Champa under Suryavarmadeva

Who rules

Name

Suryavarmadeva, the prince the Khmer stele calls Sri Vidyanandana

Title

King of Champa (Zhancheng guowang to the Chinese), a Cham prince raised at the Khmer court

Since

1190 or 1192 as ruler of part, king of the whole country from about 1191 or 1192 (the sources disagree: not pinned)

Born

not known

Family

A Cham prince; his uncle is the yuvaraja On Dhanapatigrama (Cham stelae, via the MSA brief). No wife or heir is known to me.

Confidence

medium for the man, low for the dates of 1190 to 1192

English, French and Chinese Wikipedia; the Cham stelae and the Khmer stele of 1191 as reported there. Maspero, Coedes and Vickery were not opened.

What the realm holds

• Vijaya (Chà Bàn) on the Côn river plain with its port Thị Nại, the likely seat
• Amaravati: Simhapura (Trà Kiệu), Indrapura (Đồng Dương) and the My Son valley, the port at the Thu Bồn mouth, the gold of Bồng Miêu
• The Quảng Ngãi plain with the earth citadel of Châu Sa (Co Luy), the salt of Sa Huỳnh
• The Hue plain (Châu Ô and Châu Lý) behind the Hai Van spur, the northern edge: Thanh Lôi and Liễu Cốc
• Phu Yen (the Da Rang mouth), Kauthara (Po Nagar at Nha Trang, Cam Ranh bay), Panduranga (Phan Rang, Hòa Lai, Phan Rí)
• Tribute, gifts and marriage ties, not tax, with the hill peoples who bring eaglewood, ivory, cinnamon, wax and horn
• Temple lands and servants of Po Nagar and Bhadresvara (My Son), recorded in the steles

How it was acquired

Three readings of 1190 to 1192 are in print. (1) The Maspero and Coedes line, as the Chinese Wikipedia has it: the Khmer take Vijaya in 1190 and carry off Jaya Indravarman IV, set a Khmer-backed prince 'In' on a throne at Panduranga, and a Cham prince Suryajayavarman is enthroned at Vijaya in 1191, beats Panduranga in a civil war, unifies the country and declares independence. (2) The line in the MSA brief: the Cham prince Vidyanandana, raised at Angkor, is put in the old king's place, turns on his patron and has the old king killed in 1191 or 1192.

(3) The French Wikipedia's chronology: Vidyanandana first at Panduranga from 1190 or 1192, then over the whole country, with Jaya Indravarman IV briefly restored 1191 to 1192. All three end with one king, Vidyanandana or Suryavarmadeva, in sole rule.

Allies and rivals

Khmer: Jayavarman VII, his patron turned enemy. The English Wikipedia dates Jayavarman's campaigns against Champa 1190, 1192, 1194-1195 and from 1198 on; the campaign board has 1193 and 1194. We use the English list. Dai Viet: the campaign board says the Ly court recognised him in 1199 (unverified). Song: Jaya Indravarman IV sent tribute to China and to Dai Viet and tried to buy horses (English Wikipedia); we know of no Cham embassy to the Song in the 1190s.

The uncle On Dhanapatigrama, a Cham prince whose place on 1 January is not known (see his record). The hill peoples: courted by gifts and marriage (board), never taxed.

The realm that morning

Suryavarmadeva is king, most likely at Vijaya. The war with Angkor is in a stretch (from 1198 on in the English Wikipedia) that no battle is dated to, so on this morning the Khmer may be in the field or may not; the highland road in (An Khe to the Con, the Se San, the Srepok) is where an army would come. The yuvaraja On Dhanapatigrama is somewhere not known to me, at Angkor or in the south. Building goes on: the tall towers of Dương Long and the twin towers of Thap Doi belong to the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, so on 1 January 1200 they are new or still going up.

Wealth

Trade is the wealth: eaglewood, cinnamon, ivory, rhinoceros horn, cardamom, beeswax and captives from the hills; gold from Bồng Miêu; salt from Sa Huỳnh and Cà Ná; rice on the plains; kiln wares from Gò Sành (the wares are mostly of the thirteenth century, so a kiln at work in 1200 is inference). The ports are Thi Nai, the Thu Bon mouth, the Da Rang mouth, the Dinh mouths, Cam Ranh and Phan Ri.

