My Son Sanctuary

In a closed green valley in the forests of Quảng Nam, about 40 kilometers west of Hoi An, more than 70 temples and towers of red brick once rose. Those that remain have stood in silence for a thousand years. This is the Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary, the largest Hindu heritage site left by the Kingdom of Champa.

On December 4, 1999, the same day as Hoi An, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee inscribed Mỹ Sơn as a World Cultural Heritage site. Two heritage sites in the same province, Quảng Nam at the time, now part of Da Nang, were recognized at the same session. That has never happened to any other province of Vietnam.

Champa was the kingdom of the Cham, a people who have long lived alongside the Vietnamese in central Vietnam. Their kingdom lasted more than 1,500 years. It began in the year 192. Vijaya fell in the late 15th century, but a remnant of the kingdom survived in Phan Rang until 1832. The Cham were deeply influenced by the civilization of India. They followed Hinduism, and their principal god was Shiva. Today the Cham are still one of Vietnam's officially recognized ethnic minority groups.

The name Mỹ Sơn means beautiful mountain. Mỹ means beautiful, and Sơn means mountain. It is a Sino-Vietnamese name, given to this valley of temples by the Vietnamese. The original Champa name of the place has been lost, and no written record of it survives.

The story of Mỹ Sơn begins in the late 4th century. King Bhadravarman the First laid the religious foundations of Champa. He built the first temple in this valley, to worship the god Shiva through the symbol of the linga. He named this linga Bhadresvara, joining his own name, Bhadra, to Ishvara, a name for Shiva. Many later Champa kings also set up a linga that joined their own names to Shiva. In this way, divine power and royal power became one.

From the 4th century to the 13th, for nine centuries, the kings of Champa kept building at Mỹ Sơn. The first wooden temple burned, and they rebuilt it in fired brick. The 9th and 10th centuries were the golden age, when architecture and sculpture reached their peak. In time, the center of Champa moved south. Mỹ Sơn was slowly abandoned, and the forest closed over it.

In the late 19th century, the French found this valley again, deep in the forest. But the scholarly study of Mỹ Sơn was founded by Henri Parmentier, an archaeologist from France. He worked for the French School of the Far East, a French institute that studies the classical civilizations of Asia. He surveyed the site around the turn of the 20th century and drew a map of every tower. Then he sorted the towers into groups, each named with a letter. That system is still in use today. Parmentier was also the man behind the Museum of Cham Sculpture in Da Nang. It was built in 1915 and opened in 1919. If you stopped at the Cham museum in Da Nang on the way here, you have seen the theory. Mỹ Sơn is the fieldwork.

The brick walls of these towers hold the greatest mystery of Champa architecture. The bricks were laid without any mortar to bind them. The joints between them are so tight that not even a thin sheet of paper can slip through. Today there are several theories. One is that resin from the bời lời tree served as the binder and was left to dry. Another is that the faces of the bricks were ground and rubbed until they fitted tightly. A third is that the bricks were laid while still unfired, and then the whole tower was fired where it stood. Science has not yet reached a final answer. It is a skill the ancient Cham took with them to the grave.

Among the ruins lies a heap of rubble. It was once Tower A1, the tallest tower at Mỹ Sơn, 24 meters high. It was the high point of Champa architecture in the 10th century, and international scholars called it a masterpiece. In 1969, during the Vietnam War, US Air Force B-52 bombers struck this area. Mỹ Sơn lay in a zone controlled by the National Liberation Front. The area was a military target, and the bombing was not a deliberate attempt to destroy cultural heritage. But Tower A1 and six secondary towers were completely destroyed. Some of the bomb craters have been left as they were, for visitors to see. The destruction of the towers was a cultural loss for Vietnam and for all of humanity.

The good news is that in recent years, Vietnam has worked with UNESCO, Italy and India to restore several groups of towers. Among them are groups K and H and part of group A. Groups B, C and D are still the best preserved, and they remain the heart of a visit.

Mỹ Sơn also hosts performances of Cham art, including the Apsara dance. In Hinduism, the Apsaras are celestial maidens who dance and sing in heaven. The Cham carved this figure into the sculpture of their towers, and later developed it into a traditional dance. The Cham instruments used in these performances include the Saranai, a kind of reed horn, and the Paranưng, a kind of drum. It is a living art that has survived from a kingdom now gone.

The Cham still regard Mỹ Sơn as holy ground.

After nine centuries of building and more than 600 years of abandonment, Mỹ Sơn still stands in the forest. Its red brick towers rise among the green of the trees. The wind slips through ancient arched gateways. And somewhere in the carvings on the walls, the Apsara dancers are still dancing, their feet never touching the ground, as they have for a thousand years.