| The peoples of Champa, located in the region between the Mekong Delta and the Hue, are ethnolinguistically Malay. The Cham monarchs during this era evidently did not have access to a broad plain providing enough wet rice production to support an elaborate political structure or power base and could not maintain dominance over other Cham monarchs for any extended period of time. As a result, the center or capital of Cham authority would shift over time to various locations as one Cham ruler would lose his dominance to other rulers. As a result of the failure to have a secure economic base either through agricultural production or trade activities, the Cham ruler relied on plunder from raids on neighboring areas, including Khmer territories to the west and Vietnamese territories to the north. In addition, the Cham rulers used local and Indian cultural symbols and their spiritual relationship with the ancestors as defined by religious cults. Also part of the ideological mix were Indian traditions of the king's divinity as the basis for their authority. (See The Malay Archipelago and Peninsula) | 1 |
