The Khmer king behind Angkor Wat lost most of his wars
Suryavarman II gave the world Angkor Wat, the largest Hindu temple anywhere, dedicated to Vishnu and Shiva. He also reunited a fractured Khmer Empire and reopened relations with China. On the battlefield his record was far patchier: repeated invasions of Dai Viet to the east came to nothing, and his final expedition ended in disaster.
He seems to have grown up on a provincial estate while royal authority was crumbling, born in 1094 or 1098 to parents named in an inscription as Ksitindraditya and Narendralakshmi. As a young prince he pressed his claim to the throne, apparently defeating a southern rival from another royal line and then turning on his elderly great-uncle, King Dharanindravarman I. One inscription describes him leaping onto the enemy king's elephant and killing him, though scholars disagree about which opponent is meant.
He took power in 1113, when the aged Brahmin Divakarapandita presided over his enthronement, the third coronation that priest had performed; the same sage conducted his formal coronation in 1119. His name joins a Sanskrit root meaning sun with varman, a royal suffix borrowed from India's Pallava dynasty and usually rendered as shield or protector. After death he was known as Paramavishnuloka.
Vassals paid him tribute, but eastern campaigns went poorly. Vietnamese records say he marched 20,000 soldiers against Dai Viet in 1128 and was chased out, then sent more than 700 ships against its coast the following year. Joint Khmer and Cham invasions in 1132 and 1137 also failed. In 1145 he seized the Cham capital Vijaya and installed Harideva, said to be his wife's younger brother, as king, but Cham forces soon retook the city and killed him. An 1150 expedition collapsed when disease swept his troops.
Diplomacy served him better. In 1114 he sent a precious stone to the Chola emperor Kulothunga I in south India. In 1116 he resumed formal ties with China, whose court gave his 14-member embassy special garments, and in 1128 the emperor honoured him as a great vassal of the empire while the two states settled trade disputes. He died in 1150, and historians rank him among the empire's greatest rulers.
Source: Suryavarman II
