From 12 October 2005 to 9 January 2006, the Musee Guimet in Paris will play host to an exceptional exhibition: 'Treasures of Vietnamese Art... Champa Sculpture'. This show will bring together for the firt time, outstanding pieces from the Musee Guimet, the National Museums of France and the national Vietnamese museums of Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh (formerly Saigon). The discretion of private collectors has meant that, until now, much of the wealth of this great Asian art form has remained relatively unknown but this show also includes several truly exceptional pieces from private collections, hitherto inaccessible to both the public and most curators. Jean-Franois Hubert, an international expert on Vietnamese art, has succeeding in creating a unique artistic opportunity. In the 5th century, the Champa kingdom held sway over a large area of today's Vietnam. Several magnificent structures still testify to their former presence in the Nha Trang region. Cham Sculpture was created from a variety of materials, principally sandstone, but also gold, silver and bronze, and primarily illustrated themes from Indian mythology. The kingdom was gradually eroded during the 15th century by the irresistible descent of the people towards the south ("Nam Tien") from their original base in the Red River region. The author explores, describes and comments on the various styles of Cham sculpure, drawing on in a rich and, as yet largely unpublished, iconographic vein.

The Cham people once inhabited and ruled over a large stretch of what is now the central Vietnamese coast. Written by specialists in history, archaeology, anthropology, art history, and linguistics, these essays reassess the ways that the Cham have been studied.

The kings of ancient Champa, a civilization located in the central region of today's Vietnam, started building sacred temples in a circular valley more than 1500 years ago. The monuments, now known by the Vietnamese name M? So'n, were discovered by nineteenth-century colonial soldiers and first studied by the French architect Henri Parmentier. Bombed during the Vietnam War, the ruins of the brick towers, decorated with exquisite carvings and sculptures, were designated as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site in 1999. An Italian team has worked at the site for the last ten years, doing archaeological research and restoration work in cooperation with Vietnamese specialists. This book is the first published volume based on their efforts. The opening section consists of historical, anthropological and architectural studies of the civilization of Champa. The remainder of the book presents an unusually intimate and extensively illustrated portrait of the archaeologists' research and restoration work at M? So'n. While this book is important for specialists and students of the history and archaeology of Champa and Southeast Asia, it also tells a fascinating story that will appeal to general readers and visitors to this exceptional archaeological site.

The first report in this book offers an overview of Cham art with sixty-five photographs and an introductory text by the eminent French archaeologist Henri Parmentier. Originally published in 1922, this book remains one of the best introductions to the treasures preserved in the Tourane Museum in Danang. It features splendid photographs of Cham art discovered in the main areas of this long lost culture-Mi Son, Dong Duong, Khuong My, and Tra Kieu. The development of Cham art is sketched against the background of Annamese migration pushing the Cham people and their kingdom ever further south. The second part consists of two research reports. The first one by Paul Mus summarizes what is known about the religious practices of the Cham people and is based on artifacts and translated inscriptions. The author also reviews evidence from contemporary Cham culture. The religious inheritance of Champa is related to Vedic, Indian, Chinese, and Annamese forms of worship, and the significance of the Champa king as intermediary between the gods and the soil is also discussed. The second report by Étienne Aymonier contains an overview, dated 1884-85, of the religious practices, ceremonies related to veneration of divinities, marriage, birth, priesthood, death, agriculture, collection of eagle wood, and other customs of both groups of Chams, Muslims and non-Muslims, in Vietnam, and Chams in Cambodia.

A driving, panoramic novel of four strangers whose personal struggles with grief become interconnected through their quest to reunite the body and engine of a vintage car.

A fifteen-year-old widow runs across a bridge to catch a train bound for Trichi. Sowmya is running away to make sense of the events that had seized her body and her mind, and had ripped apart her world. She is determined to flee her destiny of numbing isolation within her community, the Brahmins of the Thanjavur district in South India. Her plans pivot when she meets a devadasi--an aging dancer--in her compartment. When the woman Mallika opens her drawstring bag and buys Sowmya her dinner, Sowmya recognizes what she needs to overcome her own condition, that of a young woman in possession of a thin cotton sari, a head shorn clean, and little else. She asks Mallika how she too can achieve that kind of power--the power to open a bag and pull out money. Thus begins Sowmya's transformation in the city by the sea, Madras, which is in the grip of its own political and social changes while India is struggling to seize its independence from the imperial British raj. Here she learns the beauty of dance from Mallika, and the sweetness and agony of falling in love with a married man. The cinema brings unimagined opportunities and all the power and riches that she could desire, but it also consumes her relentlessly. When a letter arrives, Sowmya begins her quest to regain everything that had been lost when she once lived in that small village tucked into a little bend of the Kaveri River. Hear Champa Bilwakesh reading from Desire of the Moth here: http://voicethread.com/myvoice/#thread/5863247/30058528/31699244

Catalog of an exhibition held at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Ga., Feb. 27-May 16, 1999.