Hi tho Khoa hc Nhn thc v min Trung Vit Nam-Hnh trnh 10 nm tip cn,

Vin Vn ha Ngh thut Vit Nam-Phn vin Vn ha Ngh thut Vit Nam ti Hu,
Hu, ngy 26/07/2009

INTERACTIONS BETWEEN UPLANDS AND LOWLANDS

THROUGH THE RIVERINE EXCHANGE NETWORK:
AN EXPLORATION OF THE HISTORICAL CULTURAL
LANDSCAPE OF CENTRAL VIETNAM - A CASE STUDY IN THE THU
BN RIVER VALLEY 1
- Trn K Phng (*)
Abstract: In this paper, I examine the history of the riverine-based upland-
lowland exchange network in the Thu Bon river basin of Quang Nam
province in central Vietnam. This examination provides a detailed picture
of the nature of the exchange network and the political economy of the
Champa kingdom(s) and of Central Vietnam. I also argue that land routes-
which were known to the locals as Salt Roads-complimented the rivers in
the creation of the lowland and upland exchange network. Together, rivers
and roads brought people from diverse geographies and ethnicities
together historically to forge the economic and political foundations of
Central Vietnam.
This paper is the result of preliminary research on the historical cultural
landscape of central Vietnam regarding by historians as a site of cultural interactions
between uplands and lowlands, and between north and south.2 Bennet Bronson first

1
The original of this paper entitled Gharuwood/Cinnamon and Salt: Interaction between upland
(Austro-Asiatic speakers) and lowland (Austronesean speakers) by riverine exchange network
through centuries from the Sa Huynh Culture to Champa and Hoi An of Quang Nam Province in
Central Vietnam, was presented by the author at The 18th International Congress of Indo-
Pacific Prehistory Association, held at the University of Philippine, Manila, 20-26 March 2006.
A shorter version of this paper was published on BiblioAsia, Vol 4, Issue 3, October 2008,
National Library Singapore, pp.4-9.
(*)
Nh nghin cu, Thnh ph Nng.
2
Li Tana, Nguyn Cochinchina, Southern Vietnam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
(Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University,
1998), pp. 99-116; Charles Wheeler, Re-thinking the Sea in Vietnamese History: Littoral Society
in the Integration of Thun-Qung, Seventeenth-Eighteen Centuries, Journal of Southeast Asian

290
proposed the upstream-downstream exchange network model. According to
Bronson, the riverine exchange network system typically featured a coastal-based
trade center, which was usually located at a river mouth as an entrept- port. There
were also distant upstream or inland trading centers, which functioned as feeder
stations or initial concentration points for products originating in more remote parts
of the river watershed. Non-market oriented people living in upland or upriver
villages produced these forest products. These people transported forest products to
the river mouth center, where they found a larger population through whom they
could tap into a more productive and technologically advanced economy. 3
Scholars studying the history of early states in what is todays Peninsular
Malaysia and Sumatra, as well as Champa have applied Bronsons model widely.4
Geographically, this model corresponds equally well with the physical conditions of
central Vietnam, where Champa was located historically. In this region, most of the
rivers flow from west to east, and from the high mountains and plateaus to the coast.5
Along each of the upland rivers there are many villages inhabited by non-Viet

Studies 37 (1) (February 2006), pp. 123-53; Trn K Phng, Gp phn tm hiu v nn vn
minh ca vng quc c Champa ti min Trung Vit Nam, Nghin cu & Pht trin, No.
3(37), 2002; No. 4(38), 2002 (Hu: S Khoa hc, Cng ngh v Mi trng Tha Thin-Hu,
2002), pp. 63-74(37) and pp. 71-78 (38). [A Contribution to the Comprehension on the
Civilization of the Ancient Champa Kingdom in Central Vietnam, Journal of Research and
Development, No. 3(37), 2002; No. 4 (38), 2002 (Hu: Department of Science, Technology and
Environment of Tha Thin-Hu Province, 2002), pp. 63-74(37) and pp. 71-78(38).] (In
Vietnamese); Trn K Phng, Gharuwood/Cinnamon and Salt: Interaction between upland
(Austro-Asiatic speakers) and lowland (Austronesean speakers) by riverine exchange network
through centuries from the Sa Huynh Culture to Champa and Hoi An of Quang Nam Province in
Central Vietnam, paper presented at The 18th International Congress of Indo-Pacific Prehistory
Association, held at the University of Philippine, Manila, 20-26 March 2006.
3
Bennet Bronson, Exchange at the upstream and downstream ends: Notes toward a functional
model of the coastal state in Southeast Asia, in Economic Exchange and Social Interaction in
Southeast Asia: Perspectives from prehistory, history, and ethnography, ed. Karl L. Hutterer (Ann
Arbor: Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan, 1977), pp. 39-52.
4
Christie Jan Wisseman, Trade and State Formation in the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra, 300
B.C.-A.D. 700, in The Southeast Asian Port and Polity: Rise and Demise, ed. J. Kathirithamby-
Wells and John Villiers (Singapore University Press, National University of Singapore, 1990), pp.
39-60; Michel Jacq-Hergoualch, The Malay Peninsula: Crossroads of the Maritime Silk Road
(100 BC-1300 AD), (Leiden.Boston.Koln: Brill, 2002), pp. 67-71; Pierre-Yves Manguin, The
amorphous nature of coastal polities in Insular Southeast Asia: Restricted centres, extended
peripheries, Moussons, 5 (2002), pp. 73-99; William Southworth, River settlement and coastal
trade: Towards a specific model of early state development in Champa, paper presented at a
Symposium on New Scholarship on Champa, sponsored by the Asia Research Institute, National
University of Singapore, Singapore, 5-6 August 2004.
5
Wheeler, Re-thinking the Sea in Vietnamese History, pp. 137-38.

