Music
Nicholson: Little is known of the Champa dynasty that ruled much of what is now Vietnam. Sensuous sculptures of their gods have survived as testimony to this highly developed civilisation.Their temples are now home to bats rather than kings. But against the odds, their descendents have lived on.
Phuong: This is the ancient capital of the Cham. This is where I come from.
Nicholson: The leaders of the Hindu dynasty which created these treasures, longed for immortality, but over time, they were defeated. New, powerful regimes replaced them, but could not erase them all together.
This is the heart of the holy city of the Champa Kingdom from 1600 years ago. The original wooden temples have long since disappeared, and these are remnants of the dozens of red brick ones that the Champa people built up to the 13th century. Theyve been ravaged by wars, ancient and modern, and their treasures have been plundered. Now they're relying on an international rescue mission to stop them from sinking into the jungle.
Zolese: Actually we know very few things.
Nicholson: Heading an Italian archaeological team at My Son is Patrizia Zolese. Worried that this rare vestige of ancient Vietnamese history was threatened, she helped persuade UNESCO to list it as world heritage.
Zolese: Very dangerous because there is no sustain to retain the weight of the roof and slowly, slowly, part of the roof is collapsing.
Nicholson: War and religion have always gone hand in hand here. The weathered ruins tell the story of the Cham kings, great traders, profoundly influenced by the Indian civilisation. For nine hundred years, they ruled their own independent state. But they feuded constantly with their neighbours - the Vietnamese to the north and the Khymers to the south.
Music
Nicholson: Centuries on, the tranquillity of this secluded valley masks a sinister danger.
Zolese: Here the damage was a shell bomb during the American war in 69,
Music
Nicholson: During the Vietnam war, my son was a hideout for the Vietcong. They planted hundreds of landmines for kilometres around. The Americans repeatedly bombed the site, destroying Champa towers and antiquities more than a thousand years old.
Zolese: There are some bombs just a few months ago, some bombs unexploded. So the mines are still there and we dont know exactly where they are.
The Vietnamese workers here are well aware of the dangers.
During the only other archaeological dig here -- a Polish expedition in the eighties -- twelve locals were killed by explosives.
The evidence is everywhere. Bomb craters and masonry pocked with shell and bullet holes. On display, inside one of the towers, is a B52 bomb -- a modern artefact vying for attention with the old.
But it doesnt deter even the youngest of helpers in this huge rescue project.
Nicholson: For six hundred years, My Son lay almost forgotten until the 19th century. French archaeologists rediscovered the site and took the artefacts away, because they were deteriorating and vulnerable to looting .
They built a museum for them seventy kilometres away in Da Nang where they are still held today.
Here the finest examples of cham art have survived.
Like the Mona Lisa the cham beauty the graceful Tra Keu dancer flashes an enigmatic smile. Her beauty reflects the Hindu-Javanese artistry of the tenth century.
The artwork captures the sensuality of Cham culture. The power of creation is revealed through representations of male and female genitalia.
Miss Duoc: This is lingam and yoni. The lingam symbolise the phallus and yoni symbolises the woman. Its man and woman. The Cham worshipped this and they wish for fertility, happiness from the lingam and yoni.
Music
Nicholson: But even here, in this supposed safe house, the treasures have not always been secure. Although the French cemented them into the walls, some were stolen.
The museum was seconded during wartime used by soldiers and refugees with little respect for the graven images. Now pollution from a city that is expanding rapidly is taking a new toll.
Music
Nicholson: This building is open to the elements and damage to the artefacts is plainly visible. Security is, at best, rudimentary. No closed circuit television here, just entertainment for the guards.
But the Vietnamese are now accepting help from Australia and France to remove the sculptures from their concrete chains, restore them and install them in a new building.
The Cham treasures are on the move once more. Donna Hilton, a conservator with the New South Wales Art Gallery, is helping the Vietnamese rescue some artefacts left outside the museum.
Donna: They know they are getting stained by the lichen, and it's degrading the surface of the stone, so the carving is less clear now because of that.
Nicholson: For the past seven years, Australia has been advising on conservation techniques. Donna: They've got a layer of dirt on them and that would be from the open plan museum where youve got the traffic and everything. Some of them are starting to crack and that is because of iron pins usually that have been put in, perhaps in the 1920s round that time -- or the 30s and these pins are starting to corrode now. And when they corrode, they expand, and that breaks up the stone.
