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cham·pa

Champa (Cham: ꨌꩌꨛꨩ; Khmer: ចាម្ប៉ា; Vietnamese: Chiêm Thành or Chăm Pa) were a collection of independent Cham polities that extended across the coast of what is contemporary present-day central and southern Vietnam from approximately the 2nd century AD until 1832, when the last remaining principality of Champa was annexed by the Vietnamese Nguyễn dynasty under its emperor Minh Mạng as part of its expansionist Nam tiến policy. The kingdom was known variously as Nagaracampa (Sanskrit: नगरचम्पः), Champa (ꨌꩌꨛꨩ) in modern Cham, and Châmpa (ចាម្ប៉ា) in the Khmer inscriptions, Chiêm Thành in Vietnamese and Zhànchéng (Mandarin: 占城) in Chinese records.The Kingdoms of Champa and the Chams contribute profound and direct impacts to the history of Vietnam, Southeast Asia, as well as their present day. The Chams evolved from seafaring Austronesian Chamic Sa Huỳnh culture off the coast of modern-day Vietnam. The emergence of Champa at the late 2nd century AD shows testimony of early Southeast Asian statecrafting and crucial stage of the making of Southeast Asia. The peoples of Champa had been established and maintained a vast system of lucrative trade networks across the region, connecting the Indian Ocean and Eastern Asia, until the 17th century. In Champa, historians also witness the first and oldest native Southeast Asian language literature being written down around c. 350 AD, predating first Khmer, Mon, Malay texts by centuries.The Chams of modern Vietnam and Cambodia are the major remnants of this former kingdom. They speak Chamic languages, a subfamily of Malayo-Polynesian closely related to the Malayic and Bali–Sasak languages that is spoken throughout maritime Southeast Asia. Although Cham culture is usually intertwined with the broader culture of Champa, the kingdom had a multiethnic population, which consisted of Austronesian Chamic-speaking peoples that made up the majority of its demographics. The people who used to inhabit the region are the present-day Chamic-speaking Cham, Rade and Jarai peoples in South and Central Vietnam and Cambodia; the Acehnese from Northern Sumatra, Indonesia, along with elements of Austroasiatic Bahnaric and Katuic-speaking peoples in Central Vietnam.Champa was preceded in the region by a kingdom called Lâm Ấp (Vietnamese), or Linyi (林邑, Middle Chinese (ZS): *liɪm ʔˠiɪp̚), that was in existence since 192 AD; although the historical relationship between Linyi and Champa is not clear. Champa reached its apogee in the 9th and 10th centuries AD. 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 through conflicts and conquest of territory from neighboring Funan in the 4th century AD, shaped the art and culture of the Cham Kingdom for centuries, as testified by the many Cham Hindu statues and red brick temples that dotted the landscape in Cham lands. Mỹ Sơn, a former religious center, and Hội An, one of Champa's main port cities, are now World Heritage Sites. Today, many Cham people adhere to Islam, a conversion which began in the 10th century, with the ruling dynasty having fully adopted the faith by the 17th century; they are called the Bani (Ni tục, from Arabic: Bani). There are, however, the Bacam (Bacham, Chiêm tục) who still retain and preserve their Hindu faith, rituals, and festivals. The Bacam is one of only two surviving non-Indic indigenous Hindu peoples in the world, with a culture dating back thousands of years. The other being the Balinese Hindus of the Balinese of Indonesia.

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