Town · Champa under Suryavarmadeva · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Simhapura (Tra Kieu)

A rectangle of earth bank and brick on the lower Thu Bồn, with Mỹ Sơn up the valley behind it and the sea an hour downstream (board).

The identification with the Simhapura of the texts is argued about, and so is whether the early Chinese reports of Lin-yi mean this place (board, marked contested). By 1200 the court is long gone south to Vijaya and this is a provincial seat of the northern plain.

Who holds it

Title
Cham lord of Amaravati
Confidence
low

The campaign board entry notes; English Wikipedia (My Son)

Lord in 1200

A Cham lord of Amaravati; not named.

What the town holds

  • The lower Thu Bồn rice plain
  • The road up to Mỹ Sơn and down to the Cửa Đại roadstead
  • The Bàng An octagonal tower on the road inland

How things stand that morning

Under Suryavarmadeva; not pinned.

Wealth

Rice, the cinnamon road from Trà My, gold of Bồng Miêu.

Military

Walls and the lord's followers; no numbers.

Threats

  • Viet raiders by land from the Hue plain or by sea

Charter

None known for a town. The Cham kings grant lands and exemptions to temples by inscription; no town charter is recorded.

Council

Not recorded.

Communities

Cham villages; Brahman and Buddhist priests of Mỹ Sơn and Đồng Dương; Katu traders upriver.

Militia

No numbers.

Walls and castle

Earth bank and brick rectangle (board); whether in repair in 1200 is not known.

Trade and crafts

Rice, cinnamon, gold, eaglewood from the Katu.

Places of note

  • Simhapura: Walled seat
  • Bang An: Octagonal tower

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: Site evidence; 1200 use is the campaign board's inference.

"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.

Primary sources for Champa

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

  • The Abridged History of Viet, Anonymous (attributed by some to Su Hy Nhan) (about 1377, probably as an abridgement of Le Van Huu's lost history of 1272). The oldest surviving Vietnamese history, a century older than the Complete Annals and in places fuller for the Ly dynasty, which fills its second and third books.
  • The Complete Annals of Dai Viet, Ngo Si Lien, drawing on Le Van Huu's Dai Viet su ky (1272) and Phan Phu Tien; continued by Pham Cong Tru and Le Hi (1479; printed 1697 in the standard Chinh Hoa edition). The main narrative source for Dai Viet in 1200, compiled in 1479 from Le Van Huu's lost history of 1272. Read online
  • History of Song, chapters 488 and 489: Jiaozhi, Dali, Champa, Zhenla, Pagan, Srivijaya, Java, Brunei, Chola and Tambralinga, Toqto'a (Tuotuo) and the Yuan history office, from the Song court records (1343 to 1345, from Song veritable records and court diaries). The Chinese court's record of its southern neighbours, compiled from Song archives. Read online
  • History of the Song, the chapters on Xia and on foreign states, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office (1343 to 1345). The Song court's accounts of its neighbours, each arranged as an annal of embassies and wars. Read online
  • Draft Compilation of the Collected Statutes of the Song, Various; the Song huiyao were compiled by the Song state, the surviving draft reassembled by Xu Song from the Yongle dadian in the nineteenth century (the original Song compilations date from the eleventh to the thirteenth century; the surviving extracts were recovered in 1809 to 1820 and printed in 1936). Dated extracts from the Song government's own statute collections, arranged by office. Read online
  • Corpus of the Inscriptions of Campa (EFEO and ISAW), Various (the Cham kings and their officers), edited by Arlo Griffiths, Amandine Lepoutre, William Southworth and Thanh Phan (inscriptions of the 4th to 15th centuries; the online corpus from 2012). The online edition of the Cham inscriptions, with photographs, texts and translations, keyed to the C. numbers. Read online
  • The Inscriptions of Cambodia, Various (the Khmer kings and their officers), edited by George Coedes (inscriptions of the 6th to 14th centuries; edited 1937 to 1966). The Khmer empire of 1200 is known almost entirely from the great foundation stelae of Jayavarman VII (reigning from 1181), which Coedes edited: the Ta Prohm stele of 1186 (K. Read online
  • The Sanskrit inscriptions of Cambodia and Champa (ISCC), Various (Khmer and Cham kings), edited by Auguste Barth and Abel Bergaigne (inscriptions of the 7th to 12th centuries; edited 1885 to 1893). The founding edition of Khmer and Cham Sanskrit epigraphy, public domain and online, which Coedes's later corpus supersedes but does not replace. Read online

4 more in the sources library for Mainland Southeast Asia.

Sources and studies

  1. Mỹ Sơn, English Wikipedia (read)
  2. OMNIA board notes for the Vietnam and Champa area (a lead, not a source)

Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.