Military

A war fleet is attested under Jaya Indravarman IV (the English Wikipedia: he built a naval squadron after failing to buy horses in China; Vickery doubts the sack of Angkor in 1177). Earth-and-brick citadels at Cha Ban, Simhapura, Chau Sa and Thanh Loi. The Chinese Wikipedia has a Fujian man teaching Cham troops cavalry archery in 1171. We give no numbers.

Threats

• A Khmer army by the An Khe pass and the Con valley, or by the Se San and the Ba
• A Khmer fleet into Thi Nai
• The uncle On Dhanapatigrama and any Cham lords who sided with the old king
• Panduranga going its own way
• The hill peoples closing the trade roads

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

1. 1203 (the Cham stelae and the Vietnamese annal; month not given for the fall)The yuvaraja On Dhanapatigrama, with a Khmer army, beats Suryavarmadeva and takes Vijaya; the king flees north by sea and reaches Cua Lo in August 1203, is not given refuge, and vanishes.Depends on: The Khmer keep their forward base and the uncle stays loyal to Angkor. Stopped by: A Khmer defeat in the highlands or a Cham reconciliation.
2. 1203 to 1220 or 1226Champa is governed as a Khmer province; building at My Son and Po Nagar stops for a generation.Depends on: Angkor holds the coast. Stopped by: Jayavarman VII's death or a rising.
3. 1220 or 1226 (the inscriptions disagree)Jaya Paramesvaravarman II, a Cham prince raised at Angkor, restores a Cham kingdom; the Khmer withdraw.Depends on: The Khmer empire pulls back from its outer holdings. Stopped by: A Khmer relief force.
4. 1306Jaya Simhavarman III gives Chau O and Chau Ly (the Hue plain) for a Viet princess: the frontier moves to the Hai Van.Depends on: A marriage treaty. Stopped by: A war or a refusal.

Places of note

• Vijaya (Cha Ban): The likely seat
• Thi Nai: The harbour of Vijaya
• An Khe pass: The step from the Con valley to the Bahnar plateau

Where the sources disagree

• Board 'Champa' blurb: Khmer armies 'came against him in 1193 and 1194 and were beaten'. The English Wikipedia (Champa) gives 1190, 1192, 1194-1195 and 1198-1203; we use that list and make no claim of Cham victories.
• Board: 'recognised by the Ly court in 1199, which buys a quiet frontier': unverified; no source we could open mentions it.
• Board: 'sent home in 1190 with the army that broke his own country; killed both the captive king and the usurper who followed him': sources differ (see acquired); the MSA brief says he killed the old king in 1191 or 1192.
• The campaign board entry says he holds Vijaya on 1 January 1200: plausible (the 1203 flight is from Vijaya) but not shown; the French Wikipedia has him first at Panduranga.
• The campaign board's 'federation of five plains' is the older model; the French Wikipedia, after Vickery, calls it obsolete.
• Saka dating: 1 January 1200 falls in Saka 1121 (the year that began in the spring of 1199).

Evidence: The Cham and Khmer steles are the best evidence, but the years 1190 to 1203 reach me only through Wikipedia articles that disagree with each other; Maspero, Coedes and Vickery could not be opened.

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

On the map: Coastal plains drawn as unions of modern districts; the old plains had no such edges. The highland valleys behind each plain belong to the hill peoples and are drawn as their own records.

Primary sources for this realm

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
• The Customs of Cambodia, Zhou Daguan (after 1297, from a stay at Angkor in 1296 to 1297). A Chinese envoy's account of Angkor a century after Jayavarman VII, and the only description of the city and its court by an eyewitness. Read online
• A Description of the Foreign Peoples (Records of Foreign Nations), Zhao Rukuo (Zhao Rugua) (1225 at Quanzhou). The best single text for the island world around 1200, written by the superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou from merchants' reports a generation after the date. Read online
• Description of the Foreign Peoples (Chau Ju-kua), Zhao Rukuo (趙汝适) (about 1225, while superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou). The Song customs officer's survey of the overseas world, compiled from merchants and from Zhou Qufei, a generation after 1200 but describing trade routes that were the same in 1200. Read online
• Notes in Answer to Questions about the Lands beyond the Passes, Zhou Qufei (周去非) (1178, after service in Guangxi). A Guangxi official's notes, written twenty years before 1200, on the south-western frontier of the Song and the countries beyond. Read online