The Cham Towers in Vietnam are brick structures that were built between the 7th and 13th century CE by the religious Cham Kingdom as a place to honor and worship their gods. The Cham Kingdom land was annexed by the Vietnamese in 1832, but the brick towers still remain. There are about 50 Cham towers remaining in Vietnam today. High concentrations of them can be found in Binh Dinh and Quảng Nam Provinces.
The Kingdom of Champa
The Chams used the sea to their advantage and controlled the trade of silk and spices between China, India, Persia, and Indonesia. The Cham people originally travelled to Vietnam from India. They were a powerful kingdom with strong Hindu beliefs adopted from India. That’s why most of the Cham towers were built to honor Hindu deities. The people of Champa mixed Hindu beliefs with their own to create their own type of mixed religion. One such Cham belief is that the Cham people are descendants of a goddess named Po Nagar, known as Mother of the World. They believe she created the earth along with everything on it. Champa was strongest between the 9th and 10th century CE. After that, there was a steady decline of the Champa culture as Vietnamese polities put them under pressure. The Kingdom of Cham lasted over a thousand years, and Quy Nhon was its capital for over 500 years from the late 10th century until 1471, when it was overthrown by Vietnamese from the north. The area was later annexed by the Vietnamese Empire under Minh Mang in 1832. There are fewer Cham Towers now than back then, as many of them were razed to the ground by enemies and some just deteriorated due to weathering.
Design Elements of the Cham Towers of Vietnam
Cham towers are built on square foundations and consist of a base, tower, and roof. For each tower, there are four doors, one facing in each direction. However, three of the four doors are false doors. The east door is believed to be facing the direction of the gods and is extended as a lobby. The east door would be opened to welcome the gods into the tower.
- Red Brick : The Cham Towers are mostly built of red brick, which is why many of them still stand today. Many of the red bricks have decorative carvings in them, and mortar was not used to bind the bricks together.
- Freestanding Sandstone Sculptures : Sandstone sculptures representing different Hindu and Buddhist deities can be found in the Cham Tower complexes.
The Cham people were extremely skilled in carving sandstone in “relief”. This is an art form that involves carving the sandstone while leaving enough of it to provide a background for the carved details to stand out.
- The Kalan : The kalan is a brick sanctuary in the form of a tower that houses the shrine to the deities. The structure of the kalan represents a microcosm of the Hindu metaphysical realm, with the base of the tower representing the physical world, the tower’s body representing the heavenly realm, and the pyramidal design at the top representing Mount Meru.
- The Mandapa : This area has large columns on either side of the path. This area is the link between the outside world and the place of worship.
- The Kosagrha This building typically has a saddle-shaped roof. Kosagrha translates to “fire-house” and is a building used to house the belongings of the deity and to cook food for the deity.
- The Gopura The gopura is a gate-tower that serves as an entrance into the Cham Tower complex.
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| Gopura of Banh It Towers |
Origin and Purpose of the Cham Towers of Vietnam
Like their Khmer neighbors, the origin of Cham society and architecture stems from the China-India coastal trade routes that proliferated in the early 1st Millennium BCE. In large part, this is from the earlier Funan culture in the Mekong Delta. A handful of Funan monuments can still be found in the Mekong Delta and are hardly distinguishable from later Cham Towers to the casual observer. The earliest Cham temples were built out of wood, but were destroyed presumably by warfare. Beginning in the 7th Century CE, The Cham people began to build the cores of their newer temples out of brick, the kalan or towers. Auxiliary buildings such as lodging, and the earlier versions of mandapas were still built out of wood. Eventually, these outer parts of the Cham temples also were constructed with brick. The Cham Towers that remain in Vietnam today were built by the Cham people between the 7th and 13th century CE as a place to worship Hindu gods, primarily Shiva. Because of this, many common elements can be seen between these Cham temples, as well as echoed in their Khmer equivalents, including the lingam-yoni and statues of Shiva’s Mount, Nandi the bull.
