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Jewel in Danang Province There was once a mighty empire called Champa
that ruled over the central portion of present-day Vietnam for a thousand years
and its history has been traced as far back to the first century AD - making it
one of the oldest ethnic groups in Indochina. At its height, in the 10th and eleventh
centuries, Champa's borders stretched from the Mekong Delta in the South, along
the Annamite mountain range, and further north than Hué, where it met with the
border of the Dai Viet Kingdom. 
Despite
having their empire crushed by the Vietnamese in the late 1400s, watching it finally
crumble away in the early eighteenth century, and suffering mortal persecution
at the hands of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, pockets of this ancient ethnic group survive
throughout south east Asia. Unfortunately, the Cham kings, though leaving
a scattering of statues and artworks, were not great builders and there are few
monuments, palaces or temples of the type left by their Khmer neighbours. Remaining
sites at My Son and Dong Duong - near Danang - were badly damaged by bombing and
firefights during the Second Indochina War. However, French archaeologists of
the Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient - who had restored many of the buildings
at My Son before their re-destruction - had fortunately removed many of the Cham
artworks and statues. A large number of these are now on show at the Musée Guimet
in Paris. However, the world's largest collection remains in the ancient heart
of Champa, at the Cham Museum in Danang. Constructed in 1916 by the Ecole, over
300 sandstone sculptures exhibit the range of artistic influences at play upon
this ancient kingdom throughout its grandest millennium. 
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