Jayavarman V

Jayavarman V came to the throne in 968 as a boy, the son of Rajendravarman II, and reigned for over three decades during which the Khmer state appears to have enjoyed relative stability and a flowering of learning. His youth at accession meant that effective power initially rested with senior figures at court, chief among them the Brahmin scholar Yajnavaraha, builder of Banteay Srei, who served as the young king's guru. Several powerful priestly and official families are unusually visible in the epigraphy of this reign, suggesting a government in which the king shared authority with an entrenched aristocracy of office.

His state temple was Ta Keo, called Hemasringagiri, 'the mountain with golden peaks,' begun east of the East Baray as part of a new royal precinct named Jayendranagari. Built of massive sandstone blocks in a severe five-towered pyramid, Ta Keo was left unfinished, its surfaces largely uncarved; a later inscription attributes the halt to a lightning strike interpreted as an evil omen, though the king's death and the disorder that followed offer a simpler explanation. Even incomplete, it marks a step in the development of the fully sandstone temple-mountain that culminated at Angkor Wat.

Religious life under Jayavarman V was notably plural. The state cult remained Shaiva, but Mahayana Buddhism flourished at court, and inscriptions from the reign include sophisticated Buddhist doctrinal texts. Women of the royal circle are recorded as patrons and as learned figures, including the king's sister Indralakshmi, married to the Indian Brahmin Divakarabhatta.

Jayavarman V died in 1001. His death ended the long period of orderly succession that had run from Rajendravarman's restoration, and the kingdom slid into crisis: his successor Udayadityavarman I vanished from the record within months, and rival claimants — Jayaviravarman at Angkor and Suryavarman I advancing from the east — fought for roughly a decade before Suryavarman prevailed. The contrast between that turmoil and the calm of Jayavarman's own reign has led historians to view his era as a high point of the tenth-century state.