His son.Jayavarman III, came to the throne សោយរាជ្យ young,was an elephant hunter,and die after ruling "Wisely"in A,D 877. the writer who provided this information had a special interest in continuity,after all,with regard to the Devaraja cult,for the Sdok-Kak-Thom inscription presumes,
perhaps mistakenly, that the ruler who patronized the Devaraja cult was the legitimate and unique ruler of Cambodia ,this may have become the case,especially after the middle of tenth century,but it is interesting that Jayavarman III's successor the first to embark on a systematic program of temple and inscriptions at Hariharalaya,made only one muted reference to this predecessor, tracing his own legitimacy to relatives of wife of Jayavarman II (not Jayavarman III) mother and to a pair of "King" about whom nothing else has come to light.
Presumable, this was a way of casting his genealogy(សន្តិវង្សវិទ្យា)back beyond Jayavarman's usurpation, thus connecting himself with the pre-Angkorrean ruler to enhance legitimacy.
In fact this very King,Indravarman ( A,D 877-889) was himself a usurper,which may account for his muddled genealogy,his Reign is important because it was the first of many to be in 1930s by the art historian Phillip S,
The first phase was to sponsor irrigation work in honor of his subjects and the watery divinities of the soil during Indravarman's Reign, a large reservoir was constructed at Haraharalaya to trap rain water it was known as the Indratataka and covered 300 hectare (650 ares) an inscription tell us that as soon as Indravarman become a King he made this promise,In five days ,I will Begin to dig,another purpose of such reservoirs was to indicate the extent of "King's power, and of his alliances with the Gods,by re-creating on Earth geographical features associated in people's minds with the mythical home of the God.Mt Meru, where lakes surround the central mountain,this North Indian Fantasy,translated to waterlogged Cambodia,is not devoid of ivory ,at neither are Gothic tower in U,S college town.
The second phase was for a monarch to honor his parents and his other ancestors by installing statues of these people,usually in the guise of Gods,Indravarman sponsored statues of his parents (as well as of others ,including his mother's parents and Jayavarman II and his wife depicted as embodiments of Silva and his consort) in the stuccoed brick temple complex known today as Praeh Ko (Sacred Cow)[គោសក្តិសិទ្ធិ ]
This charming temple,completed in 879 ,inaugurated what is now called Roluos style of Cambodia architecture,in this style,several features that were to become important later-including the custom of enclosing temples in a series of concentric moats and walls -appeared for the first time,the sophistication and carving and the predominance អធិភាព of floral motifs suggest that these skills had been developed earlies by carving wood,although of modest size in comparison with later temples Indravarman's monuments of Praeh Ko and Bakong-his"Temple-Mountain"were far more grandiose
in conception and appearance than anything that had preceded them and hint at developments in religious ideology and special mobilization for which other evidence is lacking.
An inscription from Prae Ko indicates that Indravarman had become a universal monarch by subduing unspecified contenders,In battle" which is like a difficult ocean to cross ,he raised a pathway, made up of the heads of his arrogant enemies, his own troops passed over on it; the inscription also tell us ' it seem that the creator[ Indra] tired of making so many Kings, had fashioned this King Named Indravarman [Literally 'Protected by Indra'] to form the joy of the three worlds uniquely. inscriptions far from Rolous suggest that Indravarman commanded at least briefly,loyalties in Northeastern Thailand and the Mekong Delta that confirm his seemingly ihflated rhetoric វោ
ហោសាស្រ្ត .One of these,carved in honor of one of his teachers( himself a cousin of Jayavarman II)
goes even further:
" Ruler of the entire world which he had conquered ,established on the slopes of Mt Meru, he was even steadier than the sun,which occasionally was distant."
"A top the lordly heads of the Kings of China Champa and yavadvipa[Java?] his Reign was like a flawless សុក្រិត្យ crown made from a garland of Jasmine flower"
Statements like this about Kings,which may strike us as flowery were circumscribed by the traditional characteristics of the Gods the Kings were being made to resemble,the Poets skill was thought to consist of piling up these characteristics and half-concealing some of them behind metaphor, similes,and puns ,just as the verses enumerated ways in which a King was like the God,the temples were catalogs and pictures of the world of the Gods-a sort of mirror images of another world.
