Historical figure
Indravarman III
Indravarman III was a king of the Khmer Empire, the king whom the Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan saw at Angkor in 1296.[1] Maurice Glaize's list of kings names the king who reigned from 1295 to 1307 Çrindravarman.[2] The stele of Kok Svay Chek (K.754) names a king Sri Srindravarma who came to the throne in 1296. It holds what George Coedès judged to be the earliest Pali text in Cambodia.[3]
Reign
In Glaize's list, Çrindravarman was a relative of Jayavarman VIII, the king before him, and reigned from 1295 to 1307.[2] Martin Polkinghorne, Christophe Pottier and Christian Fischer, spelling the name Srindravaman, give the same years.[4] The Angkor National Museum, reading the stele K.754, says that Sri Srindravarma came to the throne at Yasodharapura in 1296.[3] Peter Sharrock wrote that Jayavarman VIII gave up the throne, and that Zhou Daguan arrived the following year.[5] Glaize lists Çrindrajayavarman as the next king, from 1307 to 1327.[2] Polkinghorne and his co-authors spell that king's name Srindrajayavarman and give the same years.[4]
Zhou Daguan's account
Zhou Daguan traveled up the Mekong in August 1296, crossed the Great Lake (Tonle Sap) and entered the city by its south gate. He stayed for almost a year and wrote an account of what he saw after he went home to China.[1] A long part of his report describes a royal procession. Hundreds of guards and attendants surrounded the king, who stood high on his elephant and held the sacred sword of state. Everyone who saw him had to kneel and touch their foreheads to the ground.[1]
Buddhism and the stele of Kok Svay Chek
The stele was found at Wat Kok Khpos in February 1933. The monks there said it came from a mound called Kok Svay Chek, about three kilometers to the southwest. One face carries 20 lines in Pali and the other 31 lines in Khmer, and the two texts say nearly the same thing.[3] The museum writes that in 1308 the king gave a village to the Mahathera Sri Srindramaulideva. In 1309 he had a laywoman build a monastery there, where an image of the Buddha was later placed.[3] The museum's dates for these gifts fall after 1307, the end of the reign in Glaize's list and in Polkinghorne and his co-authors.[3][2][4]
Polkinghorne and his co-authors list K.754 among the inscriptions in which the kings after Jayavarman VIII showed that they preferred Buddhism. The same kings also paid for the foundations of high-ranking Brahmanist officials, in a reading the authors take from Michael Vickery.[4]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Proceedings of the British Academy, Charles F. W. Higham, The Origins of the Civilisation of Angkor (2003)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Angkor Database, Maurice Glaize, The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation of the fourth French edition)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Angkor National Museum, Inscription of Kok Svay Chek K.754 (July 25, 2025)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Journal Asiatique, Martin Polkinghorne, Christophe Pottier and Christian Fischer, One Buddha Can Hide Another (2013)
- ↑ Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Peter D. Sharrock, Garuda, Vajrapani and Religious Change in Jayavarman VII's Angkor (February 2009)