Legacy of the Cham Towers of Vietnam
Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the Cham Towers is their relative anonymity, particularly when compared to their counterparts in neighboring countries. Everyone in Southeast Asia knows the jungle temples at Angkor, the crumling stupas of Ayutthaya and Chiang Mai, and the vast plains of Bagan, but few hear about the ancient Hindu towers domineering over the southern Vietnamese coast. The truth is that the Cham Towers are not promoted in Vietnam in the same way that other countries do with their similar ancient monuments. For instance, I had been in Southeast Asia for over three years actively seeking ruins in the region before I ever even heard of My Son, the most famous of the Champa ruins. I think this is due in part to the ethnic history of the country. For centuries, the Chams and the Dai Viet (Vietnamese) ethnic groups and their respective kingdoms were warring over the territory. Seeing the name of the country, anyone can guess who won.
The Cham people were slowly integrated in to the greater Vietnamese population as their territory shrunk to a few small pockets. And while the Vietnamese government has placed these ancient Hindu temples under protection, they are not popularized in the same way as even the handful of historical Dai Viet sites found around the country. The Cham Towers are magnificent buildings that are a reminder of cultures and kingdoms from almost 2000 years ago. Some Cham Tower sites are protected as historical landmarks. Work has been put in to restore and preserve many of the broken Towers and monuments. These vestigial monuments reinforce the ancestral Hindu (and occasionally Buddhist) beliefs that have long held a presence in Vietnam and neighboring Southeast Asia as far back as the First Millennium CE. They also leave questions regarding the building methods used to erect them. With no evidence of mortar or any other substances between the bricks. The only writings that have survived to this day are those on steles. These are pillars or slabs of stone that were used to host inscriptions that don’t degrade like wood, paper, or leaves.
Kingdom of Champa : 2nd-15th century
The kingdom of Champa existed alongside the Khmer kingdom, sometimes passing under its rule, sometimes maintaining a precarious independence. From the north it was continually subject to the pressure of the advancing Vietnamese, a people racially related to the Burmese and Thai, who were themselves under pressure from the Chinese. The Hinduizing dynasties who ruled Champa from the 6th century were obliged to pay heavy tribute to the Chinese empire. After 980 they were forced by the Vietnamese to abandon their northern sacred capital, My Son; thereafter, except for a brief return to My Son in the 11th century, their southern capital at Vijaya (Binh Dinh) became their centre. Under such disruptive circumstances, it is perhaps surprising that the Cham succeeded in creating and maintaining a dynastic art of their own. It was, however, always on a relatively modest scale, devoted to a conception of divine kingship similar to but far less ambitious than that of the Khmer. The evolution of Cham art falls naturally into two epochs, the first when the capital was in the north, the second when it was removed to the south.
Art of the northern capital : 4th-11th century
The form of the earliest temple at My Son, built by King Bhadravarman in the late 4th century, is not known. The earliest surviving fragments of art come from the second half of the 7th century, when the king was a descendant of the royal house at Chenla. The remains of the many dynastic temples built in My Son up until 980 follow a common pattern with only minor variations. It is a relatively simple one, with no attempt at the elaborate architecture of space evolved by the Khmer. Each tower shrine is based upon the central rectangular volume of the cell. The faces are marked by central porticoes that are blind on all but the western face, where the entrance door is situated. The blind porticoes seem to have contained figures of deities-perhaps armed guardians standing in a threatening posture. The porticoes are set in a tall narrow frame of pilasters (columns projecting a third of their width or less from the wall), crowned with horizontally molded capitals that step out upward. They support a tall double-ogival blind arch, crowned by another stepped in behind it. The arches are based on an Indian pattern and are carved with a design of slowly undulating foliage springing from the mouth of a monster whose head forms the apex of the arch. The faces of the walls are formed of pilasters framing tall recesses. The pilasters are carved with foliate relief, and elaborate recessed and stepped-out horizontal moldings mark their bases. The height of the pilasters and recesses gives a strong vertical accent to the body of the shrine. The principal architrave is carried on stepped-out false capitals to the pilasters. The roof of the tower is composed of three diminishing, compressed stories, each marked by little pavilions on the faces above the main porticoes. Inside the tower is a high space created by a simple corbel vault with its stepped courses of masonry. The chief portico was extended to include a porch, and the whole structure stood upon a plinth whose faces bore molded dwarfed columns (small columns) and recesses.