The final phase of Indravarman's program,as detected by Phillip S,was to a temple-mountain,this is now known as the Bakang and took the form of a stepped pyramid,unlike the reservoir,or the Prae Ko ,The Bakang was dedicated to the King himself and was to serve,after his death,as his sarcophagus ម្ឈុសថ្ម Coedes estimated that thirteen Angkorean Kings,beginning with Jayavarman II ,built such temple mountains.not all of them have survived,and those that have can be read in different ways,First they were planned as duplicates of the mythical mountain,Mt Meru with stood north of the Himalayas at the center of the universe, like Mt Meru they were home for the Gods and for deceased worthies-not only Kings-who had been assimilated to heaven,they were also tombs,housing the ashes of the King servatories as well in sum,the temples were Cities of and for the Dead,.
Bakang was the first Cambodian temples to be built primarily of stone rather than brick,it was also the first to assume a precisely pyramidal shape, the temple was reconstructed by french archaeologist in the 1930s,but by then,nearly all of its bas-reliefs had disappeared.
Indravarman's son , Yasovarman , who Reigned from 889 to 910 was an important King, his inscriptions and his building suggest that he wanted to do more than his Father and to focus Cambodia around a Royal City, Yasodharapura,the "City" of Angkor bore his name until the fourteenth century.
Yasovarman's first official action appears to have been to endow "A hundred " religious hermitages,equipping each with a Royal rest house and a set of regulations twelve nearly identical inscription related to these hermitages have been discovered, two are near Rolous six of the other are from Southeastern Cambodia,where Yasovarman,though his mother,claimed family connections from Pre- Angkorean times, the spread of the inscriptions suggests that "Kampuja-Desa" was becoming a recognized concept as well as an Ideal.
Soon after this ,Yasovarman honored his parents by building the four brick temples,now know as Lolei. on an Island he built in the middle of his father's reservoir ,at the Northeast corner of the reservoir-often an honored direction in Cambodia religious thinking-he built a raised high-way running Northwestward toward the area 16 Km(10 mile) away where he planned to establish his City,this area now house the Angkor complex.
Yasovarman's choice of Angkor was probably influenced by his plan to built his own temple-mountain the on the summit of a natural hill ,his choice included a hill (Phnom-Krom) that was too close to the Tonle Sap and another (Phnom Bok) that was too far away ,He constructed small temples on these two hills,however,and built his main temple on the hill known today as Phnom BaKeng (literally Mount Mighty Ancestor) and then as Phnom Kadal (Central mountain) which still lies close to the center of the Angkor complex.
The Sdok Kak Thom inscription tells us that Yasovarman"Established the Royal City of Sri Yasodharapura and brought the Davaraja from Hariharalaya to this City ,then erected a central mountain(Phnom Kan dal ) Yasovarman's mountain was not identified as Phnom-Bakeng until the 1930s in conception and execution,it is far more grandiose than any of this Father's monuments it's symbolism has been studied in detail byJean Filliozat. who has shown that the number of levels statues, towers,and stairways,when read separately and together,correspond to various number particularly 33 and 108 endowed by Indian religion with metaphysical significance ,in some cases,pilgrims approaching the monument would able to catch this allusion by counting the number of towers they could see.
To the East of Phnom Ba Keng ,Yasovarman built a reservoir ជលដ្ឋាន the Yasodharatataka roughly 6,5 Km (4 mile long) and 3 Km ( 2 Mile) Wide, a long its Southern shore he had monasteries built sects that honored Siva,Vishnu,and the Buddha ,elsewhere throughout his Kingdom, he ordered temples built on natural hills, the most notable being Phreah Vihear, on the edge of the precipice that nowadays forms part of the frontier between Cambodia and Thailand.