291
speaking peoples. These rivers connected upland peoples to the coastal trading centers
that are located at the river mouths. Archaeological findings indicate that such
riverine-based upland-lowland exchange have been practiced since prehistoric times.
In this paper, I examine the history of this upland-lowland exchange network in
the Thu Bn river basin in the central Vietnam. The examination provides a detailed
picture of the nature of the exchange network and the political economy of the
Champa kingdom(s)6 and of central Vietnam. Through historical analyses of riverine
based exchange networks in the Thu Bn river basin, I argue that the local people, in
particularly the Mon-Khmer speaking peoples, contributed to the construction of this
classic river-centered economic network since the prehistoric times, and in doing so
may have contributed to major political developments. I also argue that land routes-
which were known to the locals as Salt Roads-complimented the rivers in the
creation of the lowland and upland exchange network. Together, rivers and roads
brought people from diverse geographies and ethnicities together historically to
forge the economic and political foundations of central Vietnam.
Sa Hynh Culture sites at the Thu Bn River region
Since the 1990s, new archaeological findings uncovered by Vietnamese and
international archaeologists in excavations in central Vietnam, particularly in the
Thu Bn River basin in Qung Nam province, have provided us with a more
comprehensive understanding of this lands past. These new findings have also
provided clear insights into the interactions between upland and lowland areas
during the prehistoric period.
The archaeological artifacts found in central Vietnam reflect two foreign
cultural influences, namely the Chinese Han Dynasty (206BCE-220CE) and the
Indians. These finds have provided large quantities of various types of artifacts,
which prove the existence of a maritime trade relationship between a number of port
cities and polities in central Vietnam, with their counterparts in China and the Indian
sub-continent. Central Vietnam played an important role in the Maritime Silk Road
from the fifth century BCE to the fourth century CE, thanks to the rich resources of
its forests, as well as to its favourable geographical location, which offered a number
of potential sites for useful entrepts.7 Professor Ian Glover who has been engaging

6
Southworth, River settlement and coastal trade.
7
Yamagata Mariko, Tr Kiu of the second and the third centuries A.D.: The formation of Linyi
(Champa) from the archaeological point of view, paper presented at a Symposium on New

292
archaeological research in central Vietnam during the 1990s and the early 2000s has
concluded that,
The early states along the central coast of Vietnam were founded on existing
social structures, influenced by Indian religious and political ideology, but remained
economically dependent on trade with China through the exportation of natural,
forest resources and through the establishment of port entrepts specialising in the
transfer of inter-regional trade to the commercial centres of southern China and
northern Vietnam. 8
The Sa Hynh Culture along the Thu Bn River
The Sa Hunh culture was an Iron Age culture belonging to a period between
the fifth century BCE and the second century CE. Most of its sites have been found
in central Vietnam through archaeological excavations carried out since the
beginning of the last century. Sa Hunh is the name of a small village on the coast of
Qung Ngi province in central Vietnam nowadays where the first excavation of this
culture was conducted in the early twentieth century by French archaeologists.9
A great number of Sa Hunh burial sites have been uncovered along the two
banks of the Thu Bn river, from its tributaries all the way down to its lower
reaches. It is worthy to note that the Thu Bn river basin is the most densely
distributed of the Sa Hunh sites in Vietnam, and the archaeological sites of the Sa
Hynh culture in this area have been found not only in the lowlands along the coast
but elsewhere, such as in the inland and mountainous areas along the upper reaches
of the Thu Bn River and its main tributaries.10

Scholarship on Champa, sponsored by the Asia Research Institute, National University of

Singapore, Singapore, 5-6 August 2004; Lm Th M-Dung, Regional and inter-regional
interactions in the context of Sa Hynh Culture: with regards to the Thu Bn Valley in Qung
Nam Province, Vietnam, paper presented at The 18th International Congress of Indo-Pacific
Prehistory Association, held at the University of Philippine, Manila, 20-26 March 2006.
8
Ian Glover & Nguyn K D, Excavations at Go Cam, Qung Nam province, central Vietnam,
2000-2003: Lin-yi and the emergence of the Cham kingdoms, paper presented at a Symposium
on New Scholarship on Champa, sponsored by the Asia Research Institute, National University
of Singapore, Singapore, 5-6 August 2004.
9
Henri Parmentier, Dpots de jarres Sa-Huynh (Quang-ngai, Annam), Bulletin de lEcole
franaise dExtrme-Orient, No. 23, 1924, pp. 325-43.
10
H Xun Tnh, The proto-historic Cam Ha burial jars in Hi An, Qung Nam-Da Nang, in
Ancient Town of Hi An, ed. The National Committee for the International Symposium on the
Ancient Town of Hi An (Ha Noi: Th Gii Publishers, 2006), pp. 127-28.

293
 The Vu Gia river is one of the main tributaries of the Thu Bn river,
approximately 110 kilometres inland from the river mouth in Hi An, the Thu Bns
primary downriver port. In 1985, a burial ground of the Sa Hynh Culture was
excavated in the Tabhing village, the home of the Katu, a Mon-Khmer speaking
people in the Trng Sn Range. Here archaeologists found five burial jars in three
trenches on the bank of a stream.11 Iron tools, such as axes, spearheads and hatchets
were found, together with the typical Sa Hynh bi-headed animal ornament, and
bronze earrings and Indian agates.12
The archaeological sites found in both coastal plain and inland areas of the Thu
Bn basin display the same two cultural phases: an early phase and a later phase.
Because the archaeological cultural material found in both the upstream and
downstream appeared simultaneously and evolved continuously from the early
phase to the late phase, this provides the tangible evidence of the interactions
between upland and lowland during the prehistoric period.13 The cultural space of
the Sa Hunh archaeological sites in central Vietnam, from the coastal region up to

11
V Quc Hin Bi m chum Pa Xua, in Vin Bo tng Lch s Vit Nam, Thng Bo Khoa
Hc, nm 1991, pp. 167-79. [The Jar Burials at Pa Xua, in National Museum of Vietnamese
History, The Annual Scientific Report, Year 1991, pp. 167-79.] (In Vietnamese); Yamagata
Mariko, Inland Sa Hynh Culture along the Thu Bn River valley in Central Vietnam, in
Uncovering Southeast Asias Past, ed. Elisabeth Bacus, Ian Glover & Vincent Pigott (Singapore:
NUS Press, 2006), p.181. Besides the Sa Hynh sites the archaeologists had also uncovered a
brick structure in a square ground-plan, size: 610x580cm, containing a number of bricks, size:
40x30x12cm and terra-cotta tiles, size: 30x35cm, together with two porcelain bowls; this brick
structure might be considered as an early Cham brick structure comparing with those of the Tr
Kiu sites found in the years later (see Trnh Cn, M c Ba Roong, Qung Nam- Nng, in
Vin Bo tng Lch s Vit Nam, Thng Bo Khoa Hc, nm 1991, pp. 105-09. [The Ancient
Tomb of Ba Roong, Qung Nam-Da Nang, in National Museum of Vietnamese History, The
Annual Scientific Report, Year 1991, pp. 105-09.] (In Vietnamese)
12
Up to nowadays, with Katu people, Indian agates are great precious ornaments for their women;
during 1978-79, there was a big site of Sa Huynh culture found by accident in i ng village,
i Lc district, within the midland of Qung Nam province, close to the land of Katu people; at
that time, the villagers had exchanged agates with Katu people in a large number, in many cases,
a big piece of agate might be exchanged for a buffalo, see Trn K Phng, Bc u tm hiu
v a -lch s ca vng quc Chim Thnh (Champa) min Trung Vit Nam: Vi s tham
chiu c bit vo h thng trao i ven sng ca lu vc sng Thu Bn Qung Nam, Thng
tin Khoa hc, Thang 3/2004 (Hu: Phn vin Nghin cu Vn ho Ngh thut ti Thnh ph Hu,
2004), p. 50. [Preliminary research on the historical geography of the Champa kingdom in
Central Vietnam: in regard to riverine exchange network of Thu Bn river basin in Qung Nam
province, in Scientific Reports, March 2004 (Hu: Vietnam Institute of Culture and Arts Studies,
Central Vietnam, Sub-Institute in Hu, 2004), p. 50.] (In Vietnamese).
13
Yamagata, Inland Sa Hynh Culture, pp.172-81; Southworth, River settlement and coastal trade.

