A Cham goddess

From: Tan Pham <nxb315kio@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 3:17 PM
To: Mike High <mikebiking@yahoo.com>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] A Cham goddess

  Thanks Mike,

Please do go and see the Devi. While you see her, please spare a thought for her, her family, and her husband, who built the wonderful Đồng Dương Buddhist Monastery, some 30 kilometres south of Hội An. During the reign of his family, Indrapura sent envoys to Java twice in the early 10th century, probably from Đông Hà, Quảng Trị.

The story of Indrapura is fascinating, but it is well outside this email thread.

BTW, I checked the Uma statue you mentioned, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/77791. Let me study it further, as it could be the Laskmi from the tower of Vĩnh Hưng in Bạc Liêu (see photo attached). Thanks so much for this information since if that is the case, my fellow travellers would be very happy.

If that is OK with you, can you email me a photo of the carving that your wife is working on?

I am pleased to hear that you plan to visit the Óc Eo sites. I attach the details of the sites in case you or other members of the VSG are interested. I would be grateful if you could share the photos.

Kind regards,

Tan Pham (NZ)

Author of a book series on Vietnamese history: A Traveller’s Story of Vietnam’s Past.

Volume One: The Bronze Drums and The Earrings. ISBN:  978-0-473-59804-4. 

Volume Two: One Thousand Years - The Stories of Giao Châu, the Kingdoms of Linyi, Funan and Zhenla. ISBN 978-0-473-63527-5.

From: Mike High <mikebiking@yahoo.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 8:52 PM
To: Tan Pham <nxb315kio@gmail.com>; Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] A Cham goddess C

Yes, the Bảo tàng Mỹ thuật will be one of my first stops in Saigon—haven’t been there in a while. I do have a lot of thoughts about Đồng Dương. I visited there once, a long time ago, and was saddened by the thought that those splendid buildings, which had survived for nearly a millennium, were wiped out in a few minutes. Probably a bigger loss than the A-1 tower at Mỹ Sơn. And I have no idea why either of them would have been targeted. (The most likely explanation at Mỹ Sơn is that the Marines at An Hòa Combat Base were using it as a landmark to “range in” their artillery, though I found no indications of hostile activity in that quarter in the official records. Vietnamese accounts typically describe it as a B-52 strike, but that is unlikely, for a number of reasons.)

I do try to keep on top of the Óc Eo sites—last year I visited the digs and the small museum at Cát Tiên, which is an odd outlier. The last time I was at Óc Eo itself, they were embarked on a second attempt to open a museum next to the site. (The first attempt was a bold effort to place a linga-shaped building on Núi Ba Thê itself, which may have been too scandalous to survive.) If anyone has visited the museum recently, I’d love to see how things turned out. I’ve also seen an article describing a very modern and elegant design for an Óc Eo exhibition hall in Đồng Tháp province. 

I’ve also visited Tháp Chót Mạt in Tây Ninh, though it is assuredly not an Óc Eo site. (Parmentier’s 1909 BEFEO article sensibly identifies it as Khmer.) I remember that the History Museum in Saigon had photographs of the two towers, labeling them as Cham, which was preposterous. Now, the sign at Chót Mạt says that it is an "Óc Eo” structure—studiously avoiding the taboo term “Khmer.” This is par for the course—I discovered a few years back that the entire chapter on the Khmer had been dropped from the reprint of Huỳnh Minh’s book, Tây Ninh: xưa và nay.  (Same thing in the TPHCM History Museum, where a number of exquisite Khmer statues are exhibited in the Óc Eo room, with no signage indicating that they are actually Khmer.)

BTW, the “restoration” of the Chót Mạt tower is almost as ghastly as what was done to the Tháp Hòa Lai in Phan Rang, with crude imitations of Khmer bas-reliefs carved into new bricks. Very dispiriting (literally).

:: Mike High

Great Falls, Virginia 

USA 

From: Tan Pham <nxb315kio@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 3:31 PM
To: Mike High <mikebiking@yahoo.com>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] A Cham goddess

Thanks Mike,

Please do go and see the Devi. While you see her, please spare a thought for her, her family, and her husband, who built the wonderful Đồng Dương Buddhist Monastery, some 30 kilometres south of Hội An. During the reign of his family, Indrapura sent envoys to Java twice in the early 10th century, probably from Đông Hà, Quảng Trị.

