Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- King Bhadravarman's founding stele begs later kings not to destroy his gift, warning that a destroyer would inherit the founder's bad deeds.
- The first temples were largely of timber and burned in a great fire around 535–536; King Sambhuvarman rebuilt the sanctuary early in the 7th century.
- In 605 a Chinese army sacked the Cham capital, carrying off more than a thousand Buddhist books and gold tablets honouring eighteen earlier kings.
- King Prakasadharma began the custom of offering kosas, decorated metal sheaths placed over the linga, and unusually honoured Vishnu as well as Shiva.
- Of all the temples at Mỹ Sơn only one, known as B1, was built of stone; every other building is of red brick.
- Chemical tests found no organic material between the bricks, suggesting a sticky mortar made from the same clay rather than tree resin.
- The carvings run unbroken across brick joints, which led scholars to conclude they were cut into the walls after the buildings were finished.
- The storehouse B5 is the best surviving example of the saddle-shaped roof that is peculiar to Cham architecture.
- Tower A1, long hailed as the masterpiece of Cham architecture, is now a mound of rubble; a scale model by Japanese researchers shows it in Da Nang.
- About 32 inscribed steles have been found at Mỹ Sơn, written in Sanskrit and Cham between the 5th and 12th centuries.
Why it is worth it
In a green valley about two kilometres across, ringed by two ranges of hills in central Vietnam, stand the ruined red-brick towers of Mỹ Sơn, the great religious centre of the kingdom of Champa. For roughly a thousand years, from the 4th to the 13th century, Cham kings built and rebuilt temples here, most of them dedicated to Shiva. The sanctuary began under King Bhadravarman I, who reigned around 380–413 and consecrated a shrine to the god as Bhadreshvara, a name that joined his own to the deity's.
More than seventy temples once filled the valley. The central type is the kalan, a brick tower-sanctuary that sheltered a linga, accompanied by a mandapa, or entrance hall, a kosagrha, a small building that served as a store or fire-house, and a gopura, or gateway tower. Exactly how the Cham builders made and bonded their fine red bricks is still only partly understood. Unusually for the region, even the decorative carving was cut straight into the brick walls rather than into stone panels set into them.
The site was brought to the attention of European scholars in 1898 by the Frenchman Camille Paris, and from 1899 Henri Parmentier surveyed it, sorting the surviving temples into groups lettered from A to K, a system still used today. Much of what he recorded was lost in August 1969, when US bombing during the Vietnam War destroyed a large part of the complex in a single week; craters can still be seen among the ruins. What remains was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1999. Restoration began in 1981 with a Polish team led by Kazimierz Kwiatkowski. Many statues from the site were taken to France or to museums in Vietnam, among them the Museum of Cham Sculpture in Da Nang.
Getting there
Mỹ Sơn lies about 36 km from Hội An and about 68 km southwest of central Da Nang; the nearest town is Đại Lộc, about 13 km away. The nearest airport is Da Nang International Airport (DAD), about 32 km in a straight line.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Mỹ Sơn is a cluster of abandoned and partially ruined Shaiva Hindu temples in central Vietnam, constructed between the 4th and the 13th century by the Kings of Champa, an Indianized kingdom of the Cham people. The temples are dedicated to the veneration of God in accordance with Shaivism, wherein God is named Shiva, or The Auspicious One. In this particular complex, he is venerated under various local names, the most important of which is Bhadreshvara.
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