Man receives reward for ancient Champa monkey God statue
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Dương Đình Lục of Quảng Ngãi province, Vietnam, received a reward of nearly 93 million đồng after turning over an 11th- to 12th-century statue he discovered underwater.
In early 2021, Lục found pottery fragments while fishing in Dung Quat bay and then located a stone statue partially buried in the sand about 50 meters from shore.
He and his family recovered the approximately 150 kg statue and kept it at his home until 2023, when local authorities persuaded him to hand it over for preservation. Experts at the Quảng Ngãi Provincial Museum identified the statue as depicting Hanuman, the monkey god, carved from fine sandstone and measuring 84 cm tall. The statue’s style blends late Champa sculpture with Khmer artistic influences.
The Quảng Ngãi People’s Committee established public ownership of the statue in 2025, assigning it to the museum for safekeeping. Vietnam’s regulations provide rewards to people who discover and turn in national artifacts, based on the assessed value of the item. Based on the reward amount, experts estimate the statue’s value at around 2.337 billion đồng.