The story of Indrapura is fascinating, but it is well outside this email thread.

BTW, I checked the Uma statue you mentioned, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/77791. Let me study it further, as it could be the Laskmi from the tower of Vĩnh Hưng in Bạc Liêu (see photo attached). Thanks so much for this information since if that is the case, my fellow travellers would be very happy.

If that is OK with you, can you email me a photo of the carving that your wife is working on?

I am pleased to hear that you plan to visit the Óc Eo sites. I attach the details of the sites in case you or other members of the VSG are interested. I would be grateful if you could share the photos.

Kind regards,

Tan Pham (NZ)

Author of a book series on Vietnamese history: A Traveller’s Story of Vietnam’s Past.

Volume One: The Bronze Drums and The Earrings. ISBN:  978-0-473-59804-4. 

Volume Two: One Thousand Years - The Stories of Giao Châu, the Kingdoms of Linyi, Funan and Zhenla. ISBN 978-0-473-63527-5.

From: Tan Pham <nxb315kio@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 3:15 PM
To: David Biggs <biggsbiggs@gmail.com>
Cc: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Fwd: A Cham goddess

Wow, Thanks David

That is fascinating information. As my surname is Phạm, I need to check this out.

Kind regards,

Tan Pham (NZ)

Author of a book series on Vietnamese history: A Traveller’s Story of Vietnam’s Past.

Volume One: The Bronze Drums and The Earrings. ISBN:  978-0-473-59804-4. 

Volume Two: One Thousand Years - The Stories of Giao Châu, the Kingdoms of Linyi, Funan and Zhenla. ISBN 978-0-473-63527-5.

From: Tan Pham <nxb315kio@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 2:45 PM
To: mchale@gwu.edu
Cc: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Fwd: A Cham goddess

Thanks, Prof. McHale,

Yes, Phạm is a Vietnamese surname, not Cham.  

The beautiful four-arm statue you refer to is worshipped as a Buddha with four arms, see attached photo. The Vietnamese also worship the Cham god in his original form, see the photo attached of a Mukhalinga at Đồng Lâm pagoda, Cu Hoan commune Quảng Trị. I visited the site on my recent trip visiting the Cham sites in Huế, Quảng Trị, and Quảng Bình. 

Kind regards,

Tan Pham (NZ)

Author of a book series on Vietnamese history: A Traveller’s Story of Vietnam’s Past.

Volume One: The Bronze Drums and The Earrings. ISBN:  978-0-473-59804-4. 

Volume Two: One Thousand Years - The Stories of Giao Châu, the Kingdoms of Linyi, Funan and Zhenla. ISBN 978-0-473-63527-5.

From: Mike High <mikebiking@yahoo.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 11:32 AM
To: David Biggs <biggsbiggs@gmail.com>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] A Cham goddess

I photographed the Khmer statue on the main altar in the Linh Sơn Cổ Tự last year—it is a sitting Buddha, and, as far as I can tell, has not been altered. It answers to the description given by Parmentier (“Notes des archéologies indochinoises,” Bulletin de l’École française d'Extrême-Orient, XXIII, 1923, pages 293-295).

There is a Cham statue of Vishnu worshipped in the Bửu Sơn pagoda (Biên Hòa)  as a “Buddha with Four Hands” (Phật Bốn Thay). For reasons unknown, it has been painted a garish shade of blue, which makes it appear to be ceramic rather than stone. It is particularly interesting because it has an inscription on the back, with the date 1421 that memorializes the victory of the Cham king over the Khmer in that era when the Cham had benefitted from the Ming occupation of Đại Việt. There is a detailed analysis of the inscription on the "Corpus of the Inscriptions of Campā”  website; it is also discussed by Coedès in The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, page 238.

Corpus of the Inscriptions of Campā

https://isaw.nyu.edu/publications/inscriptions/campa/inscriptions/C0001.html

On a related note, there is also a Khmer statue of Vishnu that was found in Biên Hòa and is now kept in the Đồng Nai provincial museum. It has been dated to the 7th century CE and is identified with the style of Phnom Da; Nancy Tingley notes that it resembles a Vishnu found near Angkor Borei and suggests that it may have been transported to Biên Hòa. (see Arts of Ancient Vietnam, pages 158-159.) I find this interesting because it supports the idea that the Đồng Nai river serves (roughly) as a line of demarcation between the Khmer territories and those of the Cham.

