through 1832 before being absorbed and annexed by the Vietnamese state. The kingdom was known variously as nagara Campa (Sanskrit: नगरः कम्पः; ចាម្ប៉ា) in the Chamic and Cambodian inscriptions, in Vietnamese (Chiêm Thành in Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary) and (Zhànchéng) in Chinese records.The Chams of modern Vietnam and Cambodia are the remnants of this former kingdom. They speak Chamic languages, a subfamily of Malayo-Polynesian closely related to the Malayic and Bali–Sasak languages.Champa was preceded in the region by a kingdom called Linyi (, Lim Ip in Middle Chinese), or Lâm Ấp (Vietnamese), that was in existence from AD 192; the historical relationship between Linyi 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.Hinduism, adopted from India since early in its history, has shaped the art and culture of Champa kingdom for centuries, as testified by the many Cham Hindu statues and red brick temples that dotted the landscapes in Cham lands. Mỹ Sơn, a former religious center, and Hội An, one of Champas main port cities, are now World Heritage Sites. Today, some Cham people adhere to Islamic faith, a conversion which was started in 15th century; they are called Bani Cham. There are, however, Balamon Cham (from Sanskrit: Brahman) who still retain and preserve their Hindu faith, rituals, and festivals. The Balamon Cham are one of only two surviving non-Indic indigenous Hindu peoples in the world, with a culture dating back thousands of years. The other is the Hindu Balinese of Indonesia.

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