Nicholson: Once in danger of being forgotten, the future of the Mecca of Cham heritage is now much more secure.
A direct descendent of the people who once lived here, Thanh Che Phuong is a trainee architect helping Japanese archaeologists stabilise a damaged tower.
Phuong: I am really happy to be here.
I can see the roots of my culture.
Nicholson: Phuong comes from a Cham village in the south and is among an estimated one hundred thousand descendents of the Champa people in Vietnam.
Phuong: So many temples here are ruined. Its very regrettable.
Music
Nicholson: Like sentries, crumbling towers watch over the main highway to the province of Ninh Thuan.
This is the area where Phuong comes from, once the kingdom of Panduranga.
The people in this Cham village, Ng Hiep, make their living from one of their ancient arts .
It can take three days to weave one cloth but the textiles are sought after internationally, so most of the women in the village spend their days at the loom.
Phu Van Ngoi: Its slow not as fast as machines. But if we do not teach this craft to young people, Cham culture will be lost.
Nicholson: Phu Van Ngoi is one of the wealthiest in the village.
He goes home from his shop for lunch every day to join his wife, Thach, and children. They live in the best house in the village where the traditions of the past collide with the present.
Thach started weaving at 15. She learned from her mother, who, at 76, continues her craft.
Thach: We pass on the knowledge from generation to generation.
Nicholson: At the local school, benign images of uncle - the late Ho Chi Minh attest to Vietnams communist rulers.
Yet, in a country where ethnic minorities are often repressed, these children are allowed to learn about the ancient Cham rulers.
Theyre speaking Sanskrit, the language of their ancestors, the language of My Son.
Phu Van Ngoi: We the Cham people were very proud when My Son was rediscovered. If it were possible, all of us would like to visit our ancient holy land.
Music
Nicholson: The Cham kings may be long dead, but as their homes and treasures have new life breathed into them, their longing for immortality may not have been in vain after all.
Reporter: Anne Maria Nicholson
Camera: David Leland
Editor: Garth Thomas
Nicholson: Little is known of the Champa dynasty that ruled much of what is now Vietnam. Sensuous sculptures of their gods have survived as testimony to this highly developed civilisation.Their temples are now home to bats rather than kings. But against the odds, their descendents have lived on.
Phuong: This is the ancient capital of the Cham. This is where I come from.
Nicholson: The leaders of the Hindu dynasty which created these treasures, longed for immortality, but over time, they were defeated. New, powerful regimes replaced them, but could not erase them all together.
This is the heart of the holy city of the Champa Kingdom from 1600 years ago. The original wooden temples have long since disappeared, and these are remnants of the dozens of red brick ones that the Champa people built up to the 13th century. Theyve been ravaged by wars, ancient and modern, and their treasures have been plundered. Now they're relying on an international rescue mission to stop them from sinking into the jungle.
Zolese: Actually we know very few things.
Nicholson: Heading an Italian archaeological team at My Son is Patrizia Zolese. Worried that this rare vestige of ancient Vietnamese history was threatened, she helped persuade UNESCO to list it as world heritage.
Zolese: Very dangerous because there is no sustain to retain the weight of the roof and slowly, slowly, part of the roof is collapsing.
Nicholson: War and religion have always gone hand in hand here. The weathered ruins tell the story of the Cham kings, great traders, profoundly influenced by the Indian civilisation. For nine hundred years, they ruled their own independent state. But they feuded constantly with their neighbours - the Vietnamese to the north and the Khymers to the south.
Music
Nicholson: Centuries on, the tranquillity of this secluded valley masks a sinister danger.
Zolese: Here the damage was a shell bomb during the American war in 69,
Music
Nicholson: During the Vietnam war, my son was a hideout for the Vietcong. They planted hundreds of landmines for kilometres around. The Americans repeatedly bombed the site, destroying Champa towers and antiquities more than a thousand years old.
Zolese: There are some bombs just a few months ago, some bombs unexploded. So the mines are still there and we dont know exactly where they are.
The Vietnamese workers here are well aware of the dangers.
During the only other archaeological dig here -- a Polish expedition in the eighties -- twelve locals were killed by explosives.
