The Khmer empire of Jayavarman VII

Who rules

Name

Jayavarman VII (Sri Jayavarmadeva)

Title

King of Kambuja (the Chinese Zhenla); posthumous name Mahaparamasaugata (the great supreme Buddhist)

Since

crowned 1181 (Higham; English Wikipedia; some accounts 1182). On 1 January 1200 he has reigned eighteen years.

Born

about 1122 to 1125, inferred (his father Dharanindravarman II reigned 1150-1160; English Wikipedia gives c. 1122/1125). He is therefore about 75 to 78 and old. No inscription gives his age.

Family

Son of Dharanindravarman II and Sri Jayarajacudamani (a granddaughter line of Harshavarman III, English Wikipedia). Husband in turn of the sisters Jayarajadevi, Rajendradevi and Indradevi (French Wikipedia after Coedes). Sons named in the stelae: Suryakumara, Virakumara, Srindrakumara; Indravarman II (his successor c. 1218) is said to be a son.

Confidence

high for the reign and its works, medium for his age

English and French Wikipedia (Jayavarman VII, after Coedes pp. 169-180 and Higham pp. 120-132); stelae of Ta Prohm (K. 273, 1186), Preah Khan (K. 908, 1191), Banteay Chhmar (K. 227, undated) and Phimeanakas (K. 485). No source gives his death date: c. 1218, range 1218-1220, inferred from the successor's reign.

Overlord

None. The Song court styles the Khmer king a tributary on the Chinese side only (embassies of the 1100s); no Khmer source recognises an overlord.

What the realm holds

• Yasodharapura/Angkor with the walled royal city of Angkor Thom (about 9 square km inside its wall and moat, English Wikipedia on the Bayon), the Phimeanakas palace enclosure, the Bayon at its centre (under way, undated) and the old Angkor Wat (Vaishnava, kept up)
• The king's foundations and their endowed villages: Ta Prohm (Rajavihara, stele K. 273 of 1186, for his mother), Preah Khan (Nagarajayasri, stele K. 908 of 1191, for his father), Banteay Kdei and Srah Srang, Neak Pean in the Jayatataka baray
• The water works: the West Baray, the East Baray (built about 900; whether it still held water in 1200 is argued), the new Jayatataka, the moats and feeder canals
• The royal roads and their rest houses (121 'houses with fire' claimed in the stele of 1191, 17 of them on the road to Phimai, 57 on the roads to Champa) and the hospital chapels (102 claimed; seven foundation stelae are dated Saka 1108, 1186)
• The Tonle Sap plain and its fishery; the Battambang rice plain; the Stung Sen and Stung Chinit lands to the Mekong; the Chatomuk junction; the Mekong lowlands to Kratie and Stung Treng; the northern delta (Angkor Borei, Takeo) and a thin hold on the lower delta
• The Mun valley and the southern plateau from Phimai to Phanom Rung and the Dangrek passes, with Sdok Kok Thom on the western road
• Wat Phu and the Champasak country on the Mekong
• Lavodayapura (Lopburi), Suvarnapura (Suphan Buri), Jayarajapuri (Ratchaburi), Jayavajrapuri (Phetchaburi), Jayasimhapuri (probably Muang Sing on the Khwae Noi) and Sambukapattana, six western towns that received Jayabuddhamahanatha images in 1191 (stele K. 908)
• Khmer shrines of the upper Chao Phraya (Sukhothai, Chaliang, Phitsanulok) in the Khmer orbit, without a governor on the evidence
• The iron of Phnom Dek and the Dangrek, the copper and iron field of Khao Wong Prachan, the salt of the Nong Han and Khorat flats and of the Gulf coast, the cardamom, benzoin, eaglewood and ivory of the Cardamom and Annamite hills

How it was acquired

By blood and arms. The line of Suryavarman II broke: Yasovarman II was killed in 1165 or 1166 by his minister Tribhuvanadityavarman, who took the throne; Jayavarman, then a prince away in Champa, came home, and when Jaya Indravarman IV of Champa sailed up the Tonle Sap in June 1177, killed the usurper and held Yasodharapura for about four years, Jayavarman gathered an army, drove the Cham out and was crowned in 1181 (Coedes pp. 166-170; Higham pp.

120-121). The French Wikipedia notes that the Bayon reliefs may show Cham allies and a more tangled recovery than the tradition says.

Allies and rivals

Rival: Champa under Suryavarmadeva (Vidyanandana), a Cham prince raised at Angkor, sent home with the army that took Vijaya in 1190 and now hostile. Dai Viet under Ly Cao Tong: no war in 1200, no treaty known; Dai Viet's recognition of Vidyanandana in 1199 is the campaign board's claim and unverified (the Vietnam and Champa researcher checks the Toan thu). The Song court: Zhenla's last dated embassies to China are of the 1100s in the sources we could read; the Zhufan zhi (1225) later calls Lavo a dependency of Zhenla (Wyatt doubts it).

