Cham Culture ID

The Cham culture flourished along the central coast of what is now Vietnam, where the Austronesian-speaking Cham built the kingdom of Champa. A seafaring people, they turned their position on the maritime routes of Southeast Asia to great advantage.

Champa thrived on trade and the sea, its ports linking the commerce of China, India, and the islands of the archipelago. This maritime wealth, alongside rice farming on the coastal plains, sustained a vigorous and independent state.

Cham religious life drew first on Indian traditions, with Hinduism shaping kingship and temple-building, expressed in the brick towers that still dot the landscape; in time Islam also took root among the Cham.

Maritime, mercantile, and long independent, the Cham maintained a distinctive Austronesian civilisation on the Southeast Asian mainland for many centuries.