294
the mountainous area, exactly overlapped those of the Champa kingdom(s) or
polities that emerged during the successive centuries.14

The upland and lowland exchange network during the Champa period
(from the second to the fifteenth centuries CE)
Regarding the upland and lowland exchange network during the Champa
period in central Vietnam from the second to the fifteenth centuries CE, the
economy of the Champa kingdom or polities, beyond an agricultural and fishing
base, was largely centred on the coastal trade with India, China, and the other parts
of Southeast Asia. Champa was the closest source from which China could import
many luxury goods, such as ivory, rhinoceros horns, cinnamon and aromatic woods,
spices, and so on, while port-entrepts located along the coast provided useful
shelter, fresh water and firewood for ships traveling along the coasts from South
Asia to East Asia. 15 Thus, the Champa kingdom(s) provided some of the most
significant middlemen in the South Sea Trade or Nanhai Trade.16 According to the
An Nam Ch Lc [The Brief Records of An Nam), Champa was the largest and
most important sea-ports that provided fresh water and firewood to Chinese ships
going south until the early fourteenth century (circa 1335).17 This confirmed by the
evidence of the remains of the Cham well systems found in the Hi An area and
elsewhere in central Vietnam.18
With a geo-historical viewpoint, John Whitmore has considered on this land
as a network of interrelated geographical niches existing in a configuration of

14
Peter Bellwood, Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago (Honolulu: University of HawaiI
Press, 1997), p. 275.
15
William Southworth, The coastal states of Champa, in Southeast Asia from prehistory to history, ed.
Ian Glover and Peter Bellwood (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), pp. 209-33.
16
Wang Gungwu, The Nanhai Trade: Early Chinese Trade in the South China Sea (Singapore:
Eastern University Press, 2003), pp. 107-35.
17
L Tc, An Nam Ch Lc, trans. Hu University (Hu: Thun Ha Publisher & Trung Tam Ngon
Ngu Dong Tay, 2002), pp. 72-73. [Brief Records of An Nam] (In Vietnamese)
18
Trn K Phng and V Hu Minh, Ca i Chim (Port of Great Champa) in the 4th - 15th
Centuries, in Ancient Town of Hi An, ed. The National Committee for the International
Symposium on the Ancient Town of Hi An (Hanoi: Th Gii Publishers, 2006), pp. 117-22;
Nguyn Vn K, Ng Vn Doanh and Andrew Hardy, Peregrinations into Cham Culture (Hanoi:
Centre of Ecole Francaise dExtreme-Orient, 2005), pp. 15-16.

295
internal cultural-religious developments and an external system that linked the sea
routes and the forests of the inland mountains.19
The inhabitants of the Champa kingdom(s) (known as the urang Camp), were
considered by historians to have been very accomplished merchants, who handled
the exchange of commodities between the coastal people and the inland peoples of
the mountainous areas.20 These Champa merchants may have established an interior
exchange network involving such commodities as salt, fish-sauce, dry sea foods,
fabric, agate, carnelian, Chinese jar ceramics, gongs, glass, bronze tools, in
exchange for aloes-wood/eaglewood, cinnamon, ivory, rhinoceros horns, spices,
cloves, rare animals, rare birds, rare bird feather, ironwoods, etc. 21 These luxury
products were then collected in the trade centers of the port-cities, especially those
with good entrepts, in order to trade with the foreign merchants who called there
from South and East Asia.22
Thu Bn - The Longest of the Main Rivers in Central Vietnam
Thu Bn river in Qung Nam province is the longest of the main rivers in
central Vietnam. The river starts in the southern part of the Trng Sn Range,
which includes the 2,598-metre Ngc Lnh Mountain, the highest mountain in
central Vietnam. 23 The average amount of rainfall in this area is approximately
4,000 mm per year. With this huge amount of rain, the Thu Bn river is full of water
all year round. This is the main stream connecting the mountainous and coastal
areas, and it has played an important role in the exchange of goods between the
uplands and the lowlands. Since the fifth century CE, the river itself has been

19
John Whitmore, The Last Great King of Classical Southeast Asia: Che Bong Nga and
Fourteenth Century Champa, paper presented at a Symposium on New Scholarship on Champa,
sponsored by the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 5-6
August 2004.
20
Kenneth Hall, Economic History of Early Southeast Asia, in The Cambridge History of
Southeast Asia, Volume One, ed. Nicholas Tarling (Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 256-
58; Anthony Read, Charting the Shape of Early Modern Southeast Asia (Singapore: Institute of
Southeast Asia, 2000), pp. 39-55.
21
Victor Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830, Volume
One, Integration on the Mainland (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 351; Wheeler, Re-
thinking the Sea in Vietnamese History, p. 144.
22
Southworth, The coastal states of Champa, pp. 224-25.
23
Tam Quach-Langlet, The Geographical Setting of Ancient Champa, in Proceedings of the
Seminar on Champa, University of Copenhague on May 23, 1987, ed. P.-B. Lafont and trans.
Huynh Dinh Te (California: Rancho Cordova, CA, 1994), pp. 24-27.