These temples have one distinguishing internal feature: a pedestal altar within the cell, upon which statues were set, sometimes, it seems, in groups. The pedestals themselves are often beautifully adorned with reliefs, and some of the best Cham sculpture appears upon them. The subjects are usually based on Indian imagery of the celestial court. The fact that the pedestal altars carried their sculptures in the space of the cell, away from the wall, meant that the Cham sculptors could think in terms of three-dimensional plasticity as well as relief.
These temples have one distinguishing internal feature: a pedestal altar within the cell, upon which statues were set, sometimes, it seems, in groups. The pedestals themselves are often beautifully adorned with reliefs, and some of the best Cham sculpture appears upon them. The subjects are usually based on Indian imagery of the celestial court. The fact that the pedestal altars carried their sculptures in the space of the cell, away from the wall, meant that the Cham sculptors could think in terms of three-dimensional plasticity as well as relief.
The glory of Cham art is the sculpture of the whole of the first period. Much of what survives consists of lesser figures that formed part of an architectural decor: heads of monsters, for example, which decorated the corners of architraves, and figures of lions, which supported bases and plinths. These figures reflect the heavy ornateness of the Cham decorative style at its most aggressive, and many of them effloresce into the solid wormlike ornament that is the Cham version of Indo-Khmer foliage carving and carries strong reminiscences of Dong Son work. The remaining fragments of the large icons suggest a double origin for Cham art traditions. On many of the capitals and altar pedestals are series of figures carved in relief in a sensuous style, which is nevertheless strictly conceptualized. This sophisticated work is reminiscent both of late Chenla art and of Indonesian decoration, especially during the 11th-century return. Other figures are more emphatic in style, with the defined cubic volumes of Melanesian sculpture. It is thus probable that artists trained in the sophisticated Cambodian tradition worked for the Cham kings at one time or another, while Champa’s own native craftsmen emulated the work of the foreigners in their own fashion.
Apart from My Son there are one or two other sites in north and central Vietnam where Cham art was made in quantity. The most important of these is Dong Duong, in Quang Nam. It is a ruined Buddhist monastery complex of the late 9th century, conceived on the most beautifully elaborated plan of structured space in Champa. The architectural detail is distinguished from the My Son work by its greater emphasis upon the plasticity of architectural elements such as angle pilasters and porticoes. The circuit wall was about half a mile (one kilometre) long and once contained many shrines dedicated to Buddhist deities. It is possible that, when this complex of brick courts, halls, and gate pavilions was intact, it may have resembled very closely the contemporary Buddhist monasteries of northeastern India.
Art of the southern capital : 11th-15th century
After 980, when the northern provinces were taken over by the Vietnamese and the Cham capital was established at Binh Dinh in 1069, the kings maintained a gradually diminishing splendour. After the Khmer attack of 1145 they could claim little in the way of royal glory. Although the Cham kings made a brief return to My Son from 1074 to 1080, most of their artistic effort was spent on shrines at Vijaya (Binh Dinh) and a few other sites in the south. The early 12th-century Silver Towers at Binh Dinh are simplified versions of the older northern towers, with corner pavilions added to the roofing stories and arches of pointed horseshoe shape. Throughout the 13th and early 14th centuries the building of successive shrines gradually declined. The plasticity of the old pilasters and architraves became simpler, and the beauty of the buildings became largely a matter of proportion. By the mid-14th century the temples erected at Binh Dinh articulated only reminiscences of the classic Cham style.