West: Pagan (Narapatisithu) across the Tenasserim range and the Three Pagodas pass; the Mon towns of the western plain; Haripunjaya on the Ping (wars between Lavo and Haripunjaya are in the northern chronicles, the Tai north researcher's ground and later written). South-west: Tambralinga and Grahi (Island Southeast Asia map). North: the Lao chiefs of Muang Sua, Wiang Chan and Muang Phuan, owing whatever they owe to Angkor and Dali.

The realm that morning

Jayavarman VII is alive and still building; the Bayon and the walls and gates of Angkor Thom are under way, and so are the galleries of Banteay Chhmar. The royal roads, the rest houses and the hospital chapels are in use. The Cham war is unfinished: the Khmer attacks on Vijaya are dated 1190, 1192, 1194-1195 and 1198-1203 in English Wikipedia (Champa; citing Coedes pp. 171, 180-181 and Vickery 2011 p. 400), and no source puts either army anywhere on 1 January.

It is the dry season and the Tonle Sap is draining (campaign weather). The succession is not settled in any source: Srindrakumara, called crown prince at Banteay Chhmar, is said to have died before his father, and Indravarman II, who succeeds about 1218, is not named heir in any dated text. In the west the six towns of the 1191 list have Khmer shrines and Buddha images; Wyatt found no sign of Angkorian administration in the sixteen dated inscriptions (1168-1219) of Lopburi and the western plain, so a seat with Khmer titles and gifts is the safest reading, not a governed province.

At Sukhothai and Chaliang there are Khmer shrines and no attested governor.

Wealth

Rice (Tonle Sap and Battambang plains, flood-recession and irrigated), the fish of the Tonle Sap, salted and dried, iron from Phnom Dek, salt from the Gulf shore and the plateau, forest goods (cardamom, benzoin, eaglewood, ivory, wax, lac, kingfisher feathers), copper, tin and gold by trade, the Mekong portage at Khone, and the foreign junks that come to the delta ports. No Khmer coinage is known for this reign; payment was in rice, cloth, and gold and silver by weight (Zhou Daguan, a century later, for the practice). The stelae claim temple servants in tens of thousands (Ta Prohm: 79,365 people in 3,140 villages; Preah Khan: a total of its own that we did not re-read): these are the king's claims, not counts.

Military

Elephants, foot soldiers with spears and shields and archers, as the Bayon and Banteay Chhmar reliefs show them; war boats on the Tonle Sap (the naval battle with the Cham is on the Bayon); provincial lords call out men by sruk; the king's household guard and the endowed servants of the great foundations provide labour more than troops. The Banteay Chhmar stele (K. 227) names no army but says four companions in arms twice saved the prince Srindrakumara, once in a campaign against Champa.

Fortified places are temple cities with moats (Angkor Thom, Preah Khan of Kompong Svay, Banteay Chhmar, Phimai, Muang Sing) rather than castles. No numbers are known.

Threats

• Vidyanandana (Suryavarmadeva) at Vijaya and the highland tracks to him
• The king's age and the unsettled succession
• The cost of the building programme in labour and rice, and the silting of the barays
• The Tai peoples moving into the upper Chao Phraya and the Mekong (Syam are on the Angkor Wat relief as soldiers about 1150)
• Pagan on the western passes, and the Mon of the Gulf coast
• A Brahmin reaction against the Buddhist king (after his death, 1243)

Household

Queens: Jayarajadevi (died early in the reign, English Wikipedia), Rajendradevi (named as mother of Virakumara in the 1191 stele), Indradevi (her sister, chief teacher in the Buddhist schools of Nagendratunga, Tilakottara and Narendrasrama; the Phimeanakas stele K. 485 is hers); which of the three is alive on 1 January 1200 is not pinned. Sons: Suryakumara (the Ta Prohm stele was written for him, French Wikipedia), Virakumara (son of Rajendradevi; author of the Preah Khan stele), Srindrakumara (crown prince, died before his father), and Indravarman II (succeeds about 1218).

Tamalinda, a prince who became a monk in Sri Lanka, is in English Wikipedia after Coedes pp. 178, 180; the Burmese Sasanavamsa (1861) also has him: not pinned. Ages of the children are not given in any source.

Ministers

Hrishikesha, Brahmin chief priest with the title Jayamahapradhana (Coedes pp. 173, 176, via English Wikipedia); the king's guru Jayamangalartha, to whom a satellite shrine at Ta Prohm is given; the chief teacher Indradevi. No dated source names a chancellor or a general for 1200.