296
worshipped by the Cham dynasties as a holy river named Mahanadi (Great River) or
Goddess Ganga, the consort of God Siva.24
Thu Bn river joins its tributaries, such as Vu Gia river, at the Giao Thy,
meaning the Water Crossway, which becomes a large stream flowing down to the
lowland basin. The Thu Bn basin is a meeting place of all the main streams in
Qung Nam province. The three largest estuaries of the province, including Ca Hn
Estuary, Ca i Estuary, and Ca K H Estuary, are connected by lagoons, such
as C C, Vng and Trng Giang, all meet at the Ca i estuarine port.25
Several prosperous markets were built along the Thu Bn and Vu Gia rivers, such as
Bn Ging wharf, Bn Hin wharf, Tr Mi market, Tin Phc market, Tam K
market, H Lam market, Trung Phc market, Hi Khch market, H Tn market,
i Ngha market, Vnh in market, Cu Lu market, Bn Thch market, Ty Loan
market, Hn market and so on. These are the collecting places for the forest products
headed for the port-city of Hi An.26
Along the upper reaches of Thu Bn river is the junction between the
mountainous area and the midland at Hn Km- Dng wharf of the Thch Bch
community, in Qu Lm village, in Qu Sn district, where a seventh century Cham
stele was found. The inscription states that this stele belonged to King Prakasadharma
of the seventh century CE, noting that: Sri Prakasadharma, king of Campa always
victorious, master of the land, has installed here the god Amaresa (Siva).27 This
Cham inscription reveals that this area was previously ruled by Cham kings.
The Forest Products for Export

24
Karl-Heinz Golzio (ed.), Inscription of Camp (Aachen: Shaker Verlag, 2004), p. 5. Up to
nowadays, the Thu Bn river is still worshipped by the locals as the Lady of Thu Bn, her temple
was built on the right bank of the river directly toward the north of M Sn Sanctuary. The temple
was built overlapping a Cham ruin. A yearly festival celebrating her is organized by the locals
during the 22nd of the Second Lunar month. There are legends about the lady related with the
Cham temples of M Sn told by the locals, see Henri Parmentier, Inventaire descriptif des
monuments Cams de lAnnam (vol. I. Description des monuments) (Paris: Leroux [Publications de
lcole Francaise dExtrme- Orient 11], 1909), pp. 286-88.
25
Trn K Phng and V Hu Minh, Ca i Chim (Port of Great Champa) in the 4th - 15th
Centuries, pp. 117-22; Wheeler, Re-thinking the Sea in Vietnamese History, p. 133-42.
26
Trn K Phng, Bc u tm hiu v a -lch s ca vng quc Chim Thnh (Champa)
min Trung Vit Nam, p. 55.
27
Golzio, Inscription of Camp, p. 10.

297
 Regarding the special forest products in Central Vietnam during the mid-sixteenth
century, we can gain some sense of the variety of these products by referring to the list of
local products in the book Chu Cn Lc (The Accounts of Chu Prefecture) written
by Dng Vn An in 1555. This is the earliest account of the products of northern central
Vietnam, which included:
ivory, rhinoceros horn, several different sorts of incense-woods (aloes-
wood, eagle-wood, sandalwood), white colored printed textile, blue colored
printed textile, buffalo skin, pine-resin, buffalo horn, deer skin, deer young
horn, doe skin, peacock- tail, pheasant- tail, black pepper, honey, yellow
beeswax, rattan , and so on.28
Since all the above-mentioned items are forest products, it is clear that
uplanders played an important role on the economic formation of the Champa
kingdom(s).29 Those forest products might be regarded as the Cham specialties in
the previous centuries. These items were collected by uplanders, 30 who then
exchanged them with the lowlanders, following the patterns of riverine exchange
networks which have been described in the preceding pages. We might also compare
those forest products with Shiro Momokis studies of Champa products recorded in
Chinese texts in the previous centuries:
Table 1. Products from Champa recorded in Chinese documents: 31
gold, silver, tin, iron, baomu jewels, Chengshuichu pearls, fire
pearls , amber, crystal, beichi [cowries?], pusashi stones,
rhinoceros horns, elephant tusks, tortoise-shell, kalambak, eaglewood, sandalwood,
campher, musk, milk incense, lakawood incense, clove, rose water, petroleum,

28
Dng Vn An, Chu Cn Lc [A new translation], trans. Trn i Vinh and Hong Vn Phc
(Hu: Thun Ha Publishers, 2001), pp. 29-40 [The Accounts of Chu Prefecture]. (In
Vietnamese)
29
Gerald Hickey, Sons of the Mountains: Ethnohistory of the Vietnamese Central Highlands to
1957 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 78-120; Li, Nguyn
Cochinchina, pp. 121-25; Nakamura Rie, Cham in Vietnam: Dynamics of Ethnicity (Ph.D.
dissertation) (University of Washington: Department of Anthropology, 1999), p. 60.
30
Andrew Hardy, Eaglewood and the Economic History of Champa and Central Vietnam in
Champa and the Archaeology of My Son (Vietnam), eds. Andrew Hardy, Mauro Cucarzi and
Patrizia Zolese (Singapore: NUS Press, 2008), pp. 114-16.
31
Momoki Shiro, Was Champa a Pure Maritime Polity?: Agriculture and Industry Recorded in
Chinese Documents, paper presented at The Core University Seminar, Kyoto University and
Thammasat University: Eco-history and Rise/Demise of the Dry Areas In Southeast Asia, Kyoto
University, Japan, 13-16 October 1998.

