page_title: History of Champa
section_title: The Buddhist dynasty at Indrapura
hierarchical_section_title: History of Champa / History / Champa at its peak / The Buddhist dynasty at Indrapura
caption_attribution_description: English: It is of a 13th century sculpture from Champa. The motif is Garuda devouring a serpent. The style is Thap Mam.
context_page_description: The history of Champa begins in prehistory with the migration of the ancestors of the Cham people to mainland Southeast Asia and the founding of their Indianized maritime kingdom based in what is now central Vietnam in the early centuries AD, and ends when the final vestiges of the kingdom were annexed and absorbed by Vietnam in 1832.
context_section_description: In 875, King Indravarman II founded a new northern dynasty at Indrapura (Dong Duong near Da Nang in modern Vietnam). Eager to claim an ancient lineage, Indravarman declared himself the descendant of Bhrigu, the venerable sage whose exploits are detailed in the Mahabharata, and asserted that Indrapura had been founded by the same Bhrigu in ancient times.  From 877 onward, the Chinese knew Champa as "Cheng-cheng", discontinuing their use of the term "Huan-wang."  Indravarman II repulsed an invasion by the Khmer King Yasovarman I.
  Indravarman was the first Cham monarch to adopt Mahayana Buddhism as an official religion. At the center of Indrapura, he constructed a Buddhist monastery (vihara) dedicated to the bodhisattva Lokesvara. The foundation, regrettably, was devastated during the Vietnam War. Thankfully, some photographs and sketches survive from the prewar period. In addition, some stone sculptures from the monastery are preserved in Vietnamese museums. Scholars have called the artistic style typical of the Indrapura the Dong Duong Style. The style is characterized by its dynamism and ethnic realism in the depiction of the Cham people.  Surviving masterpieces of the style include several tall sculptures of fierce dvarapalas or temple guardians that were once positioned around the monastery. The period in which Buddhism reigned as the principal religion of Champa came to an end in approximately 925, at which time the Dong Duong Style also began to give way to subsequent artistic styles linked with the restoration of Shaivism as the national religion.
  Kings belonging to the dynasty of Indrapura built a number of temples at Mỹ Sơn in the 9th and 10th centuries. Their temples at Mỹ Sơn came to define a new architectural and artistic style, called by scholars the Mỹ Sơn A1 Style, again in reference to a particular foundation at Mỹ Sơn regarded emblematic for the style. With the religious shift from Buddhism back to Shaivism around the beginning of the 10th century, the center of Cham religion also shifted from Dong Duong back to Mỹ Sơn.
caption: 13th century sculpture in the Thap Mam style, depicting Garuda devouring a serpent
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