Suryavarman II builds Angkor Wat

Suryavarman II, a grandnephew of King Dharanindravarman I, won power in 1113 after a struggle which, according to his inscriptions, ended in a single day’s battle, claiming to have ‘united a double kingdom’; the Brahmin Divakarapandita performed his consecration. In George Coedès’ words he led the Khmer armies farther than they had ever been before. He restored relations with the Song court, which received his embassies in 1116 and 1120 and in 1128 granted him high titles; from 1128 he sent armies and a fleet of more than 700 vessels against Đại Việt without lasting success; in 1145 he occupied Vijaya, the capital of Champa, until the Chams drove the Khmers out in 1149; and his last expedition against Đại Việt, in 1150, ended in disaster in the rains of the Annamite range. The History of the Song describes his realm as reaching from the borders of Champa to Pagan and to the Malay Peninsula.

His greatest work was the temple now called Angkor Wat, ‘Temple City’. No foundation stele or contemporary inscription naming it has been found, and its dates are inferred from the reign: some recent accounts place the start of construction in 1122, and work stopped soon after the king’s death. Coedès regarded it as a funerary temple built in the king’s lifetime, in which Suryavarman was deified as Vishnu under the posthumous name Paramavishnuloka; its orientation to the west, unusual for a Khmer temple, has been read in the same sense. The outer wall measures 1,024 by 802 metres and is surrounded by a moat 190 metres wide; inside, three rectangular galleries, each higher than the last, rise to the central tower, 65 metres above the ground. The reliefs of the outer gallery show the Churning of the Ocean of Milk, the battles of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, the heavens and hells and — the only historical scene — a procession of Suryavarman II and his army. The sandstone came from Mount Kulen, about 40 km away.

The Vishnuism of Suryavarman’s court had its counterpart, Coedès noted, in Java, where the kings of Kediri presented themselves as incarnations of Vishnu. His successor was a cousin, and a generation of disorder followed that ended with the Cham sack of Angkor in 1177. Angkor Wat gradually became a Buddhist sanctuary and was never completely abandoned; since 1992 it has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage site of Angkor.