298
cotton, zhaoxia cloth, patterned cloth , white cotten cloth ,
mats of palm leaf, Mingjiao (?), Wujiao (?), yellow beeswax,
brimstones, sappanwood, wuman trees [a kind of ebony], guanyin
bamboos, rice, swallow nests, pepper, betel nuts, coconut palms, jackfruits, haiwuzi
trees, anise, cubeb pepper, nutmeg, rhinoceros, lions, elephants, orang
utans, white monkeys, white pheasants, chinji birds, parrots, shanji
birds, guifei birds, tortoises.
Table 2. Prescribed tribute items exported from Champa to China during the
early Ming:32
elephants; elephant tusks, rhinoceros, rhinoceros horns, peacocks, peacock-
tails, orange-peel incense for human body ; camphor; mixed incense
for cloths ; bensoin; kalambak; local lakawood; sandalwood; cypress
(?); burnt crushed incense ; pear tree, ebony ; sappanwood; rattan-
flower incense (?); turnip-patterned printed cloth ; red-coloured
printed cloth ; red oilcloth; white cotton cloth; blackened cotton cloth
; round-jade-patterned printed cloth ? red-edged cloth in solid
colour (?); varied cloth in solid colour (?); barbarian
printed towels ; barbarian printed handkerchiefs ; headdresses
made of tula cloth ; bleaching mud for cloth (?).
Upland and lowland exchange network in Qung Nam province: The
Salt Road and its cultures
The period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the heyday of the
port-cities such as Hi An, Thanh H, Nc Mn in central Vietnam, and is
considered by historians to have marked the revival of previous Cham port-cities.33
The nature of the commodity exchange system between lowland and upland in
Qung Nam province is reflected in a popular proverb: Ai v nhn vi nu
ngun/Mng le gi xung c chun gi ln/Whoever goes to see the uplanders
please remind them, (if) forest products are brought down, sea products are carried
32
Momoki, Was Champa a Pure Maritime Polity?
33
Trn K Phng and V Hu Minh, Ca i Chim (Port of Great Champa) in the 4th - 15th
Centuries, pp. 117-22; Charles Wheeler, One Region, Two Histories: Cham Precedents in the
History of the Hi An region, in Vietnam: Borderless Histories, ed. Nhung Tuyet Tran and
Anthony Reid (Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), pp.173-84.

299
up. Li Tana argued that the close interactions between lowlanders and uplanders
contributed to the formation of the state economy of the Nguyn Lords.34
We can perhaps gain some sense of the tradition of exchange along the Thu Bn
river, thanks to an account of modern-day trading there, as recalled by a local
informant. Quch Xn (died in 1999) who spent almost 30 years (from 1945 to 75)
living with the Katu people in Qung Nam province throughout the war. He exchanged
products with the minorities in the province after he became the head of the
Commercial Bureau of Qung Nam- Nng province in 1975. Quch Xn described
the commodity exchange activities along Thu Bn river between the Katu people and
the Kinh people (or Vietnamese speakers) during the early twentieth century:
The western part of i Lc district, including the three villages of i Lnh, i
ng and i Sn, were formerly the sub-districts of i An Thng /Upper i An,
i Ha Thng /Upper i Ha and Ph Kh. It is a small valley in the shape of the
letter Y, with the farming land covering several thousands of hectares. In the north is
Hin district, in the south-west is Ging district, and in the south-east is the village of
i Lc district. Every year, the floodwaters of the Vu Gia River (the so called Sng
Ci/Mother River) and its smaller branch, the Sng Con/ Daughter River, bring a large
amount of alluvia down into this valley, making this land very fertile for growing rice,
corn and strawberries. There are useful transportation routes throughout the valley by
means of land roads, as well as by rivers, which connect the two mountainous districts
of Hin and Ging with i Lc district. So, trade interactions between the upland and
the lowland are very convenient.
The old people said that, formerly, there was a periodical market named Hi
Khch (today belonging to i Sn village in i Lc district; Hi means Meeting,
Khch means Katu ethnic people).35 This market was set up twice a month, when the
Katu people brought their forest products down to the market and met with the Kinh

34
Li, Nguyn Cochinchina, p.123.
35
Although, Quch Xn explained the term of Khch as Katu people but scholars suppose that
Khch means Chinese merchants (Minh Hng people) who lived in the main markets along the
Thu Bn riverbanks such as Tr Mi, Tin Phc, i Lc, Qu Sn, so on, to collect/exchange
directly forest products from upper lands then transporting into Hi An, see Trn Vn An,
Nguyn Ch Trung, Trn nh, X Minh Hng vi thng cng Hi An th k XVII-X IX (Qung
Nam: Trung tm Bo tn Di sn -Di tch Qung Nam, 2005, pp. 56-57. [Minh Hng village with
Hi An port-city during the XVII-XIX centuries (Quang Nam : Center for Conservation of
Heritages- Monuments of Quang Nam, 2005), pp. 56-57.] (In Vietnamese). I am grateful to Li
Tana for her comments on this.

300
merchants in order to trade for salt, iron tools, textiles and other necessities.
However, thanks to the very prosperous tradings between these peoples, there were
many permanent markets built in the midland, such as H Tn, Trc H, An M, and
H Nha markets, which attracted more Kinh merchants, who came to engage in
trade. The Katu people also went further down into these markets to exchange their
own goods, or directly deliver their forest products to the houses of the Kinh
merchants. Furthermore, during such festivals as the Lunar New Year and the Fifth
Day of the Fifth Month of Lunar Year, the Katu people enjoyed visiting to the Kinh
merchants families in the midland.
Trading with forest products was generally very profitable, so that the
community of merchants in this area expanded day-by-day. Instead of waiting for
the Katu people to bring their products down to the market, the Kinh merchants
would go directly into the Katu villages in the mountainous area to trade. In many
cases, the poorer farmers in the lowlands became the carriers or boat drivers for the
rich merchants who traded up and down the main rivers in this region. 36
The above description by Quch Xn gives an overview of the typical trading
environment between Katu and Kinh merchants (or Vietnamese speaking
merchants), as well as between uplanders and lowlanders, along the main rivers (i.e.
Thu Bn river) in Qung Nam province. This description of recent modern-day
trading activities might give us some sense of the nature of the exchanges that
formerly occurred during the Champa era between the Austro-Asiatic speakers (i.e.
the Katu people) in the upstream areas and the Austronesean speakers in the
downstream areas.37
Qung Nam provinces mountainous area is the homeland of the Katu people
who are Mon-Khmer speakers.38 Today, the Katu population in Vietnam numbers

36
Quch Xn, Gic Ma, in Ngc Lnh, chuyn nghin cu, sng tc v Min Ni & Ty
Nguyn, No. 1 ( Nng: Trung tm Khoa hc X Hi v Nhn Vn, i Hc Nng v Nh
Xut Bn Nng, 2000), pp. 71-72. [Seasonal Enemy, in Ngoc Linh Magazine, Special
researches and literary works on Mountainous Area and Central Vietnam Highland , No. 1,
Center for Social Sciences and Humanity of Danang University, Danang: Danang Publishers,
2000, pp. 71-72]. (In Vietnamese)
37
Leonard Andaya, Leaves of the Same Tree: Trade and Ethnicity in the Straits of Melaka
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006), pp. 40-48.
38
According to linguistic experts, Katu language is the closest language to those of the Vietnamese
language among the Mon-Khmer speaker groups, see Nguyn Hu Hanh, Ting Katu cu to t
(H Ni: Nh Xut Bn Khoa Hc X Hi, 1995), pp. 21-22. [The structure of words in Katu
language (Hanoi: Khoa Hc X Hi Publishers, 1995), pp. 21-22.] (In Vietnamese).

