Mỹ Sơn

About

My Son lies in a small valley about sixty-eight kilometres southwest of Da Nang, hemmed in by two mountain ranges in the commune of Thu Bon. Across nine centuries the kings of Champa, the Indianised maritime civilisation of central Vietnam, raised here a religious centre devoted to Shiva, venerated at this site under the name Bhadreshvara, joining the king's own name Bhadravarman with the Sanskrit ishvara, Lord.

At its height the valley held more than seventy brick towers and stele in Sanskrit and Cham marking foundations, royal genealogies, and the burials of kings and heroes. King Bhadravarman, who reigned from 380 to 413, dedicated the whole valley to Bhadreshvara, pleading with his successors to maintain rather than destroy his foundation. The plea was heeded, and the precinct remained the religious heart of Champa for generations.

The original wooden temples were destroyed by fire in the sixth century and rebuilt in stone by King Sambhuvarman, who reinstalled the deity as Sambhu-Bhadresvara. Later kings such as Prakasadharma, Harivarman II, and Harivarman IV continued to build and renovate. The latest surviving Cham inscription at My Son, set by Jaya Indravarman V, is dated 1243.

My Son slipped from memory after Vietnamese expansion reached central Vietnam, until Camille Michel Paris rediscovered it in 1898. French restoration began in 1937, but in August 1969 American bombing devastated much of the surviving architecture. UNESCO recognised the site as World Heritage in 1999.

History

Mentioned in the steles of Bhadravarman, rebuilt by Sambhuvarman after the fire of 535-36, and expanded under Prakasadharma in the seventh century, My Son passed through later renovations under Harivarman II and Harivarman IV in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The valley fell to the Viet by the early fifteenth century and lay forgotten until its rediscovery in 1898 by the Frenchman Camille Michel Paris, with scholarly study by the Ecole francaise d'Extreme-Orient following from 1899.

Significance

My Son is regarded as the foremost Shaiva Hindu sanctuary in Southeast Asia and the principal heritage site of Cham civilisation. UNESCO recognised it in 1999 as evidence of cultural evolution and of an Asian civilisation now extinct, placing it alongside Borobudur, Angkor Wat, Wat Phou, Bagan, and Phimai among the great religious landscapes of the region.