tified with Vishnu after his death. This would account
for the remarks of Chou Ta-kuan who seems to have regarded it as a
tomb.]

[Footnote 327: See especially the inscription of Bassac. Kern,
_Annales de l'Extreme Orient_, t. III. 1880, p. 65.]

[Footnote 328: Pali books are common in monasteries. For the
literature of Laos see Finot, _B.E.F.E.O._ 1917, No. 5.]

CHAPTER XXXIX

CHAMPA[329]

THE kingdom of Champa, though a considerable power from about the
third century until the end of the fifteenth, has attracted less
attention than Camboja or Java. Its name is a thing of the past and
known only to students: its monuments are inferior in size and
artistic merit to those of the other Hindu kingdoms in the Far East
and perhaps its chief interest is that it furnishes the oldest
Sanskrit inscription yet known from these regions.

Champa occupied the south-eastern corner of Asia beyond the Malay
Peninsula, if the word corner can be properly applied to such rounded
outlines. Its extent varied at different epochs, but it may be roughly
defined in the language of modern geography as the southern portion of
Annam, comprising the provinces of Quang-nam in the north and
Binh-Thuan in the south with the intervening country. It was divided
into three provinces, which respectively became the seat of empire at
different periods. They were (i) in the north Amaravati (the modern
Quang-nam) with the towns of Indrapura and Sinhapura; (ii) in the
middle Vijaya (the modern Bing-Dinh) with the town of Vijaya and the
port of Sri-Vinaya; (iii) in the south Panduranga or Panran
(the modern provinces of Phanrang and Binh-Thuan) with the town of
Virapura or Rajapura. A section of Panduranga called Kauthara
(the modern Kanh hoa) was a separate province at certain times. Like
the modern Annam, Champa appears to have been mainly a littoral
kingdom and not to have extended far into the mountains of the
interior.

Champa was the ancient name of a town in western Bengal near
Bhagalpur, but its application to these regions does not seem due to
any connection with north-eastern India. The conquerors of the
country, who were called Chams, had a certain amount of Indian culture
and considered the classical name Champa as an elegant expression for
the land of the Chams. Judging by their language these Chams belonged
to the Malay-Polynesian group and their distribution along the
littoral suggests that they were invaders from the sea like t