Angkor’s hydraulic cities crowned a thousand-year Kambuja
Khmer rulers built hydraulic cities across northern Cambodia under the name Kambuja, conventionally from Jayavarman II’s 802 universal-ruler rite on Phnom Kulen until 1431. Angkor—with Angkor Wat and the Bayon—anchors what scholars also call the Angkorian Empire.
The empire's founder spent years assembling it before the famous ceremony. A temple inscription at Sdok Kok Thom says that around 781 the prince Jayavarman II set up his capital at Indrapura, in Banteay Prey Nokor near modern Kampong Cham. Back in the former Chenla lands he defeated a string of rival kings, became ruler of Kambuja in 790, and moved his court inland to Mahendraparvata, north of the Tonlé Sap lake. There, in 802, he staged a Hindu-derived consecration in which he declared himself chakravartin, universal ruler, and devaraja, god-king, and proclaimed independence from a place the inscriptions call Java. The mountain is now Phnom Kulen. He reigned until 835 and, according to an inscription of 947, descended from the line of Rudravarman.
The people called their country Kambuja or Kambujadeśa, the land of the sons of Kambu, ancestors of the modern name Kampuchea. Modern scholars prefer Khmer Empire or Angkorian Empire. At its peak it ruled or held as vassals most of mainland Southeast Asia and reached into southern China.
Angkor, the capital at the empire's height, is its best-known legacy. Monuments such as Angkor Wat and the Bayon display wealth, artistic skill, engineering and a changing mix of patronised religions. Satellite surveys show that, between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, its water-management network made it the largest pre-industrial urban complex on earth.
Historians work from limited materials, since apart from inscriptions on stone no writings from the period survive. They rely on excavation, temple foundation steles recording royal deeds, wall reliefs showing markets, marches and palace life, and accounts by Chinese envoys and merchants. The end is traditionally dated to 1431, when Siamese Ayutthaya took Angkor, but the causes of collapse are debated. Research points to a spell of heavy monsoons followed by severe drought that damaged the waterworks, and swings between flood and drought may have pushed people south away from the great cities.
Source: Khmer Empire