The evidence is everywhere. Bomb craters and masonry pocked with shell and bullet holes. On display, inside one of the towers, is a B52 bomb -- a modern artefact vying for attention with the old.
But it doesnt deter even the youngest of helpers in this huge rescue project.
Nicholson: For six hundred years, My Son lay almost forgotten until the 19th century. French archaeologists rediscovered the site and took the artefacts away, because they were deteriorating and vulnerable to looting .
They built a museum for them seventy kilometres away in Da Nang where they are still held today.
Here the finest examples of cham art have survived.
Like the Mona Lisa the cham beauty the graceful Tra Keu dancer flashes an enigmatic smile. Her beauty reflects the Hindu-Javanese artistry of the tenth century.
The artwork captures the sensuality of Cham culture. The power of creation is revealed through representations of male and female genitalia.
Miss Duoc: This is lingam and yoni. The lingam symbolise the phallus and yoni symbolises the woman. Its man and woman. The Cham worshipped this and they wish for fertility, happiness from the lingam and yoni.
Music
Nicholson: But even here, in this supposed safe house, the treasures have not always been secure. Although the French cemented them into the walls, some were stolen.
The museum was seconded during wartime used by soldiers and refugees with little respect for the graven images. Now pollution from a city that is expanding rapidly is taking a new toll.
Music
Nicholson: This building is open to the elements and damage to the artefacts is plainly visible. Security is, at best, rudimentary. No closed circuit television here, just entertainment for the guards.
But the Vietnamese are now accepting help from Australia and France to remove the sculptures from their concrete chains, restore them and install them in a new building.
The Cham treasures are on the move once more. Donna Hilton, a conservator with the New South Wales Art Gallery, is helping the Vietnamese rescue some artefacts left outside the museum.
Donna: They know they are getting stained by the lichen, and it's degrading the surface of the stone, so the carving is less clear now because of that.
Nicholson: For the past seven years, Australia has been advising on conservation techniques. Donna: They've got a layer of dirt on them and that would be from the open plan museum where youve got the traffic and everything. Some of them are starting to crack and that is because of iron pins usually that have been put in, perhaps in the 1920s round that time -- or the 30s and these pins are starting to corrode now. And when they corrode, they expand, and that breaks up the stone.
Nicholson: Once in danger of being forgotten, the future of the Mecca of Cham heritage is now much more secure.
A direct descendent of the people who once lived here, Thanh Che Phuong is a trainee architect helping Japanese archaeologists stabilise a damaged tower.
Phuong: I am really happy to be here.
I can see the roots of my culture.
Nicholson: Phuong comes from a Cham village in the south and is among an estimated one hundred thousand descendents of the Champa people in Vietnam.
Phuong: So many temples here are ruined. Its very regrettable.
Music
Nicholson: Like sentries, crumbling towers watch over the main highway to the province of Ninh Thuan.
This is the area where Phuong comes from, once the kingdom of Panduranga.
The people in this Cham village, Ng Hiep, make their living from one of their ancient arts .
It can take three days to weave one cloth but the textiles are sought after internationally, so most of the women in the village spend their days at the loom.
Phu Van Ngoi: Its slow not as fast as machines. But if we do not teach this craft to young people, Cham culture will be lost.
Nicholson: Phu Van Ngoi is one of the wealthiest in the village.
He goes home from his shop for lunch every day to join his wife, Thach, and children. They live in the best house in the village where the traditions of the past collide with the present.
Thach started weaving at 15. She learned from her mother, who, at 76, continues her craft.
Thach: We pass on the knowledge from generation to generation.
Nicholson: At the local school, benign images of uncle - the late Ho Chi Minh attest to Vietnams communist rulers.
Yet, in a country where ethnic minorities are often repressed, these children are allowed to learn about the ancient Cham rulers.
Theyre speaking Sanskrit, the language of their ancestors, the language of My Son.
Phu Van Ngoi: We the Cham people were very proud when My Son was rediscovered. If it were possible, all of us would like to visit our ancient holy land.
Music
Nicholson: The Cham kings may be long dead, but as their homes and treasures have new life breathed into them, their longing for immortality may not have been in vain after all.
Reporter: Anne Maria Nicholson
Camera: David Leland
Editor: Garth Thomas