Reign of Suryavarman I at Angkor

Khmer inscriptions of the first decade of the 11th century name three rival kings: Udayadityavarman I, a nephew of Jayavarman V, who came to the throne in 1001; Jayaviravarman, who reigned at Angkor at least from 1003 to 1006; and Suryavarman, a prince who appears in 1001–1002 in the east of the country, at Sambor on the Mekong and near Kompong Thom. His inscriptions speak of a war of nine years in which sacred places were damaged; he was installed at Angkor about 1010 but later dated his reign from 1002. He claimed descent from Indravarman I through his mother, and his queen Viralakshmi seems to have been related to Jayaviravarman — perhaps, as George Coedès suggested, a marriage that lent legitimacy to his power. Coedès had once derived him from Nakhon Si Thammarat on the Malay Peninsula on the strength of late Thai chronicles, a view he later abandoned and that Michael Vickery called ingenious speculation.

In 1011 the officials of the realm swore an oath of loyalty to him, and its text, followed by long lists of their names, was engraved on the entrance pavilion of the royal palace at Angkor. His accession was apparently marked by the completion of the Phimeanakas and the Ta Keo; other works attributed to him include the temple of Phnom Chisor, parts of Preah Vihear on the Dângrêk escarpment and of Preah Khan of Kompong Svay, and Wat Ek near Battambang, and he settled the lands west of the Great Lake by founding temples and granting land. His rule reached the lower Chao Phraya: an inscription of 1022–1025 from Lopburi (Lavo) records Mahayana monks, Theravada elders (sthavira) and Brahmin yogis living side by side. He favoured Buddhism — hence his posthumous name Nirvanapada, ‘the king who has gone to nirvana’ — yet the hereditary priests of the royal cult of the devaraja kept their office.

Abroad, Suryavarman sought the friendship of the Chola king Rajendra I, to whom, according to a Chola copper-plate charter, he sent a war chariot. The Pali chronicles of Chiang Mai tell of wars between a ‘king of the Kambojas’ and the Mon kingdom of Haripunjaya, which Coedès was tempted to connect with him, while warning that these stories may be imaginary. Suryavarman died at the beginning of 1050 (a summary of the inscriptions gives 1049) and was succeeded by Udayadityavarman II, the builder of the Baphuon.