Jayavarman VIII

Angkor › Angkor Thom

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

BeforeIndravarman IIbefore 1210 to 1243 (Glaize 1944)1220 to 1243 (Ishizawa via Angkor Database)

This reignJayavarman VIII1243 to 1295 (Glaize 1944)1243 to 1295 (Ishizawa via Angkor Database)and 1 more reading

AfterIndravarman III (Srindravarman)1295 to 1307 (Glaize 1944)1295 to 1307 (Polkinghorne, Pottier and Fischer 2013)and 1 more reading

All Khmer monarchs

Jayavarman VIII was a king of the Khmer Empire who reigned at Angkor in the 13th century, until 1295. His reign began in 1243 or 1270. Peter Sharrock took the later year from a revised reading of the Mangalartha inscription by Sanskrit specialists of the École française d'Extrême-Orient. The defacing of Jayavarman VII's Buddha images has often been laid to his reign, a view that later writers have questioned.

Illustration inspired by the small temple of Mangalartha in Angkor Thom.

Historical figure details
Also known as	Paramesvarapada (posthumous name)
Roles	Khmer king
Period	1243 or 1270 to 1295
Country	Khmer Empire (present-day Cambodia)
Subjects	History & Remembrance

Reign

Maurice Glaize's list of kings places him after Indravarman II, who reigned until 1243, and gives him the posthumous name Paramesvarapada. Sharrock wrote that this posthumous title indicates that the king's religion was Saiva. The Mangalartha inscription (K.567), dated 1295, presents him as a patron of Brahmanism. Sharrock wrote that the king left no inscriptions and seems to have built nothing.

The defaced Buddha images

Jayavarman VII had made Buddhism the religion of the state. After his time, Buddha images in the Bayon were reworked into lingas, the emblem of Shiva. Thousands of Buddha figures were chiseled off his other temples. Sharrock wrote that this destruction is often credited to the reign of Jayavarman VIII. Polkinghorne's team, citing George Coedès and Claude Jacques, wrote that it is notionally attributed to him.

Yoshiaki Ishizawa held this view. In 2001 a team from Sophia University found 274 Buddhist statues buried at Banteay Kdei. For Ishizawa, the find showed how far the movement against Buddhist images reached at the end of the 13th century. He wrote that the empire was functioning effectively under Jayavarman VIII, because the king's order to destroy the statues was carried out so efficiently. In his view, tearing down and burying so many statues and putting Hindu images in their place would have needed a great deal of labor and money, so some prosperity lasted through the reign. He set this against a popular belief that Angkor declined in the reigns of Indravarman II and Jayavarman VIII.

Martin Polkinghorne, Christophe Pottier and Christian Fischer wrote in 2013 that the case against Jayavarman VIII rests only on hypothesis, since few inscriptions deal with him. They wrote that the Banteay Kdei images appear to be ritual deposits rather than discarded images, and found no evidence that the hoard was buried at the time of the iconoclasm. Sharrock saw the burial as a careful rite, perhaps meant to protect the images from further harm. He also noted that the Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan reached Angkor the year after Jayavarman VIII abdicated. The great faces on the gates of Angkor Thom were called Buddhas at that time, which Sharrock wrote "suggests continuity if anything".

Sharrock named a later king, Jayavarma Paramesvara, as a more likely candidate for the destruction. Polkinghorne's team called the same king, whom they spell Jayavarman Paramesvara, an alternative candidate. In 1327, the first year of his reign, he set up a Sivalinga in the Bayon.

Succession

Sharrock wrote that Jayavarman VIII abdicated. He dated the end of the reign to 1295, as does Glaize. Glaize lists his successor as Srindravarman, a relative, who reigned from 1295 to 1307.

References