To this part of the coast the name Champa is often
applied in maps.
(See J.A. ser. II. tom. xi. p. 31, and J. des Savans,
1822, p. 71.) The people of Champa in this restricted sense are said to
exhibit Malay affinities, and they profess Mahomedanism. ["The Mussulmans
of Binh-Thuan call themselves Bani or Orang Bani, 'men mussulmans,'
probably from the Arabic beni 'the sons,' to distinguish them from the
Chams Djat 'of race,' which they name also Kaphir or Akaphir, from
the Arabic word kafer 'pagans.' These names are used in Binh-Thuan to
make a distinction, but Banis and Kaphirs alike are all Chams.... In
Cambodia all Chams are Mussulmans." (E. Aymonier, Les Tchames, p. 26.)
The religion of the pagan Chams of Binh-Thuan is degenerate Brahmanism with
three chief gods, Po-Nagar, Po-Rome, and Po-Klong-Garai. (Ibid., p.
35.) - H.C.] The books of their former religion they say (according to Dr.
Bastian) that they received from Ceylon, but they were converted to
Islamism by no less a person than 'Ali himself. The Tong-king people
received their Buddhism from China, and this tradition puts Champa as the
extreme flood-mark of that great tide of Buddhist proselytism, which went
forth from Ceylon to the Indo-Chinese regions in an early century of our
era, and which is generally connected with the name of Buddaghosha.
The prominent position of Champa on the route to China made its ports
places of call for many ages, and in the earliest record of the Arab
navigation to China we find the country noticed under the identical name
(allowing for the deficiencies of the Arabic Alphabet) of Sanf or
Chanf. Indeed it is highly probable that the [Greek: Zaba] or [Greek:
Zabai] of Ptolemy's itinerary of the sea-route to the Sinae represents
this same name.
["It is true," Sir Henry Yule wrote since (1882), "that Champa, as known in
later days, lay to the east of the Mekong delta, whilst Zabai of the Greeks
lay to the west of that and of the [Greek: mega akrotaerion] - the Great
Cape, or C. Cambodia of our maps. Crawford (Desc. Ind. Arch. p. 80) seems
to say that the Malays include under the name Champa the whole of what we
call Kamboja. This may possibly be a slip. But it is certain, as we shall
see presently, that the Arab Sanf - which is unquestionably Champa - also
lay west of the Cape, i.e. within the Gulf of Siam. The fact is that the
Indo-Chinese kingdoms have gone through unceasing and enormous
vicissitudes, and in early days Champa must have been extensive and
powerful, for in the travels of Hiuen Tsang (about A.D. 629) it is called
maha-Champa. And my late friend Lieutenant Garnier, who gave great
attention to these questions, has deduced from such data as exist in
Chinese Annals and elsewhere, that the ancient kingdom which the Chinese
describe under the name of Fu-nan, as extending over the whole peninsula
east of the Gulf of Siam, was a kingdom of the Tsiam or Champa race.
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