Heritage site

Hariharalaya

ហរិហរាល័យ

Hariharalaya (ហរិហរាល័យ) was a Khmer royal capital of the 9th century at Roluos (រលួស), southeast of Angkor (អង្គរ).[1][2][3] Its royal temples, Preah Ko (ប្រាសាទព្រះគោ), Bakong (ប្រាសាទបាគង) and Lolei (ប្រាសាទលលៃ)[4], stand at the site.[1][5] Jayavarman II (ជ័យវរ្ម័នទី២) and his two successors lived there.[6] At the end of the 9th century Yasovarman I (យសោវរ្ម័នទី១) moved the capital to Yasodharapura (យសោធបុរៈ), at Angkor.[4][7][6][8]

Name

Hariharalaya means "abode of Harihara," the god who joins Vishnu and Shiva in one figure.[9][5] In Old Khmer the long Sanskrit name was shortened to haralay and ralay,[9] and in modern Khmer it became Lolei, the name the temple bears.[9][7] Roluos, the name of the area in modern times, is the Khmer name of the coral tree (Erythrina indica), a tree of the paradise of the god Indra.[9]

Inscriptions of the Angkorian period call the city nagara Hariharalaya. Nagara, a word for a political center, is the origin of the name Angkor.[8] The city is classed both as a pre-Angkorian capital[5][1] and, by Nhim Sotheavin, as "the first Angkorian capital of the 9th century."[6] Piphal Heng and Paul Lavy linked it, together with Mahendraparvata on Phnom Kulen, to the passage from the pre-Angkorian to the Angkorian period.[8]

History

Founding

Michael Freeman and Claude Jacques wrote that Jayavarman II made Hariharalaya his capital at the end of the 8th century.[1] Maurice Glaize wrote that Hariharalaya was already a city when the king settled there.[7] The archaeologists Tan Sophal and Saray Kimhuol, both Cambodian, came upon two inscribed stone fragments in a tower of Bakong in 2005. Christophe Pottier and Dominique Soutif published a reading of most of the text in 2014, which helps to date the capital more closely in pre-Angkorian times. The fragments are kept at the Preah Norodom Sihanouk Museum in Siem Reap.[1]

An inscription from Sdok Kak Thom, dated 1052, lists Hariharalaya among the cities where Jayavarman II ruled before he moved to Mahendraparvata, on Phnom Kulen.[8] There, in 802, he began the Devaraja rites that made him a universal monarch (chakravartin).[8] He later moved the capital back to Hariharalaya.[8][1][7] His reign is dated from about 790 to perhaps 835,[8] from 802 to 834[6] or from 802 to 850;[10] Lawrence Palmer Briggs wrote that he ruled until 854.[11]

The reservoir and the temples

Jayavarman II's son Jayavarman III (ជ័យវរ្ម័នទី៣) succeeded him and lived at Hariharalaya until 877.[4][6] Chun Chanboth wrote that Jayavarman II died in 850 or 854 and gave his son's reign as 854 to 877;[4] Briggs also dated it from 854[11] and Nhim from 834.[6]

Indravarman I (ឥន្ទ្រវរ្ម័នទី១) ruled at Hariharalaya from 877 to 889.[3][4][6] After he came to the throne in 877, he had a reservoir dug north of the city, the Indratataka (ឥន្ទ្រតដាក).[4] Charles Higham wrote that in 879 the king announced that digging would begin in five days, and that the Roluos River was turned to fill a reservoir on a scale not seen before.[3] Its water was led south to the moats of the temples, among them Preah Ko and Bakong.[3]

Preah Ko, six brick towers in two rows, was built for the king's forebears and for Jayavarman II.[3][4] It is dated 879[4][12] or 880.[1] Indravarman's inscriptions call on thousands of people to supply the temple with goods and labor, and list cattle, elephants, horses, dancers, singers and musicians.[3] Chun Chanboth wrote that the king built Bakong in 881, at the center of the capital, to hold the linga Indresvara (ឥន្ទ្រេស្វរៈ).[4] Glaize gave the linga's name as Shri Indresvara and wrote that the Bakong inscription records its founding in 881.[7] Bakong was the main temple of the city.[7][13] It was also the first great temple mountain of the Khmer built in sandstone.[13] Glaize called it the first large group of buildings made of sandstone.[7] Glaize thought it possible that Jayavarman II had begun it.[7]

