Udayadityavarman II

Udayadityavarman II succeeded Suryavarman I in 1050; the inscriptions do not make his relationship to his predecessor clear, stating only descent from earlier royalty on his mother's side, and the succession may not have been smooth. His sixteen-year reign produced two of Angkor's largest construction projects and was repeatedly shaken by rebellion.

His state temple was the Baphuon, a towering sandstone pyramid immediately north of the royal palace, dedicated to Shiva and praised in an inscription as a golden mountain. The Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan, visiting two centuries later, still singled out its 'tower of bronze' as a remarkable sight. The Baphuon's enormous mass on a sand core made it structurally precarious — its modern restoration, completed in 2011, was among the most complex ever undertaken at Angkor — but in conception it was the most ambitious temple-mountain yet attempted, the largest such monument before Angkor Wat. Udayadityavarman also completed the West Baray and placed at its center the West Mebon, an island shrine that housed a monumental bronze image of the reclining Vishnu, fragments of which, recovered in 1936, rank among the masterpieces of Khmer metalwork.

The political record of the reign is dominated by revolt. The inscription of Sdok Kok Thom and, above all, a long text praising the general Sangrama describe at least three uprisings: one in the south led by Aravindahrada, one in the northwest, and the most serious, led by a commander named Kamvau in 1065, which reached the vicinity of the capital before Sangrama defeated and killed him. That the king's chief monuments and his survival are both credited to servants — the priest Sadasiva for ritual continuity, Sangrama in war — suggests how dependent the eleventh-century monarchy was on its great families.

Udayadityavarman disappears from the record around 1066, his fate unstated, and was succeeded by his brother Harshavarman III, under whom the kingdom faced further internal strain and renewed conflict with Champa. His posthumous standing rests on his buildings: the Baphuon defined the architectural generation from which Angkor Wat itself developed.