01The Devi of Kauthara
Kauthara was the southern Cham province, and its great shrine was to Bhagavati, whom the Cham called Yan Po Nagar, Lady of the Land. Sanskrit inscriptions on the site record that in 774 raiders from the sea burned the temple and carried off the linga, and that King Satyavarman pursued them, defeated them at sea and set up the deity again in 784. Later kings gave land, gold and servants to the Devi. The image in the main tower today is a seated ten-armed goddess, a form many identify with Mahishasuramardini.
02One mother, two peoples
When the Vietnamese took Kauthara in the seventeenth century they did not close the temple. They took the Devi into their own worship as Thiên Y A Na, the heavenly mother, and offered incense to her beside the Cham. Four of the original towers still stand on the hill. Every year in the third lunar month a festival is held here with Cham dances and Vietnamese rites together, one of the few places in the world where a Hindu temple of the first millennium has never stopped receiving offerings.
The life of this place
- 774 CERaiders from the sea burn the temple and carry off the linga.
- 784 CEKing Satyavarman reinstalls the deity after defeating the raiders.
On Cu Lao hill at the north end of Nha Trang. Cover shoulders and knees; robes are lent at the gate.
