Cambodia History

Foundation of the Empire

With this "universal monarch", begins the period known as "Angkor". The Khmer King first saw the religious foundations of the kingdom and lived in several capitals before settling in the Angkor region. After Jayavarman III, his son, a new line came to power.
From 877, Indravarman establish the basic principles were those of any time where the sacred Angkor, urban planning, and wealth formed three poles intimately intertwined and involved in the design of the Angkorian state. The planning was developed with the establishment of a new city in the present region of Angkor, which was added a large water tank, or "Baray, used to fuel both the city and its moat, to develop intensive rice production in territories normally dry.
This source of wealth associated with land development, enabled the rulers of their sacred dynasty: building religious temples in honor of his parents, the king's dynasty anchored in the religious conceptions of time and thereby legitimized its buildings and the wealth obtained.

Thus in 879, was founded the sanctuary of Preak Ko, whose six brick towers stuquées house three images of Shiva, associated with male ancestors of the sovereign and three images of the goddess for their wives. This set is the first example of the magnitude of temples called "ancestors" that the Khmer kings established thereafter, the benefit of their spiritual ancestors.

In 881, the construction of the temple pyramid Bakong appears as the first great "temple-mountain" of the Angkorian era and has long served as examples to Preah Ko In 889, a son of Indravarman received the Royal ondoyant as Yasovarman. He decided to build a new Baray (Yashodharatâka) even greater for developing greater quoted (Yasodharapura) centered on the hill of Phnom Bakeng. At its summit, stands the temple mountain of the sovereign on the linga (Yasodhareshvara) which included the characters and multiplied Bakong. All around the city, small shrines erected on the Phnom Krom and Phnom Dei were devoted to the Trimurti. The water in the Baray, it came from the Siem Reap river which rises in Phnom Kulen where were located the sacred places of the foundation with the Angkor site Kbal Spean. The prestige of this set lasted for centuries.

Links: | Cambodia History | Cambodia History the foundation of Angkor | Cambodia History Angkor Period | Cambodia History the fall of Angkor | Angkor | Angkor Wat | Preah Vihear | Cambodian Cultural Village | Bayon Angkor Thom | Banteay Srei temple | Beang Mealea | Phnom Bakheng | Phnom Kulen | Cambodia Architecture |