Historical figure
Jayavarman VII
ព្រះបាទជ័យវរ្ម័នទី៧
Jayavarman VII (ព្រះបាទជ័យវរ្ម័នទី៧) was a king of the Khmer empire of Angkor who came to the throne in the early 1180s and was still alive around 1218.[1][2][3] He built the walled city of Angkor Thom with the Bayon at its center, and is credited with more than 100 religious buildings across the empire, among them Preah Khan and Ta Prohm.[4][5] He also ordered 102 hospitals built across his territory.[2]
Family and rise to the throne
An inscription he set up at Preah Khan names his parents: his father was King Dharanindravarman II and his mother Sri Jayarajacudamani.[6] Before he became king his name was Jayavardhana (ជយវ៌ធន). In his father's reign, which was taken up with war against Champa, the young prince was given command of the army and sent against the Cham city of Vijaya. His son Srindrakumara later saved King Yasovarman II during a rebellion.[1]
Little is known of his life before or after his coronation.[3] He is thought to have spent time in his youth at the court of an allied Cham king. Some Cham factions attacked Angkor in the 1170s; around 1177 he won a battle against one of them, and he came to the throne around 1182.[3] Other sources give the start of his reign as 1181.[2][4] An inscription found on a bowl shows that he was still alive around 1218, when he would have been at least 72.[3]
His first consort was Queen Jayarajadevi. A kneeling statue in the Angkor National Museum, found at Preah Khan, is thought to show her in the form of Prajnaparamita, the Buddhist deity of wisdom.[7]
Builder and ruler
At its height his empire covered Cambodia, Laos, the far south of Vietnam and parts of Thailand.[2] At its capital he raised the wall of Angkor Thom, the last of the enclosure walls he built, with the Bayon at the center as his state temple.[4][3] Preah Khan, Banteay Kdei and Ta Prohm, temples of his reign, have walls of their own.[4]
The Preah Khan inscription, dated to 1191, records that he consecrated a statue of the bodhisattva Lokeshvara in the temple's central tower in honor of his father, surrounded by 283 other deities. It names the temple Jayasri and describes the Jayatataka reservoir and its temple, now known as Neak Poan. It also tells of a great battle he won, and lists 121 rest houses and 23 statues called Jayabuddhamahanatha set up across the country. His son Sri Virakumara composed it.[6]
He set up what may have been Southeast Asia's first state-run health care: 102 hospitals, called arogyasala, where staff gave patients rice, honey, camphor, ginger and other medicines. Along the empire's roads, archaeologists have found buildings about seven to nine miles apart that are thought to have sheltered travelers. The archaeologist Mitch Hendrickson has compared them to modern highway rest areas.[2]
Religion
Jayavarman VII was a Buddhist, and the Bayon was built as a Buddhist temple. The scholar Peter Sharrock has suggested that he followed a Tantric form of Buddhism, and that the Bayon's great faces show the Buddha in that form.[3] A later king, Jayavarman VIII, had Buddhist images at the Bayon and other temples defaced and turned into Hindu ones.[3]
Portrait statues
Four statues of Jayavarman VII are known, and each was first found without its head.[5] One head, found on January 12, 1958 at Preah Khan of Kompong Svay, is in the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh. In January 2000 the archaeologist Christophe Pottier found a torso near the same temple. A cast of the break at the neck confirmed that it belonged to the head, and the two were joined at the museum that year.[8]
See also
- Jayavarman VII (National Museum of Cambodia), a portrait statue of the king found at Angkor Thom
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Radio Free Asia Khmer, Chun Chanboth, The period after the reign of King Suryavarman II (part 15) (May 28, 2014; in Khmer)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Archaeology Magazine, Marley Brown, "The Pursuit of Wellness" (September/October 2021)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 The Cambodia Daily, Michelle Vachon, After a Century of Study, Bayon Temple Continues To Deliver Mysteries (January 16, 2010)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Cambodianess (ThmeyThmey), The Enclosure Wall of Angkor Thom (July 19, 2021)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Angkor Database, King in the Temple: Jayavarman VII Case Study (August 25, 2019)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Angkor National Museum, Inscription of Preah Khan (K.908) (July 5, 2025)
- ↑ Angkor National Museum, Highlight artifact: Prajnaparamita (undated)
- ↑ Christophe Pottier, "A propos de la statue portrait du roi Jayavarman VII au temple de Préah Khan de Kompong Svay", Arts Asiatiques 55 (2000), pp. 171-172 (in French)