301
roughly 48,946 people in 2001, concentrating in ng Giang, Ty Giang and Nam
Giang districts of Qung Nam province and a smaller number in Nam ng district
of Tha Thin -Hu province; and they have managed to treasure and sustain their
own ancient traditional culture remarkably well.39 Another part of the Katu people
amounting to about 22,759 people in 2005, they are now living mostly in the Sekong
province of Lao PDR, along the border with Vietnam. They still retain, in the words
of Nancy Costello, a wealth of interesting customs, traditions, knowledge and
folklore about astrology, medicine and other sciences. 40 The Katu people living
along the border of Lao and Vietnam still keep close connections together.41
The scattered villages of the Katu people were built from the upper reaches all
the way down to the lower reaches of the main rivers in Qung Nam province, this
area, such as the Thu Bn river, the Vu Gia/ Ci river, the Cn river, and the Ty
Loan river. Nowadays, the Katu people who live closest to the lowland are
concentrated at Ph Tc hamlet, Ha Bc village, in Ha Vang district, west of
Danang City, about 15 km from the seashore. The Katu people also call themselves
Phng, meaning people living in the upper land in the jungle.42
In terms of the relationship between Katu and Kinh merchants, whom Katu
people call the cc li or thng li, Le Pichon also mentioned in his monograph
in 1938 that the interaction between uplanders and lowlanders in this area followed
the watersheds, including the head-water stations of Bn Ging and Bn Hin in the
ultra-upper reaches of the Vu Gia and Cn rivers. He also thought that such
interaction occurred previously with the Cham, and subsequently with the
Vietnamese speakers (or Annamites) who arrived later.43
Salt, Tears and Bitterness

39
Nguyn Hu Thng (edited), Katu, k sng u ngn nc (Hu: Nh xut bn Thun Ha,
2004), pp. 45-47. [Katu, the people living at the water-head (Hue: Thuan Hoa Publisher, 2004),
pp. 45-47.] (In Vietnamese)
40
Nancy Costello, Katu Society: A Harmonious Way of Life, in Laos and Ethnic Minority
Cultures: Promoting Heritage, ed. Yves Goudineau (Paris: UNESCO, 2003), p.163; Martin
Stuart-Fox, Historical Dictionary of Laos (Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, 2008), p.148.
41
Khamluan Sulavan, Thongpheth Kingsada and Nancy A. Costello, Katu Traditional Education
for Daily Life in Ancient Times (Vientiane: Ministry of Information and Culture, Institute of
Research on Lao Culture, 1996), pp. 375-76. (In Lao, Katu and English)
42
Hickey, Sons of the Mountains, pp. 10-13.
43
J. Le Pichon, Les Chasseurs de Sang, Bulletin des Amis du Vieux Hu, No. 4, 1938, p. 364.

302
 In central Vietnam, the local people used to say that: n ca rng, rng rng
nc mt; and Ngm ngi tm trm, which means it is extremely difficult to get
things from the forest, literally translated as, if we want to eat things from the
forest we have to pay with our tears; and it is extremely difficult to endure
searching for eaglewood in the forest, literally, keeping something very bitter in
your mouth while searching for eaglewood. Historians have supposed that because
of the difficulties in collecting forest resources and the mystery involved in finding
these precious commodities, the Vietnamese quickly learned to imitate Cham and
uplander rituals involved in the process.44
Salt is the most important item of trade between lowlanders and uplanders.45 Salt
was emphasized in most of the studies of uplanders; indeed, they built a main trading
route called Salt Road.46 During the French colonial in Vietnam salt was used as an
economic tool to curb rebelliousness in the uplands.47 In the mid-20th century, Jacques
Dournes succinctly described this great road from the highland to the coast in his
monograph of the ethnic people in the highland of central Vietnam.48 The Salt Road
connected the uplands with the lowlands and brought people together, not only for
commodities, but for cultural exchanges and intermarriage reasons as well.49

44
Li, Nguyn Cochinchina, p. 124.
45
During the French colonial, since 1897, salt was controlled by the French government under an
exclusive right policy. All the salt factories of Vietnamese had to sell salt to the French colonial
government. It was illegal to sell salt in free markets. After collecting all salt from the Vietnamese
salt makers, the French salt companies sold it back to Vietnamese people with the cost higher in
roughly ten times. Such as, in 1897, salt was bought from Vietnamese by 0.05 ng /100 kg then
being sold by 0.5 ng /100kg; in 1904, bought by 0.2 ng /100kg, sold by 2.1 ng /100kg; in
1927, bought by 0.34 ng /100kg, sold by 3 ng /100kg; in 1945, bought by 2.6 ng /100kg,
sold by 28 ng /100kg; see ng Phong, Lch s Kinh t Vit nam, 1945-2000, Tp 1: 1945-
1954 (H Ni: Nh Xut Bn Khoa Hc X Hi, 2002), p. 66. [The History of Vietnam Economy,
1945-200, Vol. 1: 1945-1954 (Hanoi: The Social Sciences Publisher), p. 66.] (In Vietnamese)
46
Le Pichon, Les Chasseurs de Sang, p. 364; Dam Bo (Jacques Dournes), Les Populations
Montagnardes du Sud-Indochnois (Numero special de France-Asie) (Lyon: Derain, 1950), p. 46;
Hickey, Sons of the Mountains, p. 251. Oscar Salemink, The Ethnography of Vietnams Central
Highlanders: A Historical Contextualization, 1850-1990 (London and New York:
RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), pp. 35-36, 137.
47
Salemink, The Ethnography of Vietnams Central Highlanders, p. 89; Quch Xn, Gic Ma,
pp. 99-102.
48
Dournes, Les Populations Montagnardes du Sud-Indochnois, pp. 3-47.
49
The geographical, political and ethnological factors drew on the map of the Central Highland the
great roads of communications and influent lines as well. The reaches of Mekong river which
connected Ma people, Stieng people, Bana people, the whole Northwest of the Central Highland
region with Cambodia and Lao, the roads in which the trade had been very active, by the canoes
that could carry weight of 200 kg. Those are the great roads that Sre people used to call them as