Sculpture shows a parallel change. One or two reliefs at the Silver Towers convey a sense of tranquility and splendour, but an indigenous style of cubical emphasis came progressively to dominate the iconic Hindu figures at southern sites. The curlicued design of earlier figures was gradually converted into a style of massive blocks that convey an impression of strength, but without the refinement of preceding art.
As was the case in Cambodia, this change in art by the mid-14th century may be attributed to the people’s loss of confidence in the concept-and, with it, the imagery-of divine kingship. Theravada Buddhism, as a popular religion based upon numerous small local monasteries, adopted probably from the Tai, was spreading all over the region. The northern Vietnamese, who had originally been organized in self-contained kingdoms without any concept of royal divinity, owing an intermittent administrative allegiance only to the distant Chinese emperor, found this ultimately suitable as a state religion after the final eclipse of Confucianism in the 17th century. They did incorporate echoes of older Hindu architecture, however, in details of the dramatic ornament used on eaves and gables of their wooden monastery buildings.
Features of architectural art of Champa temples
Currently, if compared with the number of ancient Champa architectural monuments that have become ruins, the remaining Cham towers are only a small part. However, although the remaining number is small, they are still very convincing historical evidence of a unique ancient architectural art of the ancient Cham people. The art of building temples together with the techniques of carving on bricks is a unique artistic achievement of the Cham people, which has created an architectural complex with bold Champa imprints.
Origin and function of architecture
In the process of formation and development, Champa has left many different cultural imprints not only in the Central and Central Highlands but also in some Southeast Asian countries… Based on the inscriptions, we are It is known that from the V - VII centuries, the Cham people began to build beautiful shrines. Regarding the origin of architecture, there are many different views, there are views that the tower originates from the Buddha stupa (Stupa), but most of them think that it originated according to the Hindu teachings symbolizing Mount Meru, the residence. of the gods embodied in the form of the temple of Mount Sikhara.
In the Cham language, the temples are called kalan or mausoleum, where the kings built to worship the gods. The gods worshiped here can be the god of destruction Siva, the god of the head and the body of an elephant Ganesha or Buddhas depending on the belief and respect of each king. However, ancient Champa society had a combination of kingship and theocracy, so many towers also worshiped Champa kings. Therefore, Cham towers were built to worship gods. However, if considering each tower separately, worship is only one of the functions, but because most of the towers now have no worship items, it is difficult to predict other functions.
The construction of temples by the Cham kings is mentioned as early as the 6th century in the inscription of Bhadravarman I. According to the Hindu concept, the mosques or temples are the residences of the gods. Through what remains until now, it can be said that Cham temples were built for religious purposes. At the same time the inscriptions, temples, statues, ... vividly reflect the cultural and spiritual life as well as the ancient Champa society.
Classification of architectural styles by chronology
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the ancient and ruined Cham towers began to be noticed and gradually mentioned as bright pearls in Champa culture. After many years of research, the famous French artist P. Stern has completed the chronology and style table for the Cham towers.
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| Hoa Lai towers |
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| My Son A10 |
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| My Son A 1 |
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| Po Nagar |
- Late style from the beginning of the 14th century to the end of the 17th century, including the tower of Po Klaung Garai, Po Romé, Yang Mun, Yang Prong. At the end of the 13th century and the beginning of the 14th century, Po Klaung Garai marked the decline of Binh Dinh style, Cham tower architecture in the late style of Cham architectural art. After the fourteenth century, Cham architecture seemed to be dry. In Yang Prong, Yan Mun and finally in Po Romé, the severe recession and poverty reached its maximum. The architecture became completely lost its inherent majesty, the decorative towers lost all their lightness and became very heavy.
