[14] Rolf Stein proposed that Champa might have been inspired when Austronesian sailors originating from Central Vietnam arrived in present-day Eastern India around the area of Champapuri, an ancient sacred city in Buddhism, for trade, then adopted the name for their people back in their homeland.

Scholars agree that historically Champa was divided into several regions or principalities spread out from south to north along the coast of modern Vietnam and united by a common language, culture, and heritage.

Champa came to serve as an important link in the spice trade, which stretched from the Persian Gulf to South China, and later in the Arab maritime routes in Mainland Southeast Asia as a supplier of aloe.

[23] Tsat, a northern Chamic language spoken by the Utsul on the Hainan Island, is speculated to be separated from Cham at the time when contact between Champa and Islam had grown considerably, but precise details remain inadequate.

She came from the Moon, arrived in modern Central Vietnam and founded the kingdom, but a typhoon drifted her away and left her stranded on the coast of China, where she married a Chinese prince, and returned to Champa.

[46][47] George Coedès notes that during the 2nd and 3rd century, an influx of Indian traders, priests, and scholars travelled along the early East Asia–South Asian subcontinent maritime route, could have visited and made communications with local Chamic communities along the coast of Central Vietnam.

[48] On the other hand, Paul Mus suggests the reason for the peaceful acceptance of Hinduism by the Cham elite was likely related to the tropical monsoon climate background shared by areas like the Bay of Bengal, coastal mainland Southeast Asia all the way from Myanmar to Vietnam.

[51] Several granite tablets and inscriptions from My Son, Tra Kieu, Hue, Khanh Hoa dated 653–687 report a Cham king named Jaya Prakāśadharma who ascended the throne of Champa as Vikrantavarman I (r. 653–686).

Likanhsieh shocked the Emperor Zhenzong by presenting a memorial engraved on a golden tablet, some white dragon (Bailong 白龍) camphor, Moluccan cloves, and a South Sea slave at the eve of an important ceremonial state sacrifice.

Before the invasion, Kublai Khan ordered the establishment of a mobile secretariat (xingsheng) in Champa for the purpose of dominating the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean trade networks.

After the Yuan wars ended decisively in 1288, Dai Viet king Trần Nhân Tông spent his retirement years in Northern Champa, and arranged a marriage between his daughter, Princess Huyền Trân, and Prince Harijit – now reigning as Jaya Simhavarman III (r. 1288–1307) – in 1306 in exchange for peace and territory.

[103][104] Contemporary reports from China record a Cham envoy telling to the Chinese court: "Annam destroyed our country" with additional notes of massive burning and looting, in which 40 to 60,000 people were slaughtered.

[126] The 13th-century Chinese gazetteer account Zhu Fan Zhi (c. 1225) describes the Cham king 'wears a headdress of gold and adorns his body with strings of jewels' and either rides on an elephant or is lifted on a 'cloth hammock by four men' when he goes outside the palace.

[148] However, boundaries between premodern Southeast Asian states in most cases were remote hinterlands, extreme mountains and limestones covered by thick jungles with few inland trade routes, and can not be accurately determined.

[164] Before the conquest of Champa by the Đại Việt ruler Le Thanh Tong in 1471, the dominant religion of the Cham upper class (Thar patao bamao maâh) was Hinduism, and the culture was heavily influenced by that of India.

[165] The predominance of Hinduism in Cham religion was interrupted for a time in the 9th and 10th centuries CE, when a dynasty at Indrapura (modern Đồng Dương, Quảng Nam Province, Vietnam) adopted Mahayana Buddhism as its faith.

With the decline of royal power of the ruling Simhavarmanid dynasty in the 15th century and the fall of their capital Vijaya in 1471, all Mahayana or Vajrayana traces of Champa disappeared, enabling space for the rising Islamic faith.

Al-Dimashqi claimed a story that the Alīds after being expelled, a small group of them took refugee in Champa; these Muslim immigrants therefore spread Shi'a among the Cham, which perhaps eventually led to the synthesis of the Bani Awal religion.

[183][184] Kelantanese Muslim preachers or imams sailed to Champa shores not long after the fall of Vijaya to teach their school among the local community, academic ties there were also established leading to long-lasting exchange of teachers between both regions over the centuries; certain placenames in Kelantan like Pengkalan Chepa (lit.

[192] Maritime trade was facilitated by a network of wells that provided fresh water to Cham and foreign ships along the coast of Champa and the islands of Cù Lao Chàm and Lý Sơn.

[201] The largest amount of eaglewood products extracted from the highland of Champa occurred in 1155, when Cham envoy reportedly shipped 55,020 catties (around 33 tons) of incense of Wuli to the Song court as trade tribute.

[206] These cosmopolitan cities were loaded with surplus amount of trading goods and exotic products, overcrowded by merchants not just from other Cham states, but also Chinese, Khmer, Malay, Viet, Arab, and Indian traders and travelers.

[193] The Zhu Fan Zhi describes the port cities of Champa, 'on the arrival of a trading ship in this country, officials are sent on board with a book made of folded slips of black leather.'

[211] Portuguese travelers in the early 16th century, such as Fernão Mendes Pinto, reported vestiges of these cities "a town of above ten thousand households" which "encircled by a strong wall of brick, towers, and bulwarks.

"[212] Because of this, Champa was the target of multiple warring powers surrounding: the Chinese in 4th century-605 CE; the Javanese in 774 and 787, the Vietnamese in 982, 1044, 1069, 1073, 1446, and 1471; the Khmer in 945–950, 1074, 1126–1128, 1139–1150, 1190–1220; and the Mongol Yuan in 1283–85, many cities were ransacked by invaders and rebuilt or repaired over time.

Many Cham sculptures and valuable artifacts were destroyed during the Vietnam War due to bombing, others were either illegally looted or smuggled by private collectors, most famously Douglas Latchford, whose collections are now under investigation by the US Justice Department.

[39] In 1044, after raiding Champa, Vietnamese emperor Lý Thái Tông took some 5,000 prisoners, and brought back to Đại Việt a number of court dancers familiar with Indian-style dances, settling to them in a palace specifically built for them.

[237] Cham art also spread far across the Red River Delta, where many Vietnamese Buddhist temples hosted Cham-style statues of dragons, lions, nāgá, makara, kinnari, Brahma and Hamsa dated back to the 11th–13th century (however, since these creatures also existed in China, it was more likely Chinese influence and not Champa).

[28] A Buddhist stone stupa of Dạm tempe in Bắc Ninh Province, built by Vietnamese emperor Lý Nhân Tông in 1086, is a representation of a lingam and its yoni (a Hindu-Cham symbol of fertility and the power of creation).

These networks, served not only for trade, but also for connecting peoples, transporting culture, ideas, and religious identities across the region, enduring endless historical possibilities and mutual relationships, significantly helping most of Southeast Asia to transform into their present-day.