303
 Salt has been produced in several notable traditional villages along the coast of
central Vietnam such as Sa Hunh village (Qung Ngi province), Gi village,
Hng Thnh village (Bnh nh province), Tuyt Dim village (Ph Yn province),
Hn Khi village (Khnh Ha province), C N village (Ninh Thun province), and
so on;50 up to nowadays, they are still active.51 Since the eighteenth century, L Qu
n had noted on cooking salt in Thun Ha prefecture; he had also mentioned
about the tax of salt, so-called thu dim in as one of the main taxes of the
Nguyn Lords government.52
In Danang city there used to be an old hamlet called Ni Hin Ty where a
former Cham well called Ging Bng could still be seen until about ten years ago.
An old Buddhist pagoda, the Long Th Pagoda, next to the well-known Danang
Museum of Champa Sculpture, still houses a stone stele that was erected in the mid-
seventeenth century (1657) in which most of the names of the donators were the
locals. 53 The term Ni is an old word that means salt in the local language.
People here used to sing an old folksong which included the following lyrics:
Ni Hin l x e
Nu mui bng nc, an tre lm ni
(Ni Hin is the region where people played flutes

gung botau, included the tracks going through the mountainous areas from the Southwest to the
Northwest, the tracks on which Ma people using elephants to transport goods, the tracks of Sre
people going towards Blao or Dalat, the tracks of Raglay people going to the land of Noang
people, the tracks of Bana people going to the land of Sedang people, these tracks are always
parallel with the chains of mountains. They are the Salt Roads of the highlanders going towards
the Southeast down to the coast of Central Vietnam, Bana people down to Qui Nhon, Noang
people down to Phan Rang, Ma people, Sre people, Raglay people down to Phan Rang and Phan
Thiet, see Dournes, Les Populations Montagnardes du Sud-Indochnois, pp. 45-46.
50
Quc S Qun Triu Nguyn, i Nam Nht Thng Ch, translated into Vietnamese by Phm
Trng im, annotated by o Duy Anh (Hu: Thun Ha Publisher, 1997), Vol. 2, pp. 397, 450.
51
In 1929, the statistic of salt fields in central Vietnam included: 58, 648 hectares in Qung Ngi
province; 189, 997 hectares in Bnh nh province; 68, 005 hectares in Ph Yn province; 132, 273
hectares in Khnh Ha province; 70, 739 hectares in Bnh Thun province. See Nguyn Thanh Li,
Mui Vit xa v nay, Tp ch Cm Thnh, S 56, 2008 (Qung Ngi: S Vn ha, Thng tin v
Du lch), pp. 38-44. [Salt in Vietnam from the old time to the present day, Cm Thnh Magazine,
No. 56, 2008 (Qung Ngi: Department of Culture, Information and Tourism), pp. 38-44.]
52
L Qy n, Ph Bin Tp Lc, L Qy n Ton Tp, Tp 1 (Hanoi: Nh Xut Bn Khoa Hc
X Hi, 1977), pp. 340-41. [Desultory notes from the frontier, Completed Works of L Qy n,
Vol. 1, Hanoi: Social Sciences Publishing House, 1977, pp. 340-41]. (In Vietnamese)
53
H. Cosserat, La Pagoda Long-Thu, a Tourane, Bulletin des Amis du Vieux Hu, No. 3, 1920,
pp. 343-45.

304
 Where they cooked salt from water and made pots from bamboo).
The Ni Hin hamlet is now located on the banks of the Hn river, which
connect with the Ty Loan river flows down from the homeland of the Katu people
in the western mountainous areas, roughly 15 km upstream from Ni Hin hamlet.
Together with elsewhere produced salt along the coast of central Vietnam, Danang
city might have been one of the places where salt was produced and traded with the
Katu people/mountainous peoples in this area.54
Apart from salt, Katu traded with Kinh for other commodities as well, such as
axes, bush knives, gongs, ornaments, woven mats, cloth, earrings, pottery, alcohol
jars, glass beads, and so on. In return, the Kinh lowlanders sought honey, beeswax,
rattan, textiles, betel leaves, areca nut, aromatic spices, and other forest products
from the Katu uplanders.55
The trading of salt with lowlanders in the early twentieth century was recorded
in a Katu folksong:
He is the master of salt,
We are always his friends,
Because he provides us with buffaloes to eat,
And makes trading convenient,
We drink a cup of rice wine together,
Our Guol house [Katu village communal house] is his house,
Because he is strong and wealthy,
We want to make friends with him.56

54
Trn K Phng, Bc u tm v a-lch s ca vng quc Chim Thnh (Champa) min
Trung Vit Nam, p. 53.
55
Tran Duc Sang, The trading road between the Katu and the Kinh (case study in Thuong Long
commune, Nam Dong district, Thua Thin- Hu), Journal of Social Sciences, No. 6/ 2004
(Hanoi: National Center for Social Sciences and Humanity, 2004), p. 71-86; Gerald Hickey, Free
in the Forest: Ethnohistory of the Vietnamese Central Highlands, 1954-1976 (New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 251. Amongst these products, jar ceramics, gongs and
agates are the most precious ones because they have been used in ritual ceremonies of Katu
people and as the symbols of riches.
56
Le Pichon, Les Chasseurs de Sang, p. 404.

305
 The upland-lowland exchange network in central Vietnam: The
patterning of multiethnic coexistence in the region
Qung Nam was a melting pot of cultures thanks to its geographical location
midway, between the northern and southern Vietnam. This accounts for the
coexistence among the former local people of Malayo-Polynesian speakers and
Mon-Khmer speakers, as well as Kinh people. After the victory of King L Thnh
Tng took over the Champa capital city of Vijaya (todays Bnh nh) in 1471, the
king set up a local leader (who was a member of the Cham people) side-by-side with
a Vietnamese official, to co-govern this land; the title of the co-rulers in the Thu Bn
basin were so-called i Chim ng Tri Chu [Great Champa Prefecture Co-
Leaders].57 When Nguyn Hong began to assert his control over the Thu Bn basin
in the mid-sixteenth century, he continued a variety of Cham precedents in his
strategy of governing the region.58
Charles Wheeler writes:
The process of cultural transformation in the Thu Bn Basin from Cham to
Vietnamese was thus more complex than simply the peaceful infiltration
of an avant-garde of colonists who established themselves on soil
abandoned by Cham. Displacement indeed occurred, whether in massive
convulsions or in fits and starts. Impressive new linguistic evidence
persuasively demonstrates that much of the disappearance of the Cham
[Mon-Khmer] sic speakers along the coastal plain must be attributed not
to their being killed or even displaced but to their absorption into the
emerging [Vietnamese] lowland civilization, according to Graham
Thurgood. He quotes Charles Keyes, who theorized that: Once the various
territories had been conquered, Vietnamese migrants would move into and
settle these areas. Here, they often intermarried with Chams and Khmers,
and, even when they did not, they were exposed to the different social and
cultural patterns of these Indianized peoples. These contacts tended to result
in some compromising of the dominant Chinese-derived tradition, at least
among the peasantry.59

57
L Qy n, Ph Bin Tp Lc, pp. 42-43.
58
Wheeler, One Region, Two Histories, pp. 184-88.
59
Wheeler, One Region, Two Histories, p. 185.