Coinage

None known for this reign. Rice, cloth, gold and silver by weight and Chinese goods were the means of payment.

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

1. 1203 (English Wikipedia, Champa: campaigns 1198-1203; Cham stelae name the yuvaraja On Dhanapatigrama)Vijaya falls to a Khmer-backed force, Suryavarmadeva (Vidyanandana) flees by sea towards Nghe An and is lost to the record, and Champa is governed as a Khmer province to 1220 (some say 1226).Depends on: The war running on past 1 January 1200 and Dai Viet staying out. Stopped by: A truce, a Cham victory in the highlands, Dai Viet intervention, or the old king's death before the campaign.
2. about 1218 (range 1218-1220; no dated inscription)Jayavarman VII dies and Indravarman II (said to be his son) takes the throne; building stops across the empire.Depends on: Natural death of a man of about 95 by inference. Stopped by: An earlier death would move it; the succession could be contested if Srindrakumara's death left no named heir.
3. 1220 or 1226The Khmer give up Champa and most of the outer holdings.Depends on: The occupation already in place and pressure from Dai Viet and the Cham highlands. Stopped by: No occupation, because Vijaya does not fall in 1203.
4. about 1238 to 1243 (Wyatt prefers about 1243)The Tai chiefs take Sukhothai; the later stele of 1292 (authenticity disputed since 1987) tells of a Khmer official driven out, and says Pha Mueang received a Khmer title from Angkor.Depends on: A Tai chiefly house already in the upper plain and a Khmer court too weak to answer. Stopped by: A Khmer court able to hold the Chao Phraya, or no Tai chiefly rising.
5. 1243Jayavarman VIII reverses the Buddhist programme; the Buddha images of the foundations are cut out and the Bayon central Buddha broken (found in a well in 1933).Depends on: The Brahmin party at court after Indravarman II. Stopped by: Indravarman II's line or a Buddhist succession surviving.
6. 1296Zhou Daguan spends a year at Angkor and writes the only eyewitness account of the working city.Depends on: A Mongol embassy to Angkor. Stopped by: No embassy.

Places of note

• Angkor Thom (Yasodharapura): The royal city; the Bayon at its centre, under way.
• Preah Khan of Kompong Svay (Bakan): Forward base on the road to Champa; coordinates from memory (see town record).
• Phimai: Capital of the Mun plateau, northern end of the royal road.
• Lavo (Lopburi): Lavodayapura in the 1191 list.
• Wat Phu: The old Mekong sanctuary.
• Sai Fong, near Vientiane: Site of a hospital stele of 1186 (find-spot not checked).

Where the sources disagree

• The campaign board entry power 'The Khmer empire': campaigns of 1193 and 1194 failed. We follow English Wikipedia's Champa list (1190, 1192, 1194-1195, 1198-1203; Coedes pp. 171, 180-181; Vickery 2011 p. 400) and say the dates disagree.
• The campaign board entry region intro: 'a hundred and two hospital chapels and a hundred and twenty one rest houses'. These are stele claims; English Wikipedia (Arogyasala) attributes the 102 to the Ta Prohm stele of 1186, others to the Preah Khan stele of 1191: not pinned which. The 121 'houses with fire' and the road counts (17 to Vimaya, 57 to Champa) are the Preah Khan stele (1191), via English Wikipedia (Phimai).
• The campaign board entry region intro: 'the war in Champa is unfinished: Vidyanandana holds Vijaya against him with Dai Viet's blessing.' The Dai Viet recognition of 1199 is unverified; no source places an army on 1 January.
• The campaign board entry regions intro for the Chao Phraya: 'Sukhothai is a town with a Khmer governor in it' and Lavo has 'a governor answering to Angkor'. Neither is shown: Baker and Pasuk and Wyatt find Khmer shrines and Khmer-language inscriptions but no Angkorian administration in the western plain; the Khmer-governor story of Sukhothai is of the 1292 stele and later.
• Board: the Bayon 'rising now'. Agreed; no dated stele exists, and art history puts the building across the 1190s to the 1210s.
• English Wikipedia (Khmer Empire) says Jayavarman VII added Pegu in 1195 on Chinese sources; the brief calls this unverified and we do not use it.

Evidence: The reign, the dated stelae of 1186 and 1191 and the Cham wars are firm (Coedes, Higham, Jacques and Lafond). The extent in the west and north rests on monuments, one stele's town list and a few inscriptions, and is argued. We could not read the stelae themselves or the Zhufan zhi; what is quoted comes through English and French Wikipedia and is marked as such.

"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.