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| Po Klaung Garai |
Along with the process of formation, development and decline of the ancient Kingdom of Champa, the architectural art of Champa temples and towers also emerged in three major stages: group of towers in the VIII - IX centuries (My Son E1, Hoa Lai and Dong Duong style), the 10th century group (My Son A1 style), and the 11th - 13th century group (Binh Dinh style). The three styles exude three different beauty and very typical shapes, the first group is strong in decoration and in a clumsy, square shape; the second group is delicate, elegant in lines and harmonious in proportions; the third group is majestic in the block array.
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| Twin Tower |
Model of Champa temple architecture
Based on the remaining architecture that can be seen, the Cham temples and towers were built on the mound and facing east. The center is a block-shaped tower with a square body, in the middle, it forms a small shrine, which is the residence of the gods. The main architecture sometimes has two more towers located on the same South-North axis. Outside the central group is surrounded by a wall forming the sanctuary. The wall is opened to the east by a large gate shaped and built like a temple. In front of the main architecture, there is usually a long building in the east-west direction. This building consists of two adjacent houses. Outside the sanctuary, there is a long house built in the same direction as the central architecture built by a thin wall or by stone columns supporting a tiled roof. In addition to the long house in the outer area and the south tower in the central area, which were built by civil architecture, the rest were built according to the tower architecture. Inside the tower is a square-shaped altar with straight walls, unadorned and flat. A curved roof above the shrine room. The lamp holder is carved in the wall. In the middle of the hall is a statue of a god or a linga worshiping object. Outside is a hallway that leads to another smaller space. On the pillars, frills and legs, on the walls, people decorate fake doors, patterns, figures or flowers. The tower body protrudes many floors and gradually shrinks.
Temple building materials
From the V - VI centuries, the Chinese have shown in historical records the admiration for the architectural art and brick sculpture of the Cham people. Because their way of building temples is a process of meticulously selecting construction bricks, creating creative and unique carvings. Oriental art researcher B.Groslier said that: "In terms of structure, Cham towers are more beautiful than Khmer temples". The beauty here is that the Cham people have kept the material and respect its nature. He has a comparison because the Khmer they built temples on any material and then carved into it. Current researchers believe that the bricks to build the Cham tower were built of mortar. These mortar layers are quite thick, from 0.5 to 1 or 2cm. On the outside of the Cham tower, there are very thin layers of mortar that make it feel like bricks are glued together. Cham tower bricks are younger and lighter than the bricks we usually use today. Just grind the bricks together in water, the brick powder has melted into a fairly sticky glue and sucks the two bricks together. When it dries, it comes off. After analyzing by Ronghen diffraction, scientists believe that Cham tower bricks are made from Hydromica clay and fired at a low temperature. The size and shape of the bricks are often uneven. The brick shape is generally rectangular in shape, with little distortion and evenly baked. Brick color is usually bright red or light red.
Compared with bricks, stone accounts for a low percentage. Stone is often cut into blocks or slabs used in locations subject to high compressive forces. The rock consists of two types, light blue granite and red gray siliceous rock. Regarding the adhesive composition, recent researchers believe that the adhesive used by the Cham people to build the tower is made from plants. According to Tran Ky Phuong (1980), it is a plant that gives a lot of resin such as wax oil, a binder from the cactus according to Ngo Van Doanh (1978) or also a clay solution, according to Awawrenczack and Skibinski (1987) ). In recent years, people have also seen the adhesive flowing from the bricks at Po Romé tower is a brown sap consisting of a mixture of oat oil and lime. Or according to Tran Ba Viet (2000), the Cham people also use the slime of various plants to make a binder such as umbrella, Litsea, and hibiscus.
