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The Cham festivals of the Champa region in the Vietnam portion of southeast Asia include agricultural festivals, religious festivals, dancing festivals, chancel festivals and tower festivals. All these are part of their ethnic and cultural heritage.
The Chams or Champa people are an Austronesian ethnic group. From the 2nd to the mid-15th century the Chams populated Champa, a contiguous territory of independent principalities in central and southern Vietnam. They spoke the Cham language and the Tsat language, two Chamic languages from the Malayo-Polynesian group of the Austronesian family. Chams and Malays are the only sizable Austronesian peoples that settled in Iron Age mainland Southeast Asia among the more ancient Austroasiatic inhabitants.
Champa was a collection of independent Cham polities that extended across the coast of what is today central and southern Vietnam from approximately the 2nd century AD until 1832, when it was annexed by the Vietnamese Empire under Minh Mạng. The kingdom was known variously as Nagaracampa, ꨌꩌꨛꨩ in the Chamic and Châmpa (ចាម្ប៉ា) in the Khmer inscriptions, Chiêm Thành in Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and Zhànchéng in Chinese records. According to National Geographic, Champa's navy was considered unrivaled.
Lunar New Year is the beginning of a calendar year whose months are moon cycles, based on the lunar calendar or lunisolar calendar.
Hinduism in Southeast Asia had a profound impact on the region's cultural development and its history. As the Indic scripts were introduced from India, people of Southeast Asia entered the historical period by producing their earliest inscriptions around the 1st to 5th century CE. Today, the only practicing Hindus in Southeast Asia other than Overseas Indians are the Balinese and Tenggerese minorities in Indonesia, and the Cham minority in Cambodia and southern Vietnam.
Mỹ Sơn is a cluster of abandoned and partially ruined Hindu temples in central Vietnam, constructed between the 4th and the 14th century by the Kings of Champa, an Indianized kingdom of the Cham people. The temples are dedicated to the worship of the god Shiva, known under various local names, the most important of which is Bhadreshvara.
Hội An, formerly known as Fai-Fo or Faifoo, is a city with a population of approximately 120,000 in Vietnam's Quảng Nam Province and is noted as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999. Along with the Cu Lao Cham archipelago, it is part of the Cu Lao Cham-Hoi An Biosphere Reserve, designated in 2009.
Phan Thiết is the capital of Bình Thuận Province on the southeast coast in Vietnam. While most of the inhabitants live in the city center, others reside in the four urban coastal wards, extending from Suối Nước beach in the northeast towards cape Kê Gà in the southwest.
The majority of Vietnamese do not follow any organized religion, instead participating in one or more practices of folk religions, such as venerating ancestors, or praying to deities, especially during Tết and other festivals. Folk religions were founded on endemic cultural beliefs that were historically affected by Confucianism and Taoism from China, as well as by various strands of Buddhism. These three teachings or tam giáo were later joined by Christianity which has become a significant presence. Vietnam is also home of two indigenous religions: syncretic Caodaism and quasi-Buddhist Hoahaoism.
Cham is a Malayo-Polynesian language of the Austronesian family, spoken by the Chams of Southeast Asia. It is spoken primarily in the territory of the former Kingdom of Champa, which spanned modern Eastern Cambodia and Southern Vietnam. The Western variety is spoken by 220,000 people in Cambodia and 25,000 people in Vietnam. As for the Eastern variety, there are about 73,000 speakers in Vietnam, for a total of approximately 320,000 speakers.
Islam in Vietnam is primarily the religion of the Cham people, an Austronesian minority ethnic group; however, roughly one-third of Muslims in Vietnam are of other ethnic groups. There is also a community, who describes itself of mixed ethnic origins, that practices Islam and are also known as Cham, or Cham Muslims, around the region of Châu Đốc in the Southwest.
Phan Rang–Tháp Chàm, commonly known as Phan Rang, is a city in Vietnam and the capital of Ninh Thuận Province. The community has a population of 161,000 (2004), of which 91,000 (2004) live in the main city.
Po Klong Garai Temple is a Hindu Cham religious complex located in the Cham principality of Panduranga, in what is now Phan Rang in southern Vietnam. It was built in honor of the legendary king Po Klaung Garai, who ruled Panduranga from 1151 to 1205, by the historic King Jaya Sinhavarman III,
The Chơ Ro are a Mon–Khmer people in Vietnam. Most Chơ Ro live in the Đồng Nai, Bình Dương, Bình Phước and Bà Rịa–Vũng Tàu provinces. The population was 29,520 in 2019.
The Cham calendar is a lunisolar calendar used by the Cham people of Vietnam since ancient times. Its origins is based on Saka Raja calendar which was influenced by the Shaka era Indian Hindu calendar, with the current standard called Sakawi Cham likely instituted during the reign of Po Rome of the Champa kingdom.
Mo or Moism is the religion of most Zhuang people, the largest ethnic minority of China. It has a large presence in Guangxi. While it has a supreme god, the creator Bu Luotuo (布洛陀), numerous other deities are venerated as well. It has a three-element-theory. Mo is animistic, teaching that spirits are present in everything.
Vietnamese folk religion, is the ethnic religion of the Vietnamese people. About 45.3% of the population in Vietnam are associated with this religion.
Po Klaung Yăgrai was king of the Champa polity of Panduranga.
Hinduism in Vietnam is mainly observed by the ethnic Cham people. Balamon Cham is one of two surviving non-Indic indigenous Hindu peoples. Around 60,000 Hindus live in Vietnam today.
The Ahom religion is the ethnic religion of the Ahom people. The Ahom people came into Assam in 1228, led by a Tai prince Sukaphaa, and admixed with the local people. The people who came into Assam included two clans of priests, joined later by a third, who brought with them their own religion, rituals, practices and scriptures. The religion is based on ritual-oriented ancestor worship that required animal sacrifice (Ban-Phi), though there was at least one Buddhism influenced ritual in which sacrifice was forbidden (Phuralung). Ancestor worship and the animistic concept of khwan are two elements it shares with other Tai folk religions. There is no idolatry except for the titular god of the Ahom king and though there is a concept of heaven or a heavenly kingdom, there is no concept of hell. It was the state religion of the Ahom kingdom in the initial period.
Whale worship is a practice of animal worship, which is practiced mainly in Vietnam and Japan.