Jayavarman II

Angkor › Indrapura

1. Funanto about 550
2. Chenla6th to 8th century
3. Angkor802 to 1431
4. After Angkor1431 to 1794
5. Modern kingdomfrom 1794

BeforeJayavarman Ibefore 665 to after 681 (Glaize 1944)

This reignJayavarman IIabout 802 to 850 (Glaize 1944)8th to early 9th century (Chevance et al. 2019)

AfterJayavarman III854 to 877 (Glaize 1944)834 to 877 (Vickery 1985)and 1 more reading

All Khmer monarchs

Jayavarman II (ជ័យវរ្ម័នទី២) was a Khmer king whose reign, in the late 8th and early 9th centuries, marks the start of the Angkor period. In 802, on Phnom Kulen, he was proclaimed cakravartin, and the Khmer Empire is usually dated from that year. He ruled from capitals on the Kulen plateau and at Hariharalaya (ហរិហរាល័យ), near present-day Roluos (រលួស). He received the posthumous name Paramesvara.

Ruins of a temple on Phnom Kulen, 2011. Photo: dalbera from Paris, France, CC BY 2.0

Historical figure details
Roles	Khmer king
Period	Late 8th to 9th century
Country	Khmer Empire
Subjects	History & Remembrance

Origins

No inscription from his own reign has been found on Phnom Kulen. Most of what is known of him comes from inscriptions set up long afterward, above all the Sdok Kak Thom inscription of 1052, found at a temple in eastern Thailand. It traces a family of priests who served the Khmer kings for some 250 years, starting with Jayavarman II.

His origins are uncertain. Lawrence Palmer Briggs wrote that late in the 8th century a Malay empire based in Sumatra held much of Java and the Malay peninsula and raided the coast of Indochina. In his account, a Khmer prince later known as Paramesvara came back from "Java" to reign over the Khmers, seemingly as the Malay maharaja's vassal. Maurice Glaize also wrote that the king came from Java, where he had evidently lived in exile. Charles Higham writes that the region's broad rice land and plentiful fish drew him there, and that, by the Sdok Kak Thom inscription's account, he came to the Angkor region with his followers.

Michael Vickery doubted much of this story. He noted that George Cœdès came to believe the Sdok Kak Thom family had backdated the founding of its cult, and wrote that, if so, all the inscription says about Jayavarman II's reign is open to doubt. He also left open whether the supposed link between Cambodia and Java was historically likely. Dan Penny and his colleagues write that the inscription is widely held to be doubtful or invented.

Capitals

Jayavarman II ruled for a time at several places before he set his capital on the Kulen plateau. Glaize's list of kings names four capitals for his reign: Indrapura, near Kampong Cham; Hariharalaya, at Roluos; Amarendrapura, perhaps at Ak Yom; and Mahendraparvata, on Phnom Kulen. Glaize wrote that he settled at Hariharalaya, which was already a city, both before his rite on Phnom Kulen and again after it.

Mahendraparvata, "the mountain of the great Indra", lay on the plateau about 30 kilometers (19 miles) northeast of Angkor. Glaize wrote that the plateau, some 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) in area, was easy to defend. In 1932 its temples were dated to Jayavarman II's reign, and his royal city was proposed to lie on the massif. A palace site was later identified at Banteay, near the stepped pyramid temple of Rong Chen. Excavation there gave radiocarbon dates that fit his reign. Airborne laser scanning in 2012 and 2015 mapped a planned city of about 40 to 50 square kilometers (15 to 19 square miles). It had a grid of main roads, small shrines and ponds, dams and a large reservoir left unfinished. Jean-Baptiste Chevance and his colleagues write that it appears to be the first large grid city in the Khmer world, and that the remains agree with the inscriptions naming Mahendraparvata as the place from which he ruled. Cambodia's tentative list entry for Phnom Kulen credits his reign with a distinct Kulen style of carving, between pre-Angkorian and Angkorian art.

Glaize wrote that after a long reign that unified the country, the king came down again to the northern shore of the Great Lake. In Glaize's view he was perhaps discouraged by the plateau's hard access, its poor promise for his settlement and its distance from the lake. The court moved to Hariharalaya, about 15 kilometers (9 miles) east of the later city of Angkor. Glaize thought it possible that Jayavarman II began the temple mountain of Bakong (ប្រាសាទបាគង) there.

The rite of 802

Briggs wrote that the king sent for a Brahmin named Hiranyadama, skilled in magic, who performed a rite so that Kambujadesa would have a cakravartin king, and who set up a devaraja, or god-king. Higham glosses cakravartin as a universal monarch, while Briggs read it as apparently meaning simply independent or sovereign. Briggs notes that the date is regarded as the start of the Khmer empire's independence. Cambodia's tentative list entry calls it a declaration of independence from Java. Higham saw it as an answer to long conflict among the leaders of many small kingdoms. Karen Coates wrote that Jayavarman II declared himself devaraja of a united Khmer state there.

In Briggs's account, the king then made his chaplain, Sivakaivalya, chief priest of the new cult, and the office passed down in Sivakaivalya's family through the female line. The devaraja was worshipped as a linga, the emblem of Shiva, named Jayesvara after the king. Glaize placed this first royal linga on the pyramid of Rong Chen.

Vickery pointed out that the word devaraja appears in no other inscription, and that the cult's Khmer name is first recorded in its own time under Jayavarman IV, in the 10th century. Another family's inscription, known as K. 956, mentions a ceremony held on Jayavarman II's order to keep Cambodia free from Java, and Vickery saw in it a seeming challenge to the Sdok Kak Thom account. Vickery noted that most of the great families of the 11th century traced their rise to Jayavarman II and claimed that an ancestor had been one of his wives. Two of them each claimed a chief queen.

Reign and succession

Briggs wrote that early in his reign Jayavarman II reunited the Khmer lands, Upland Chenla among them. He died in 850 or 854. Glaize gives his death at Hariharalaya in about 850, after a reign of 48 years in one passage of his guide and of fifty years in another. Briggs wrote that his reign ended in 854 and that he died at Roluos. Chevance and his colleagues, and Cambodia's tentative list entry, give his reign as 770 to 835.

His son Jayavarman III (ជ័យវរ្ម័នទី៣) followed him on the throne and reigned from 854 or 834 to 877. Indravarman I (ឥន្ទ្រវរ្ម័នទី១), named in Glaize's list as Jayavarman II's nephew, reigned from 877 to 889. Higham writes that the dynasty Jayavarman II founded lasted for two centuries.

At Hariharalaya, Indravarman I built Preah Ko (ប្រាសាទព្រះគោ) for his royal ancestors. Its inscription gives 879 as the founding date of three statues of Shiva and of Devi. There the names of Jayavarman II and of Indravarman's own forebears were joined with that of Shiva, and the central tower was dedicated to Jayavarman II. Glaize called Preah Ko the funerary temple of Jayavarman II.

Legacy

Later Angkorian inscriptions often refer to his capital on the plateau, and an inscription at Baksei Chamkrong, at Angkor, praises the early kings and names Jayavarman II as the king who settled on Mahendraparvata. Phnom Kulen has long been a sacred mountain, and Khmer pilgrims come to it from across the country. The national park on the plateau, set up by royal decree in 1993, is named Preah Jayavarman-Norodom Phnom Kulen National Park.

References