These activities suggest that Yasovarman was able to commantd a far larger poll of manpower than predecessors gad done, It is likely that many of these were unwilling workers,captured in raids or battles or forced to immigrate from elsewhere in the Kingdom.Yasovarman's inscriptions show him to have been a cosmopolitan សកល monarch,aware of the grandeur of Indian civilization and tolerant of different religious beliefs, as usual,however,the sources reveal very little about his political activities his alliances or his idiosyncratic ideology មនោគមវិជ្ជាពិសេស,we have tantalizing glimpses of administrative reform, including evidence that in Yasovarman's legal code fines were levied in relation to one's ability to pay and a suggestion that Taxes were efficiently collected, in kind,throughout the Kingdom,but for the most part we must settle for proclamation ការសរសេរ
សេចក្តីប្រកាស of his greatness, he was a Lion man,he tore the enemy with the claws of his grandeur ភាពអស្ចារ្យ ,his teeth were his polities, his eyes were the Veda, his glory was like a roar in all directions, his virtues make up his name. here as so often in Sanskrit verifications កាព្យសាស្រ្ត,,
many of these words are deliberate double entendre,the phrase'His eye were the Veda"for example plays on the smilarity between the verb "To see" and and the noun 'Sacred teachings" these double meanings as we have seen,appear at many points in Angkorean verse, as well as in the architecture of the temples.
Yasovarman died a round 910 ,he was succeeded by tow of his Sons in turn,little is known about them,and by 921 a brother of one of Yasovarman's Wife had set up a rival City at Kos Ker,in what is now an inhospitable area about 85 Km(60 mile) North of Angkor.The rival began at once to perform Kingly actions, such as abuilding a reservoir and beginning work on a temple mountain,in 930,when the King died at Yasodharapura ,the usurper proclaimed himself King with the Title Jayavarman IV,work continued on his temple mountain,know today as Prasat Thom. until 930 the temple itself,housing a lingam estimated to have been 18 metre(59 feet) high and about 5 metre(16 feet) in diameter(and probably made of Metal or encased in metal,for it has disappeared) was in fact the highest of Temples erected in Cambodia,with the exception of Angkor-Wat Jayavarman IV's
inscriptions boasted that the construction surpassed those of previous King.
We do not know the roots of his colossal self-esteem, the basis of his following,or what promptected him to shift the capital so far from Yasodharapura. Kulke has argued that Jayavarman's declaring himself King while the Devaraja image was still at Yasodharapura weakened the legitimacy of cult.Jayavarman,in fact,extended it by proclaiming himself and his Kingship to be a portion of the God housed in his temple-mountain,in this way,he claimed to draw his legitimacy ធម្មនុញ្ញ directly from Siva, a notion adopted by several later Kings after the capital had returned to Yasoharapura.
Although Jayavarman's claim may seem hollow or pompousផ្លែផ្កា to us, it is clear that by force or perfusion he was able to rule at Kor Ker over large numbers of people,and in considerable splendor,
for twenty years. after his death 942,one of Sons Reign briefly,and in 944 one of his nephews( on his mother's side,a nephew of Yasavarman as well) returned to Yasoharapura as King Rajendravarman II in the words of a later inscription,this King restored the Holy City of Yasoharapura.long deserted ,
and rendered it superb and charming by erecting houses there that were ornamented with shining Gold,Palace glittering with precious Stones,like the palace of [Indra] on earth.