I’ll dig up my photos of the statues and send them along later.

:: Mike High

Great Falls, Virginia

USA

Researcher | Author

From: David Biggs <biggsbiggs@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 10:52 AM
To: mchale@gwu.edu
Cc: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Fwd: A Cham goddess

Thanks for this thread! I understood that the surname Phạm was given to Cham men from the 1500s who served in the Le Dynasty army and was passed on to their families; these men received official recognition for private land holdings in return for their service. So Phạm is a common surname in Cham regions. At least that's my understanding -- happy if someone can extend it!

Happy Summer!

David Biggs

From: Mike High <mikebiking@yahoo.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 10:33 AM
To: Tan Pham <nxb315kio@gmail.com>; Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] A Cham goddess

Dear Tan Pham,

Thanks for sharing this information. That is indeed a beautiful statue, and your note is a reminder to me to look it up when I’m back in Saigon, which should be next week. (I make a pilgrimage to the BTLSTPHCM to see the Cham and Óc Eo collections on every visit.)

The question of a reproduction is rather interesting, since Vietnamese museums routinely use them—so far, I have counted at least three reproductions of the stone statue of the Buddha from Chùa Phật Tích in national museums, including the BTLSTPHCM. (I’m assuming that the statue in the renovated pagoda is the original.) 

Personally, I think that a new carving modeled on the old might be the best way to make amends to the people of Hương Quế. There are of course many stonecarving businesses around Marble Mountain, though, sadly, they seem to have little to no interest in producing statues in the Cham style. In general, think it’d be nice if more were done to stimulate the traditional arts of woodcarving and stonecarving, especially with so much being invested in spacious, sometimes monumental temples these days. 

Incidentally, when my bà xã took up woodcarving a while back, I encouraged her to do her own “restored” version ot the standing statue of Skanda at the Đả Nẵng Museum of Cham Art. The statue currently on exhibit is missing the head, but I found a photograph from the old collection catalog that had a closeup of the head (unfortunately missing the nose). So, she came up with an “artist’s rendering” of what the original statue looked like. 

Also BTW, I came across a web page at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) with a statue of a Khmer “Devi” from Sóc Trăng that makes for an interesting comparison. (Search for "Devi, probably Uma” at site:www.metmuseum.org) The Met says that a “companion” sculpture is kept in the Museum of Fine Arts in HCMC. Companion or replica? I will certainly take a look next week.

:: MIke High

Great Falls, Virginia 

USA 

Researcher | Author 

From: Shawn McHale <mchale@gwu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 9:37 AM
To: Tan Pham <nxb315kio@gmail.com>
Cc: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Fwd: A Cham goddess

This is fascinating. I gather that the Phạm family is Vietnamese, not Cham? 

Some parallels of possible interest. I've been looking into the ways that, in the Mekong delta and into Cambodia, Vietnamese transformed existing Khmer statues into ones that appeared less Hindu. There are a good number of examples of this, such as the Lady of the Realm (Miếu Bà Chúa Xứ) on Sam mountain, which has been painted with a series of coats, and had clothing put on top, transforming what is probably a male statue of Siva into a female deity.  Another intriguing example is of a four-armed statue of Siva, found near Óc Eo, now in the Lĩnh Sơn temple nearby. This statue has gone through a variety of steps, so that now it is covered in a bright lacquer covering. The legs also appear to have been broken off to make it look less like Vishnu and more like a sitting Buddha. In southern Vietnam, there are numerous shrines (miếu) -- e.g. in Tây Ninh, western Mekong delta -- where these existing deities are turned into "ông tà"  (the Vietnamization of the Khmer "neak ta") or localized potent spirits, and sometimes also are put next to other potent objects such as rocks and linga. 

The identification of a similar statue as one of Prajnaparamita is presumably because the first Mahayana Buddhism in much of what is now Vietnam came not via China, but via the southern route. 

Thanks for sharing this. 

