|
A Jewel in Danang Province
There was once a mighty empire called
Champa that ruled over the central portion of present-day
Vietnam for a thousand years and its history has been traced
as far back to the first century AD - making it one of the
oldest ethnic groups in Indochina. At its height, in the 10th
and eleventh centuries, Champa's borders stretched from the
Mekong Delta in the South, along the Annamite mountain range,
and further north than Hué, where it met with the border of
the Dai Viet Kingdom.
Despite having their empire crushed by the Vietnamese in
the late 1400s, watching it finally crumble away in the early
eighteenth century, and suffering mortal persecution at the
hands of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, pockets of this ancient ethnic
group survive throughout south east Asia.
Unfortunately, the Cham kings, though leaving a scattering
of statues and artworks, were not great builders and there
are few monuments, palaces or temples of the type left by
their Khmer neighbours. Remaining sites at My Son and Dong
Duong - near Danang - were badly damaged by bombing and firefights
during the Second Indochina War. However, French archaeologists
of the Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient - who had restored
many of the buildings at My Son before their re-destruction
- had fortunately removed many of the Cham artworks and statues.
A large number of these are now on show at the Musée Guimet
in Paris. However, the world's largest collection remains
in the ancient heart of Champa, at the Cham Museum in Danang.
Constructed in 1916 by the Ecole, over 300 sandstone sculptures
exhibit the range of artistic influences at play upon this
ancient kingdom throughout its grandest millennium.
|