Although little is known about Rajenvarman's Reign ,his imitation of procedures enacted by Yasovarman, such as building,a temple honoring his ancestors in the midle of a Lake,indicates that he wished to restor Angkorean Kingship rather to start a dynasty of his own or to connect himself with Jayavarman's dynasty at Koh Ke,Uncle Rajandravarman,two temple-mountains were built the Mebon and Pre-Rup as well as numerous other temples,especially in the North,his Reign appears to have been peacful,except for a successful campain against Champa,and it usgered in a period of prosperity
at Angkor that lasted for almost a hundred years,one aspect of this prosprity is the literary polish of Rajendravarman's Sanskit inscriptions, one of these,the pre-Rup stele.runs to almost three hundred stanzas គាថា ,glorifying Rajendravarman's genealogy ពង្សាវលី ,his learning,and his performance as King,Another aspect of his Reign was the commercial expansion,of the Khmer Kingdom westward into what is now Northeastern Thailand, a third was his public telorance of Buddhism,
Rajendravarman appears to have studied Buddhism himself,and the minister in charge of public works throughout his Reign was a prominent Buddhist.
Rajendravarman died in 968 and was succeeded by his Son Jayavarman V,who still a boy and appears to have spent several years under the close supervision of relatives and High-Officials.These men and their families figure largely in the highly polished inscriptions from his Reign. perhaps the loveliest of the temples at Angkor, now known as Bantiey Srei[បន្ទាយស្រី] Fortress of Women)was dedicated at the beginning of the Reign by and an official who was later Jayavarman's Guru.or Tutor, there is evidence that this dedicate,small-scale temple,carved of pinkish sand-stone,once served and important urban area,Today it lies half-concealed in light forest about 16 Km(10 mile) North of the Main Angkor complex,it was discovered by French surveying party only in 1916.
Although Shaivite like his father and many of the Brahmans at the Court, Jayavarman V was tolerant of Buddhism,and Buddhism scholarship flourished during his Reign,an elegantly written inscription from Wat Sithor in Kampong Cham dating from this period shows how syncretic Buddhist thinking inside Cambodia had already become, fusing elements of Buddhism and Shavism in a way that led the nineteenth-century Sanskritist Emil Sena rt to note,everywhere one senses a manifest
preoccupation to disturb people's habits as little as possible, and to submerge deep differences inside surface similarities, Inscriptions play down Jayavarman V's role as a builder of Temple-mountain,his own, the Takeo temple,appears to be unfinished.
Jayavarman V's death in 1001 ushered in a turbulent and destructive period, but by 1003,another King,who origins are unknown,was Reigning at Angkor although the rest of Kingdom was not under his control,in the North,a prince calling himself Suryavarman-later to be King as Suryavarman I was mentioned in serveral inscriptions.
Some scholars have argued that neither of these Kings was Cambodian by blood as, Michael V- has recently shown ,however,suryavarman was almost certainly a Cambodia member of an elite family with links to the Northeastern part of the Kingdom,it is intriguing that the blueprint used by Suryavarman to take power in the first decated of the eleventh century so closely resembles the one chosen two centuries before Jayavarman II, the process involved sporadic warfare as well as the formation of coalitions -by force,marriage,and cajolery that enabled the pretender to reduce or buy off the power of local chiefs, Vikery suggested that Suryavarman had powerful allies among the Priestly families that dominated the Government at Angkor,and inscriptions of the time show him moving slowly Westward a partly depopulated Capital,over a period of years an indication in itself about the intricacy of his alliances.
Suryavarman won his final battle, an inscription tells us,"from a King surrounded by other Kings" One new element in his rise to power is his patronage of Buddhism.There is evidence from hostile inscriptions that as he rose to power he destroyed Vrah ,or religious images but the meaning of this charge is unclear,had Suryavarman been a Buddhist,perhaps the destruction would represent iconoclasm pure and simple, it is more likely that it was connected with the delegitimation of certain religious foundations whose patrons had been slow or unwilling to cooperate with him,another inscription,in fact,suggests that during his Reign the King deliberately impoverished members of the elite who had amassed great fortunes and thus represented distinct political threats .
One of Suryavarman's first actions in reaching Yasodharapura was to arrange that an oath of loyalty be sworn to him publicly,by as many as four thousand officials,known as Tamvrac,at the newly constructed Royal-Palace,the oath has survived in an inscription, the only one of its kind, it states that officials will be loyal to the King and adds:
If all of us who are here in person do not keep this oath with regard to his Majesty, May he still Reign long,we ask that he inflict on us Royal punishment of all sorts,if we hide ourselves in order not to keep this oath..may we have reborn in the thirty-second hell as long as the sun and moon shall last.