--

Shawn McHale
Professor of History
George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 USA

Author of: 

The First Vietnam War (Cambridge, 2021)

Print and Power: Confucianism, Communism, and Buddhism in the Making of Modern Vietnam, 1920-45 (Hawaii, 2004, 2008)

From: Tan Pham <nxb315kio@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 2:15 AM
To: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Vsg] Fwd: A Cham goddess

Dear List,

The most exquisite Cham sculpture I have ever seen is the statue of Devi found at Hương Quế. Devi is the Sanskrit word for 'goddess', which means 'heavenly, divine, anything of excellence'. It is a generic term for female Hindu deities such as Durga, Kali, Lakshmi, Parvati, Radha, Saraswati, and Sita.

In January 1911, M. V. Rougier, a Civil Service Commissioner of Faifo (Hội An), found Hương Quế, some 30 kilometres south of the Marble Mountains in Đà Nẵng. There, he found three small shrines built by a Phạm family as places of worship. The shrines housed a statue of Devi, a tympanum, a Nandi (a Hindu bull), and a stone stele, all of which are still there except for the statue of Devi, which is currently kept in the Museum of Vietnamese History in Ho Chi Minh City and shown in the photograph attached. According to M. Rougier, the statue wears a tiara smeared with a blue coating; the rest was highlighted in pink. The colouring is no longer visible today. He also reports that the bust was crudely glued to two feet of a larger statue, perhaps not of Annamese manufacture.  

A few weeks ago, with the help of Mr Tran, a resident of Quảng Nam province, we found the feet (see photo) and I suggest that we print the photo of the Devi and place her back beside the feet, in one of the shrines. According to Mr Huber, who described the find, the locals were repugnant when the Devi was removed so I thought it would be fitting to return a photo of her to her rightful place, over 100 years later. Someone then suggests that we get a 3D print copy of her instead. This is where things get complicated since we would need permission from the Director of the Museum of Vietnamese History in Ho Chi Minh City. If anyone among this esteemed body has a contact at the museum, would you be able to ask if it is feasible to create a 3D replica of the Devi?

According to the description by museum: “The face is harmonious, the eyebrows are curved together, the eyes are big, the bridge of the nose is straight, the mouth is slightly smiling…. According to the Champa legend, the goddess Devi is named Raja Kula Hara Devi [Haradevī Rājakula], the wife of King Indravarman II [c.870-c.895], the founder of the Đồng Dương dynasty, in the 9th century. As goddess Devi had made significant contributions to the country [Champa], especially because she had a compassionate heart and cared for the destitute, orphans, and widows, after her death, King Jaya Shinhavarman I [Jaya Siṁhavarman (c.895-904)] deified her and built a worship tower in her honour.”

I have also found another statue at the LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) (see photo). This statue is similar to the Devi but the museum describes it as the Buddhist Goddess Prajnaparamita, not a Hindu goddess. I am an expert on the subject but will undertake some studies to see where the disparities are. Meanwhile, if any member of the VSG knows the differences, please advise me.

The stele found at the site is coded C. 140 (C is for Champa), written in Cham, dated 1033 Śaka (or 1111 CE), and signed by a Pu lyaň Çrï Jayasimhavarman, who records donations to Shiva named Harinandalingeśvara (see photo). The stele is very heavy, so I assume it was erected there and not transported from elsewhere, but the statue could have been found somewhere else and placed in the shrine. If the description is correct, then the stele predates the Devi by two centuries.  I have requested it be translated since, as far as I know, there is no full translation available anywhere. Again, if anyone knows about this stele, I’d be grateful to hear.

Meanwhile, if you find the subject a little esoteric, I hope you enjoy the photograph of this wonderful statue of a Cham goddess. 

BTW, if you are in Quảng Nam you could visit Hương Quế at 15°46'46.7"N 108°19'23.1"E.  

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Devi_Goddess,_the_Museum_of_Vietnamese_History.jpg

https://collections.lacma.org/node/186402

Kind regards,

Tan Pham (NZ)

Author of a book series on Vietnamese history: A Traveller’s Story of Vietnam’s Past.

Volume One: The Bronze Drums and The Earrings. ISBN:  978-0-473-59804-4. 

Volume Two: One Thousand Years - The Stories of Giao Châu, the Kingdoms of Linyi, Funan and Zhenla. ISBN 978-0-473-63527-5.