306
 Quch Xns description of intermarriages between uplanders and lowlanders
in the Thu Bn basin illustrates well the theory described above:
The old men of the Katu people said that, formerly, the ancestors of the Katu
people lived in the Trng Sn range and then spread out into the direction of the
sunrise near the midland, on the hills close to the border of Ha Vang and i Lc
districts. There still remain the vestiges of rice fields, houses, tombs and properties
of these Katu ancestors. Afterwards, the ancestors had to shift back to the west, into
the forest because the soil in the midland became poor, or disease had decimated the
population. The migration was also due to the harsh feudal taxation policy of the
local rulers, which made their lives even more difficult. However, the relationship
between the Katu people and the Kinh people still remained very friendly. Besides
maintaining trading connections, they also intermarried. In Ha Vang district, many
Katu young men married Kinh young women and enjoyed good lives together.
In it, there was a number some of the Katu people lived in the Trhi village of
the Hin district, and in the Thng Thi hamlet, i Lnh village, in i Lc
district, and they used to go to the midland together to visit their ancestors tombs,
because they were originally Kinh people. They carried sticky rice and honey to
make offerings in the worship of their ancestors, but most of them could not speak
Vietnamese. The Katu people of the Axo-Arot villages in the upper part of Hin
district set aside a special forest where they did not allow planting, because this
forest contained their ancestors tombs. They believed that their ancestors were
originally Kinh people.
The scattered hamlets of Rapuop, Atin, Chchoong, and so on, belonged to the
lower part of Hin district where there were many Katu people, who were descended
from Kinh people whose ancestors had moved to this area and intermarried with the
Katu people a long time ago. These people could not even remember their original
villages in the midland.60
During the pre-Vietnamese period, the people in the Thu Bn basin spoke their
own language and maintained the old customs of the Cham-even as they mingled
with the Katu/Mon-Khmer speakers of the highlands-until the sixteenth century,
according to Dng Vn Ans sixteenth century account of the northern banks of the

60
Quch Xn, Gic Ma, p.75

307
Thu Bn.61 Thus, during the mid-seventeenth century, these lowlanders may have
become Vietnamese speakers whose vocabularies can be seen in the dictionary of
Alexandre De Rhodes published in 1651;62 then, up to the eighteenth century the
vocabularies of Vietnamese language spoken in the lower parts of the Thu Bn basin
(i.e. Hi An area) were not distinct from that in Tonkin (north Vietnam).63
The phenomenon of the linguistic mixture is clearly reflected in the unique
dialect of the Vietnamese speakers who live in the Thu Bn basin, where most of the
vowels are changed into different patterns, as one linguistic expert has pointed out:
all the standard vowels have moved towards different directions [patterns], a
strange status, hardly found not only in Vietnamese but also in other eastern
languages as in these languages, their vowel system is stable. 64 For example, the
vowel a is pronounced in a very distinct pattern from the normal Vietnamese
pronunciation of the other regions in the country.65
Although the Cham kingdoms were gone, the Cham cultural elements survived
and remained persistently in central Vietnam; its strong influences were felt in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries so much so that this region was still called K
Chim or X Chim, meaning the Territory of Champa, in most of the accounts
written by Westerners and Japanese who came to central Vietnam or Cochin-China
at that time. 66 Thus, the evidence of historical and linguistic research has clearly
indicates that a pattern of coexistence characterizes the interactions among the local
people in the Thu Bn basin in particular, as well as in central Vietnam as a whole.

61
Dng Vn An, Chu Cn Lc, p. 69; Li, Nguyn Cochinchina, p.101.
62
Such as the words of /ch (guy); c/d (wicked/cruel); c nghip (bad karma); c qa (craven);
ch nn (misfortune); bl/ ni di ni bl (false/ to tell lies); and so on; see Alexandre De
Rhodes, Dictionarium Annamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum. Roma, 1651, pp.1-2; 37.
63
Hong Th Chu, On a Lingua Franca in Hi An-Da Nang in the Eighteenth Century, in Hi An
Ancient Town, ed. The National Committee for the International Symposium on the Ancient
Town of Hi An (Hanoi: Th Gii Publishers, 2006), p.154.
64
an Thin Thut, Hi An Dialect, in Hi An Ancient Town, ed. The National Committee for
the International Symposium on the Ancient Town of Hi An (Hanoi: Th Gii Publishers, 2006),
pp.142, 147.
65
For examples, the words of nh (house) = nhoa; lm (working)= lom; n (eating)=
een; go (rice)= go, and so on.
66
Olga Dror and Keith Taylor (editors and annotators), Views of Seventeenth -Century Vietnam:
Christoforo Borri on Cochinchina & Samuel Baron on Tonkin (Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program
Publications, Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 2006), pp. 15-19, pp. 91-94; Li,
Nguyn Cochinchina, p. 63; George Dutton, The Tay Son Uprising: Society and Rebellion in
Eighteenth-Century Vietnam (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006), p. 91.

308
 Conclusion:
I have argued that the exchange network between uplanders and lowlanders did
not only follow the river watersheds. Exchange patterns also followed land routes,
which connected the central Vietnam coast and the Lower Mekong river basin in the
west by means of trails through the small mountain passes within the land of Katu
people belonged the uplands of Qung Nam province in the Trng Sn Range.67
The network of main periodical markets such as Bn Hin, Bn Ging, Tr Mi, Tin
Phc, Hi Khch, H Tn, Trung Phc, i Ngha, Ty Loan, and so on, located
in the upper land and the midland of this province had played important roles of
gates for the exchange of commodities from central Vietnam coast to southern Laos.
Obviously, until the eighteenth century, L Qy n noted that Qung Nam being
the neighbor of western countries or ch phin (i.e. Lao);68 and he also asserted
that, Qung Nam is the richest country under heaven where having plenty of
products imported from the North (China) through Hi An port-city.69
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