The move to Yasodharapura

Indravarman's son Yasovarman I came to the throne in 889.[3][1] He built Lolei at the center of the Indratataka,[1][4] on an artificial island.[1] Glaize gave its date as 893.[14] Nhim and Chun Chanboth wrote that the temple honored his parents and his grandparents on his mother's side;[6][4] Glaize and Higham mention only his father.[14][3]

Yasovarman then founded a new capital, Yasodharapura, with Phnom Bakheng (ភ្នំបាខែង) at its center.[4] Higham wrote that the king gave the city his own name and chose for it a low hill 18 kilometers (11 miles) to the northwest.[3] Hariharalaya had been the capital until then.[8][7] In Higham's view the king virtually abandoned the old city.[3] Nhim judged the distance so short that the move was hardly a change of capital. In his view the king wanted new land to settle nearby and a site better suited to mark the capital as a symbol. The king also had a raised road built from the Roluos reservoir to Phnom Bakheng.[6] Chun Chanboth wrote that the move was probably made because Hariharalaya already held many buildings and temples and lay too close to the Tonle Sap (ទន្លេសាប), which made further building hard.[4]

Inscriptions of the early 10th and the 11th centuries name Hariharalaya at least four times.[10] One from Svay Pream, K. 848, refers to a royal order at Hariharalaya;[10] Heng and Lavy date it to 969.[8] An inscription of the Sranger temple, dated 1013, records that a hermitage (asrama) was set up at Hariharalaya in 978 for a royal guru (teacher) of King Jayavarman V.[10]

The site

Hariharalaya lay southeast of Angkor, near the wet-season shore of the Great Lake, the Tonle Sap.[3] The city had a monumental core, but its overall plan was organic, like that of other open cities of the early Angkorian period.[2] Canals adapted from natural waterways linked it to the Tonle Sap and point to transport by river. Tang Chinese and Middle Eastern ceramics of the 9th or 10th century have been excavated there, a sign of trade with distant lands.[8]

Under the name Roluos, the site takes in Preah Ko, Bakong and Lolei.[9] Other temples nearby include Prei Monti and Trapeang Phong.[13] Bakong lies about 15 kilometers (9 miles) east of the center of Siem Reap.[13]

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 Angkor Database, record and note on Christophe Pottier and Dominique Soutif, A Bakong Inscription and the Datation of Hariharalaya City (2014 article; note undated)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Antiquity, Jean-Baptiste Chevance, Damian Evans, Nina Hofer, Sakada Sakhoeun and Ratha Chhean, Mahendraparvata: an early Angkor-period capital defined through airborne laser scanning at Phnom Kulen (2019)
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 Proceedings of the British Academy, Charles F. W. Higham, The Origins of the Civilisation of Angkor (2003)
  4. ↑ 4.00 4.01 4.02 4.03 4.04 4.05 4.06 4.07 4.08 4.09 4.10 4.11 4.12 Radio Free Asia Khmer, Chun Chanboth, Kings of the Angkor period, part 10 of a history series (April 2, 2014; in Khmer)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Angkor Database, Andy Brouwer, Harihara - Phnom Da (October 26, 2021)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 Institute of Asian Culture, Sophia University, Nhim Sotheavin, Factors that Led to the Change of the Khmer Capitals from the 15th to 17th century (undated)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 The Angkor Guide, Maurice Glaize, Roluos: Bakong, from The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation)
  8. ↑ 8.00 8.01 8.02 8.03 8.04 8.05 8.06 8.07 8.08 8.09 Piphal Heng & Paul A. Lavy, Pre-Angkorian cities: Ishanapura and Mahendraparvata (undated)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 Saveros Pou, Les noms de monuments khmers, Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient 78 (1991)
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 Angkor National Museum, Sok Keosovannara, Harihara, Angkor National Museum Bulletin, Volume 8 (October 2016)
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 The Far Eastern Quarterly, Lawrence Palmer Briggs, A Sketch of Cambodian History (August 1947)
  12. ↑ The Angkor Guide, Maurice Glaize, Roluos: Prah Ko, from The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation)
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 Hello Angkor, Rodney Charles L'Huillier, Bakong Temple: Highlights and History (updated January 1, 2026)
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 The Angkor Guide, Maurice Glaize, Roluos: Lolei, from The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation)
Retrieved from "https://khmerconnection.com/w/index.php?title=Hariharalaya&oldid=13926"
This page was last edited on 19 October 2026, at 00:16.