Ancient Indian Colonies in the Far East (Vol. I: Champa; Vol. II: Suvarnadvipa) v1.c7.s2.24

v1.c7.s2.24

We thus find that since 214 B. C., the whole of Tonkin, and Annam as far as Cape Varella, passed under the supremacy of the Chinese. The people who lived in Tonkin and northern Annam were undoubtedly the Annamites who were destined to rise to great power in a later period and give their name to the southern part of the Chinese possessions. They belonged ethnographically to the vast Yue race that occupied the territory south of Nan-ling which was first conquered by the Tsin Emperor Che-houang-ti between 221 and 214 B.C. A large part of this Yue race was ultimately absorbed by the Chinese, but those of Tonkin and northern Annam retained their individuality, and, after centuries of Chinese subjugation, ultimately formed themselves into a powerful nation, as we shall see later on. The Annamites, however, did not as yet extend beyond the "Col de Nuages" in the district of Quang Nam. To the south of it lived the indigenous savage population. But already in the first century A. D. we find a new element, the Chams, firmly established in sufficiently large number as far north as Quang Nam. At what date the Chams pushed so far north as Quang Nam we are unable to say, but we shall not probably be far wrong, if we hold that at the time when the Han Emperor had divided the vast territories between the frontier of Kouang-Si and cape Varella into the three provinces of Kiao-tche, Kieou-tchen and Je-Nan, the first two were peopled by the Annamites and the third by the Chams. The primitive savages of Tonkin and Annam, pushed by the Annamites from the north and the Chams from the south, were gradually moving towards the high mountains as their last refuge.