Koh Ker, the capital of Jayavarman IV

After the death of Yashovarman I, the founder of Yashodharapura (Angkor), early in the 10th century, his sons Harshavarman I and Ishanavarman II reigned in turn. The Sdok Kak Thom stele (1052) says that King Paramashivapada — Jayavarman IV, according to George Coedès one of Ishanavarman’s maternal uncles — ‘left the city of Yashodharapura to reign at Chok Gargyar, taking the Devaraja with him’. The stele gives no date; Coedès dated the move to 921 from an inscription of that year, and a later inscription dates his accession to 928, perhaps the year of Ishanavarman’s death. Coedès saw a usurpation in this; other historians regard Jayavarman IV, the husband of Yashovarman’s (half-)sister Jayadevi, as a legitimate claimant. A Sanskrit inscription at Prasat Thom records the consecration of a linga there as early as 921.

The new capital was laid out beside a reservoir, the Rahal, about 1.2 km long. Its main temple, Prasat Thom, stretches some 800 metres along an axis that ends in a stepped pyramid more than 30 metres high. On its summit stood the royal linga Tribhuvaneshvara, which the inscriptions call kamrateng jagat ta rajya, ‘the god who is royalty’, and whose raising to such a height they praise as an unparalleled wonder; Coedès saw in it an innovation in the cult of divine kingship. Some forty temples were built in the years when Koh Ker was the capital, and more than 180 sanctuaries have been found within the protected area of 81 km².

Jayavarman IV, posthumously called Paramashivapada, died in 941, and his son Harshavarman II reigned for only two or three years. In 944 Rajendravarman II, a nephew of both Yashovarman I and Jayavarman IV who had inherited Bhavapura from his father, returned to Yashodharapura with the Devaraja; an inscription says that, like Kusha for Ayodhya, he ‘restored the sacred city of Yashodharapuri, which had been abandoned for a long time’. Koh Ker had been the capital for about twenty years.