Article

The Chams and their literature

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

The Chams and their literature

G. E. Marrison, a veteran Malayan Civil Service officer and long-standing contributor to the JMBRAS, published this survey in 1985, covering the Cham people of central Vietnam and Cambodia, their Indianized Hindu kingdom (c. 192–1471 CE), and the surviving manuscript and literary traditions that document their cultural heritage. The overarching thesis is that Cham literature, though fragmentary and dispersed across Parisian collections, is more extensive and significant for Indonesian comparative studies than previously recognized.

Summary

Marrison’s article is a genre-based survey of Cham literary production, organized around the major classes of text attested in the manuscript collections: five classical verse romances, historical legends associated with deified kings, folk tales, ethical and didactic works, Hindu ritual and cosmological texts, and Islamic writings of both the syncretistic Cam Bani and the orthodox Cam Baruv. The central historical problem the article addresses is the extreme fragmentary nature of the source base. A kingdom that once stretched five hundred miles along the Indochinese coast is now represented by scattered monuments, inscriptions, and a relatively small corpus of manuscripts held in five Paris libraries, much of it unedited and poorly described. Marrison draws heavily on the Lafont catalogue (1977) as the principal tool for identifying and classifying texts, and synthesizes the work of French scholars (Aymonier, Cabaton, Durand, Mus, Claeys) with the more recent contributions of Cham scholars working from the Cham Cultural Centre at Panduranga (Po Dharma, Moussay, Naravija).

A recurring thread is the syncretistic blending of Hindu, Islamic, and indigenous animistic elements in Cham culture. The Book of Nosiravan, the principal Cham cosmogony, attributes its authority to the Persian king Khosroes and names the supreme deity Po Yang Po, from whom emanate Po Allah and Po Ratna — a fusion that Durand compared to the Javanese Manik Maya. Similarly, the Cham Ramayana (Pram Dit Pram Lak) shows the hero and his companion as friends rather than brothers, and the title appears to be an adaptation from Khmer, suggesting the story reached the Chams through Cambodian dance-drama rather than through a direct Sanskrit or Malay literary channel. Marrison argues that these hybrid forms, far from being mere corruptions, represent a distinctive literary tradition in their own right.

The article also engages with the problem of reconciling Cham internal chronicles with external historical sources. The Cham Royal Chronicles, long dismissed by historians, have been partially rehabilitated by Lafont and Po Dharma as documents with a real relationship to the last stages of Cham rule, though difficulties remain in matching names and dates. Marrison illustrates this with the legend of Po Sah Ino, which Durand assigned to 1397 under the Le dynasty, but which fits more plausibly with the Annamese invasion of 1312 when Jayasimhavarman IV was dethroned.

Key Findings

  • The Kingdom of Champa (A.D. 192–1471) at its maximum stretched 500 miles from Porte d’Annam (18°N) to Phan Thiet (11°N); Maspero enumerates fourteen dynasties, most of which maintained tribute relations with China (p. 45).
  • In 1834, Annamese emperor Minh Menh issued an edict making Panduranga an Annamese province and decreeing that the Cham people adopt Annamese language, names, clothing, and customs; the Cham reaction produced a body of verse celebrating revolts and an abiding hatred of this emperor (p. 54).
  • Two eleventh-century Arabic tombstones with Fatimite characteristics were found in the vicinity of Panduranga; one bears a date equivalent to A.D. 1039, supporting the hypothesis of early Ismaili settlement (p. 60).
  • The Cham Royal Chronicles reckon 39 rulers “from Adam to the present day” reining a total of 833 years, the text ending with Minh Menh’s intervention in 1834; the name Po Ovlvah (corresponding to Allah) is interpreted as reflecting the advent of Islam into Champa in the eleventh century (p. 55).
  • Durand (1903) recorded the Cam Bani in eighteen villages, constituting about a third of the Cham population of southern Annam; they observe only four of the five daily prayers, keep Ramadhan for three days only, and bury rather than cremate their dead (p. 60).
  • The Lafont catalogue (1977) describes Cham manuscript collections in five Paris libraries; Manguin’s annotated bibliography in Kerajaan Campa (1981) contains approximately 250 titles, and the collections include many composite manuscripts without recognized titles (pp. 47, 66).

Conclusion

Marrison’s definitive takeaway is that Cham literature is more extensive and worthier of study than has so far appeared, and that its full editing and publication would provide a major source for Indonesian comparative studies. The main requirement for advancing the field is the critical edition of more Cham texts and the provision of fuller subject-based descriptions of the manuscripts in the Paris collections, so that the full extent and character of Cham literary production can finally be established.

Context

  • Primary archival collections: five Paris libraries (EFEO, Société Asiatique, Missions Étrangères, CHCPI, Bibliothèque Nationale) as catalogued by Lafont (1977), supplemented by the Cham Cultural Centre archives at Panduranga (photographed by Moussay for EFEO in 1974) and the Cornell University Library holdings (listed by Po Dharma, 1981).
  • Historiographical contribution: the article serves as the most comprehensive English-language survey of Cham literary traditions to date, synthesizing French and Cham scholarship, and notably argues for the partial rehabilitation of the Cham Royal Chronicles as historical sources following the work of Lafont and Po Dharma.

References