S COPE Collection, Vietnam Historical Museum, Ho Chi Minh City, 1994.

Emmanuel Guillon 1

The catalog, bilingual (English viêtnamien4) Collection, Cam History Museum Vietnam Ho Chi Minh City, includes an introduction to the 115 works reproduced, a thematic analysis of these, signed by Pham Huu My and Vuong Hai Yen (p. 21-27 for Vietnamese text, 28-34 for the English text).
Referring to two times book Tai Truong Van Kiem and Ba Phat, published in 1974, the authors, by classifying the cam works by the museum materials, dénombrent 140 (87 stone, 26 bronze, 20 silver and 7 ceramic ), and emphasize that this is the first time the collection was published almost in its entirety. They then proceed to the analysis, more or less detail, of 28 works or group of works. It is not possible within the scope of this report, discuss each of these references, which are unfortunately rarely uses the iconography. Note however that the first god of the plank "to the nine gods of Tra Kieu can only be Surya, not USA, the second being Candra, etc.. Moreover, the role of political power in the choice of mythological Champa (eg representations of Shiva, Fig. 3-5) would not be looking in the inscriptions in the statuary, we believe there. As for Devi Huong That, that took BRIDGET emblem, there is nothing to say that this is a Mahishasuramardini, or it may represent the wife of Indravarman II. For the bronze Buddha Dong Du'o'ng (Fig. 90), studied repeatedly, there can be local charges, and can be dated between the fourth and sixth centuries (not the LM. Moreover it does not seem that there are bad parts, and some sculptures are among the masterpieces of art cam, as, for example, besides the last 2 mentioned, the series of dancers (No. 36 to 40), the Vishnu Kuong My (No. 6), or praying Tra Kieu (No. 20). A number of pieces portrayed in this beautiful catalog was known (although they did not all been studied, such as the beautiful Buddha head, No. 92) but often difficult to find. So we can only congratulate the authors of this book to see them together.

A Research Associate at CNRS.