On the map: The admin block draws the whole of modern Cambodia as the heartland; the Cardamom, Dangrek and eastern hills inside it are in fact held by their own peoples under a loose Khmer claim, and the lower delta, the Chi valley and the upper plain are drawn as claimed because the evidence is monuments and a few inscriptions, not governors. The west is drawn held because six towns get Khmer images in 1191, not because Angkor ruled them as provinces.

Primary sources for this realm

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• The Abridged History of Viet, Anonymous (attributed by some to Su Hy Nhan) (about 1377, probably as an abridgement of Le Van Huu's lost history of 1272). The oldest surviving Vietnamese history, a century older than the Complete Annals and in places fuller for the Ly dynasty, which fills its second and third books.
• The Complete Annals of Dai Viet, Ngo Si Lien, drawing on Le Van Huu's Dai Viet su ky (1272) and Phan Phu Tien; continued by Pham Cong Tru and Le Hi (1479; printed 1697 in the standard Chinh Hoa edition). The main narrative source for Dai Viet in 1200, compiled in 1479 from Le Van Huu's lost history of 1272. Read online
• The later Tai, Lao and Mon chronicles of the north, Ratanapanna (Jinakalamali); Bodhiramsi (Chamadevivamsa); anonymous monks and court scribes (the Chamadevivamsa about 1410; the Jinakalamali 1516 to 1528; the Chiang Mai Chronicle in its surviving form 1827; the Nithan Khun Borom 16th to 17th century). There is no text of 1200 for the Mon kingdom of Haripunjaya, the Tai muang of Ngoenyang (Chiang Saen), Chiang Rung, the Yom and Nan valleys, or the Lao middle Mekong.
• History of Song, chapters 488 and 489: Jiaozhi, Dali, Champa, Zhenla, Pagan, Srivijaya, Java, Brunei, Chola and Tambralinga, Toqto'a (Tuotuo) and the Yuan history office, from the Song court records (1343 to 1345, from Song veritable records and court diaries). The Chinese court's record of its southern neighbours, compiled from Song archives. Read online
• History of the Song, the chapters on Xia and on foreign states, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office (1343 to 1345). The Song court's accounts of its neighbours, each arranged as an annal of embassies and wars. Read online
• Corpus of the Inscriptions of Campa (EFEO and ISAW), Various (the Cham kings and their officers), edited by Arlo Griffiths, Amandine Lepoutre, William Southworth and Thanh Phan (inscriptions of the 4th to 15th centuries; the online corpus from 2012). The online edition of the Cham inscriptions, with photographs, texts and translations, keyed to the C. numbers. Read online
• The Inscriptions of Cambodia, Various (the Khmer kings and their officers), edited by George Coedes (inscriptions of the 6th to 14th centuries; edited 1937 to 1966). The Khmer empire of 1200 is known almost entirely from the great foundation stelae of Jayavarman VII (reigning from 1181), which Coedes edited: the Ta Prohm stele of 1186 (K. Read online
• The Sanskrit inscriptions of Cambodia and Champa (ISCC), Various (Khmer and Cham kings), edited by Auguste Barth and Abel Bergaigne (inscriptions of the 7th to 12th centuries; edited 1885 to 1893). The founding edition of Khmer and Cham Sanskrit epigraphy, public domain and online, which Coedes's later corpus supersedes but does not replace. Read online
• The Grahi (Chaiya) Buddha inscription and the Tambralinga records, Various (the officers of Grahi and the kings of Tambralinga), edited by George Coedes (the Chaiya bronze Buddha inscription 1183; the Nakhon Si Thammarat records 13th century; edited 1929, revised 1961). The peninsula in 1200 has one near-contemporary dated text: the Old Khmer inscription on the base of a bronze Buddha from Wat Hua Wiang at Chaiya, dated 1183, which records the image's casting by order of the mahasenapati Galanai, governor of Grahi, under the king Srimat Trailokyaraja Maulibhusanavarmadeva, a name that is argued to be either a Malayu (Srivijaya) overlord or a local king.
• The Customs of Cambodia, Zhou Daguan (after 1297, from a stay at Angkor in 1296 to 1297). A Chinese envoy's account of Angkor a century after Jayavarman VII, and the only description of the city and its court by an eyewitness. Read online
• A Description of the Foreign Peoples (Records of Foreign Nations), Zhao Rukuo (Zhao Rugua) (1225 at Quanzhou). The best single text for the island world around 1200, written by the superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou from merchants' reports a generation after the date. Read online
• Description of the Foreign Peoples (Chau Ju-kua), Zhao Rukuo (趙汝适) (about 1225, while superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou). The Song customs officer's survey of the overseas world, compiled from merchants and from Zhou Qufei, a generation after 1200 but describing trade routes that were the same in 1200. Read online

1 more in the sources library for Mainland Southeast Asia.