Editing Champa (section)

==Historiography==

===Sources===

The [[historiography]] of Champa relies upon four types of sources:<ref>Vickery, "Champa Revised", pp. 4 ff.</ref>
* Physical remains, including ruins as well as stone sculptures;
* Inscriptions in Cham, [[Sanskrit]], and [[Arabic script|Arabic]] ([[Kufic]]) on [[stele]]s and other stone surfaces;
* Chinese and Vietnamese annals, diplomatic reports, and other literature such as those provided by [[Jia Dan]];{{sfn|Higham|2014|p=319}}
* Historiography of modern [[Cham people]].

Approximately four hundred Champa inscriptions have been found. Around 250 of them were deciphered and studied throughout the last century. Many Cham inscriptions were destroyed by American bombing during the [[Vietnam War]]. Currently, the Project ''Corpus of the Inscriptions of Campā'' launched by [[École française d'Extrême-Orient|French School of Asian Studies]] (EFEO) partnering with the Institute for Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) of [[New York University]] is tasked for cataloging, sustaining and preserving ancient Cham inscriptions into an online index library and publications of scholarship's epigraphical studies into English, French, and Vietnamese.

The Cham have their written records in form of paper book, known as the ''[[Sakkarai dak rai patao]]'', was a 5227-pages collection of Cham veritable records, documenting a history range from early legendary kings of 11th–13th century to the deposition of [[Po Phaok The|Po Thak The]], the last king of [[Panduranga (Champa)|Panduranga]] in 1832, reckoning in total 39 rulers of Panduranga, the tales of spread of Islam to Champa in 1000 CE, to [[Po Phaok The|Po Thak The]]. The annals were written in Akhar Thrah (traditional) [[Cham script]] with collection of Cham and Vietnamese seals imprinted by Vietnamese rulers. However, it had been dismissed for a long time by scholars until [[Po Dharma]].{{sfn|Marrison|1985|pp=55–56}}{{clarification needed|date=October 2024}} Cham literature also have been greatly preserved in approximately more than 3,000 Cham manuscripts and printed books dating from the 16th to 20th centuries. The Southeast Asia Digital Library (SEADL) at [[Northern Illinois University]] currently contains an extensive collection of 977 digitized Cham manuscripts, totaling more than 57,800 pages of multigenre content.

===Overarching theories===
[[File:Shiva Kosa from Champa.jpg|thumb|upright|right|This Cham head of [[Shiva]] was made of [[electrum]] around 800. It decorated a kosa, or metal sleeve fitted to a [[lingam|liṅgam]]. One can recognise Shiva by the tall [[Chignon (hairstyle)|chignon]] hairstyle and by the third eye in the middle of his forehead.]]
[[File:Mão vàng Chăm Pa.jpg|thumb|upright|right|Crown of Champa in 7th and 8th century. (Museum of Vietnamese History)]]
Modern scholarship has been guided by two competing theories in the historiography of Champa. Scholars agree that historically Champa was divided into several regions or principalities spread out from south to north along the coast of modern [[Vietnam]] and united by a common language, culture, and heritage. It is acknowledged that the historical record is not equally rich for each of the regions in every historical period. For example, in the 10th century CE, the record is richest for ''Indrapura''; in the 12th century CE, it is richest for [[Vijaya (Champa)|Vijaya]]; following the 15th century CE, it is richest for ''Panduranga''. Some scholars have taken these shifts in the historical record to reflect the movement of the Cham capital from one location to another. According to such scholars, if the 10th-century record is richest for Indrapura, it is so because at that time Indrapura was the capital of Champa. Other scholars have disputed this contention, holding that Champa was never a united country, and arguing that the presence of a particularly rich historical record for a given region in a given period is no basis for claiming that the region functioned as the capital of a united Champa during that period.<ref>Maspero, ''Le Royaume de Champa'', represented the thesis that Champa was politically unified. Vickery, "Champa Revised", challenges that thesis.</ref><ref group=note>Early colonial era scholars and later DRV and SRV authors treated Champa as a single, unified political body. New academic works on Cham studies begun in late 1980s revised this notion. The majority of scholarship now at least agree that Champa was a series of dynamic coexisting, overlapping polyethnic kingdoms and small principalities.{{harv|Lockhart|2011|pp=22–24}}</ref><ref group=note>Previous histories of Champa such as [[Étienne Aymonier]]'s 1889 ''Tschampa'' and [[Georges Maspero]]'s 1910 ''The Kingdom of Champa'' had provided the ground academic understanding of Champa for almost a century. Maspero represented Champa as a single, unified kingdom, with the Cham explicitly made up nearly entire of its demographics. He also presented a list of 14 presumably Cham dynasties dating back to the 2nd century.{{harv|Lockhart|2011|pp=9–10}}</ref>