Construction Engineering
The stages of building towers of the Cham people still have many theories. According to the grinding theory, the Cham people use light-fired bricks that are continuously sharpened until they fit together. During the grinding process, add water and binder. After grinding, the water and the binder mix together to form the initial sticky mixture. Because bricks have high porosity and absorb water, the thin film of this substance adheres to the surface of the bricks and binds them together. According to the theory of grinding and folding, the Cham people when building the tower only need to grind the bricks in the water and put them together according to the position of the tower. When dry, the bricks are firmly attached. However, according to the legend of the Cham people, the tower was built with unburnt wet brick. Before building, people dip bricks in vegetable oil and build towers right after. When building up to 1 - 1.5m, people stop to wait for the bricks to dry and stick together, then they install the soil around the built tower wall. Then they stood on the soil around the tower wall to continue building. Just like that, wherever they built, they put the earth there until the top of the tower. Finally, light the fire to redden the tower. Then they replaced the surrounding soil as scaffolding, they scraped this layer of soil to form a ground around and let the workers stand up to sculpt on bricks and so on gradually to the point of love.
Carving technique
A special feature in Cham temples is the technique of carving directly on bricks. Cham people do not use decorative shells on bricks but chisel and carve directly into the finished brick wall. It is the special properties of brick that make it a durable building material and also an ideal material for sculptures, plus the creativity, ingenuity and meticulousness of ancient Cham sculptors who making Cham towers become perfect, unique and distinctive works of art of Champa civilization.
Influence of Hinduism
The ancient Champa architectures were built with their own religious characteristics and unique art techniques on the basis of absorption from Indian culture. Indian culture has a long history of cultural exchange with Champa, when the Champa people gained independence. Therefore, Indian culture has comprehensively participated in the social and spiritual life of the Cham people. The works and architecture of Champa, mostly with religious functions, carry the breath of Indian civilization. That is shown in the earliest statues and inscriptions. The group of statues found in Cu Lao Ha, Ganesa statues all show a clear influence of southern India, specifically the Amaravati region, and some others such as Dong Duong Buddha statue, terracotta statue head at Cung Son, reliefs Buddha statue in Tuy Hoa. In the following centuries, the appearance of temples and pagodas shows that these are masterpieces of art, very close to the expressionist art of Dravarati and Indonesia, similar to the art style of South India and the influence of pre-Angkorian art. . However, to the later temples, counting from the temple built by King Sambhuvarman but later burned down, the Champa religious architecture, although bearing the influence of Indian religion, still carries many inherited features of traditional architecture. On the basis of absorbing Hinduism, the Cham people have created a lot from materials for building towers to materials processing techniques, tower building techniques and unique ingenuity in how to decorate temples with sculptures. directly onto the brick. They have mastered those techniques to turn it into a unique Champa-style art product that forms its own characteristics.
It can be said that, during the process of formation, development and decline, the Champa kingdom has left a lot of cultural and historical values. In particular, a series of temple architectures not only in central Vietnam but also in many other countries in the region, of the Cham people is a treasure of historical and cultural value that reflects many different aspects of the culture. ancient Champa civilization. The architecture of Champa temples are historical evidences for the existence and flourishing of the ancient Champa kingdom, and have contributed to bringing about different cultural beauties in the Vietnamese ethnic community today. now on. The Cham people have contributed to the Vietnamese art treasure with unique features of architecture and sculpture. The system of Cham towers and statues is one of the largest and most valuable ancient art cultures of Southeast Asia, worthy of a world cultural heritage. Each tower is a memorial to the gods or heroic kings of the kingdom, so they are built on a high hill and open to the East - the direction of the gods. The towers are built on an almost square ground, with false doors on three sides, only the east side has doors, the tower walls are thick, the hollow tower is raised and closed. In the tower there are idols, portraits of the king or Linga. The tower is built of brick, inside and out are ripe crimson, the adhesive circuit does not seem to exist, the outside is attached with stone reliefs or directly touched on the brick surface into works of art that make up the brand of Cham nuances.
Although the tower construction technique has been studied for hundreds of years, there are still many controversial issues that have not been resolved. From the remaining monuments, it is shown that the Cham workers are indeed very talented, whose art is skillful in bringing Cham art to a high level that is still a conundrum until now.
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| Canh Tiên Tower |
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