Jayavarman II

Jayavarman II is credited in later Khmer tradition with founding the Angkorian state, yet almost nothing about him is recorded in documents from his own lifetime. The principal source is the Sdok Kok Thom inscription of 1052, composed some two centuries after his death by a priestly family that traced its offices back to his court. According to that text, Jayavarman came 'from Java' — a phrase whose meaning is still debated, since it may refer to insular Java, to a polity on the mainland, or to something else entirely — and progressively asserted control over the fragmented Khmer principalities that Chinese sources had called Zhenla.

The inscription describes a king constantly on the move. Jayavarman is said to have ruled successively from Indrapura, from Hariharalaya near the Tonle Sap, from Amarendrapura, and from Mahendraparvata on the Kulen plateau, where archaeological survey has mapped an extensive early urban grid. On Mahendraparvata in 802 the Brahmin Hiranyadama is said to have performed a ritual establishing the cult of the devaraja and consecrating Jayavarman as chakravartin, a universal sovereign owing allegiance to no foreign power. This date, however artificial it may be as a precise founding moment, became the conventional starting point of the Angkorian era.

What the consecration meant in practice is uncertain. Scholars disagree about whether the devaraja cult deified the king himself or centered on a portable image or lingam in the care of a hereditary priesthood, and the extent of Jayavarman's actual territorial control cannot be verified. He left no securely attributed temples or inscriptions of his own, which makes him unusual among major Khmer kings.

Jayavarman II spent his final years at Hariharalaya, in the Roluos area southeast of the later city of Angkor, where he died — by most reconstructions around 835, though some chronologies extend his life to mid-century. He received the posthumous name Parameshvara, identifying him with Shiva. His successors at Hariharalaya, and ultimately the entire Angkorian royal line, legitimated themselves by reference to his consecration, which is why a king known almost entirely at second hand stands at the head of the dynasty.