🇻🇳 𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒎 𝑯𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒖𝒔 & 🇮🇩 𝐁𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐇𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐬| Two Southeast Asian ethnic groups ( 𝑵𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒆 ) that still follow Hindu teachings that have persisted for thousands of years.
🇻🇳𝗛𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘂𝗶𝘀𝗺 𝗶𝗻 𝗩𝗶𝗲𝘁𝗻𝗮𝗺 is mainly observed by the ethnic Cham people. Balamon Cham is one of two surviving non-Indic indigenous Hindu peoples.
The first recorded religion of the Champa was a form of Shaiva Hinduism, brought by sea from India. Hinduism was the predominant religion among the Cham people until the sixteenth century. Numerous temples dedicated to Shiva were constructed in the central part of what is now Vietnam. The jewel of such temple is Mỹ Sơn. It is often compared with other historical temple complexes in Southeast Asia, such as Borobudur of Java in Indonesia, Angkor Wat of Cambodia, Bagan of Myanmar and Ayutthaya of Thailand. As of 1999, Mỹ Sơn has been recognised by UNESCO as a world heritage site.
Religiously and culturally, the Chams were grouped into two major religio-cultural groups; the Balamon Chams that adhere to an indigenized form of Hinduism, and Cham Bani that adhere to an indigenized form of Shi'a Islam. The term "Balamon" derived from "Brahman" or "Brahmin", one of Hindu caste of religious elite. The term "Bani" on the other hand is derived from Arabic term "bani" (بني) which means "people". Balamon Chams adhere to the old religion of their ancestor, an indigenized form of Hinduism that thrived since the ancient era of Kingdom of Champa in 5th century AD, whereas Cham Bani are adherents of a localized version of Shi'a Islam, including a minor element of Sufism, endured with Hindu-Chamic customs as early as around the 11th–13th century. However, it was not until 17th century that Islam began to attract large numbers of Chams, when some members of the Cham royalty converted to Islam. These two groups mostly live in separate villages. Intermarriage was prohibited in former times, and remains rare even nowadays. Both groups are matrilineal and conform to matrilocal residence practice.
The number of Balamon Cham Hindus in Vietnam were declared at 64,547 (36%) out of a total Cham population of 178,948 according to the 2019 population census. They do not have a caste system, although previously they may have been divided between the Nagavamshi Kshatriya and the Brahmin castes, the latter of which would have represented a small minority of the population.
Hindu temples are known as Bimong in Cham language, but are commonly referred to as tháp "stupa", in Vietnamese. The priests are divided into three levels, where the highest rank are known as Po Adhia or Po Sá, followed by Po Tapáh and the junior priests Po Paséh. By the 17th century, due to pressures from king Po Rome, the Ahier (Balamon) were forced to accept Allah as the most supreme God while retaining the worships of other Balamon deities in their faiths.
The majority of Hindu Chams in Vietnam (also known as the Eastern Chams) are syncretic Ahiér Hindu and Bani Muslims and they mostly live in Central Vietnam, while Southern Vietnam's Chams and their Cambodian counterparts are largely Sunni Muslim, as Islamic conversion happened relatively late. A smaller number of the Eastern Cham also follow Mahayana Buddhism. A number emigrated to France in the late 1960s during the Vietnam War. In the Mekong Delta, the Sunni community (which mainly Chams) has a population of around 25,000 in 2006
🇮🇩𝗕𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝗛𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘂𝗶𝘀𝗺 (Indonesian: Agama Hindu Dharma; Agama Tirtha; Agama Air Suci; Agama Hindu Bali) is the form of Hinduism practised by the majority of the population of Bali.This is particularly associated with the Balinese people residing on the island, and represents a distinct form of Hindu worship incorporating local animism, ancestor worship or Pitru Paksha, and reverence for Buddhist saints or Bodhisattava.
The population of Indonesian islands is predominantly Muslim (86%). The island of Bali is an exception where about 87% of its people identify as Hindu (about 1.7% of the total Indonesian population).
Hindu influences reached the Indonesian Archipelago as early as the first century CE. Historical evidence is unclear about the diffusion process of cultural and spiritual ideas from India. Java legends refer to Saka-era, traced to 78 CE. Stories from the Mahabharata have been traced in Indonesian islands to the 1st century, whose versions mirror those found in Tamil Nadu. The Javanese prose work Tantu Pagelaran of the 14th century, which is a collection of ancient tales, arts and crafts of Indonesia, extensively uses Sanskrit words, Indian deity names, and religious concepts.
Similarly, ancient Chandis (temples) excavated in Java and western Indonesian islands, as well as ancient inscriptions such as the 8th century Canggal inscription discovered in Indonesia, confirm the widespread adoption of Shiva lingam iconography, his companion goddess Parvati, Ganesha, Vishnu, Brahma, Arjuna, and other Hindu deities by about the middle to late 1st-millennium CE. Ancient Chinese records of Fa Hien on his return voyage from Ceylon to China in 414 CE mention two schools of Hinduism in Java, while Chinese documents from the 8th century refer to the Hindu kingdom of King Sanjaya as Holing, calling it "exceedingly wealthy," and say that it coexisted peacefully with the Buddhist people and Sailendra ruler in the Kedu Plain of the Java island.
Balinese Hinduism is an amalgamation of Hinduism and indigenous animist customs that existed in the Indonesian archipelago before the arrival of Hinduism.
It integrates many of the core beliefs of Hinduism with the arts and rituals of the Balinese people. In contemporary times, Hinduism in Bali is officially referred to by the Indonesian Ministry of Religion as Agama Hindu Dharma, but traditionally the religion was called by many names such as Tirta, Trimurti, Hindu, Agama Tirta, Siwa, Buda, and Siwa-Buda.
The terms Tirta and Trimurti emanate from Indian Hinduism, corresponding to Tirtha (pilgrimage to spirituality near holy waters) and Trimurti (Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva) respectively. As in India, Hinduism in Bali grew with flexibility, featuring a diverse way of life. It includes many Indian spiritual ideas, cherishes the legends and myths of the Indian Puranas and Hindu Epics, and expresses its traditions through a unique set of festivals and customs associated with a myriad of hyangs - the local and ancestral spirits, as well as forms of animal sacrifice that are not common in India.
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