Corpus of the Inscriptions of Campā

Support Bas-relief; sandstone; we have not recorded dimensions, but according to Parmentier 1919: 102-103 the bas-relief measures maximally h. 60 cm × w. 75 × d. 38.

Text One line on two faces of a bas-relief, probably written in Old Cam.

Date 9th or 10th century Śaka (between 9th and 11th century CE).

Origin

It was suggested that it may be from Dương Long tower (falling under the Vân Tương village, Bình Định province), where M. Lemire moved various fragments and where a scene of monkeys and men is found on the South false door of the South tower (Parmentier 1909: 572 and 192). But information provided in Parmentier 1919: 103 made this hypothesis untenable. It is more likely that it originates in Quảng Nam province. The relief-block on which is the inscription entered the collection of the “Cam Garden” in Tourane before 1899 and was moved in 1900 to Saigon, where it was held at the Musée de la Société des Études indochinoises under number S. 25 (Finot 1915d: 192). In 1918, it was transported back to Tourane, where it became part of the collection of the Cham Museum (Parmentier 1919: 103). This inscription is mentioned in Parmentier 1909: 570-572. It is presented with emphasis on the bas-relief while Parmentier merely states that “La bande supérieure du cadre qui enferme ces deux fragments de scène porte quelques mots gravés, frustres.” It was recorded in (Cœdès 1923: 96-97). Cœdès respectively described C. 152 and C. 166 as “inscription sur un bas-relief” and “quelques mots frustes sur un bas-relief.” Both of these entries refer to the same object classified as 45,2. From the way these two entries were later tabulated by Cœdès in his table of concordance between the inscription inventory numbers and the inventory numbers of the Tourane museum (IC: 311, table II), it appears that he had himself realized that the two entries in fact refer to a single inscription. We identified the bas-relief at the Museum of Cham Sculpture at Đà Nẵng in 2009.

Edition(s) First published in ECIC III: 449; republished, with C. 157, in our Đà Nẵng Catalog: 237-239.

Facsimile

• Estampage: EFEO n. 36