The oath closes by asking that those who keep it be awarded religious foundations to administer as well as food for their families-as"Recompense due to people who are devoted to their master.
"Loyalty,in other words, was to be rewarded by the right to extract surpluses from regions under some sort of control by Tamvracs. who were linked by allegiance to the King,the oath marks an intensification of Royal power and also the imposition of a newly constituted,or reconstituted,elite connected to the control of land.
Suryavarman's Reign, in fact, was characterized by the intensification of several aspects of Kingship, coming at a time when bureaucratic power rivaled or even surpassed the power of the King,
Suryavarman expanded the territory under Angkorean control,colonizing the Western end of the Ton Le sap with new religious foundations,further away,in the same direction, he annexed the Theravada Buddhist Kingdom of Louvo,centered on present-day Lopburi in central Thailand, he also expanded the irrigation words at Angkor,in a move that suggests that his other policies had increased the population of the City,because this hydraulic ផលគតិវិជ្ជា program was linked to increased bureaucratic centralization,it is possible to refer to Suryavarman's Reign as on that employed the so-called Asiatic mode of production referred to by Max & Others.
Under Suryavarman,Priestly and bureaucratic functions, seldom separate in practice,were
institutionalized Government sponsored religious foundations became conduits for Government revenue and largess in ways that remain obscure but that probably were connected with the power of Priestly bureaucratic families around the King.
His Administration was an urbanizing one,a French scholar,Henri-m du B-,has shown that whereas for the preceding three Reigns roughly twenty toponyms contained in inscriptions end with the suffix Pura ,or City" (cf Singapore,the "lion city )" under Suryavarman the number jumped to forty-seven, further evidence that his rise to power involved herding people in to conglomerations្បិណ្ឌីករណ៏ from less tightly administered rural areas,perhaps some of these Pura were Cities name only,to enhance the prestige of locally based elites, but the evidence for urbanization coincides with other things we know about Suryavarman Reign's.
There is also evidence that merchants engaged in local and overseas trade became more active while Suryavarman was King,throughout Cambodia history, the majority of such people appear to have been
in ethnic terms ,Outsiders, Chams Chinese,or Vietnamese, but reference to merchants' Reign, as usual
foreign trade involved the exchange of "Wild" goods from forested area for Civilized",once, such as Land Rice,Buffalo,and slaves were also trade by Cambodians,at this time for manufactured or exotic goods from other countries.
The extent to which Suryavarman's Reign mobilized bureaucratic and coercive* talents to concentrate people at Yasodharapura marked a departure from the past,and the success of his tactics showed subsequent Kings that the Kingdom could be organized and expanded by forcing its cultivators to work throughout the year, the food needed to support the coercive apparatus,(Priests,Kings, bureaucrats,and armies) could not be supplied by the single annual harvests that previously had sufficed for ordinary people to survive.
In extending his power in this way, Suryavarman enjoyed the advantages of a usurper,he was free to choose and reward his trusted followers rather than finding himself hemmed in at the beginning of his Reign by hangers on from other Courts.At first,governing the country with new officials probably meant that more attention was paid to local issues for the new officials would still have debts to their clients in the countryside that their successors could ignore.
Suryavarman's successor,Utyadityavarman II (r 1050- 1068) was a devotee of Siva, guided by a powerful Garu, he revived interest in the Devaraja cult and also revived the custom of building a massive temple-mountain- in his case, the Baphoun- to house the ling-am associated with his reign, as an inscription carved under his successor tell us.
"Seeing that in the middle of Jambudvipa, the home of Gods, there rose up a Golden mountain, He made a Golden mountain in the center of his City, out of emulation.on the summit of this mountain, in a Golden Temple,Shining with celestial brilliance, He set up a Sivalinga made of Gold"
End of Yasovarman and his Successors.
