Angkor Wat and The Khmer Empire of Cambodia - The kingdom of Wonder - weibo-cambodia

Angkor Wat and The Khmer Empire of Cambodia - The wonder of kingdom - weibo-cambodia

The Khmer Empire, now known as Cambodia, was the most powerful empire in Southeast Asia. The empire, which grew out of the former kingdom of Chenla, at times ruled over and/or vassalized parts of modern-day Laos, Thailand, and southern Vietnam. During the formation of the empire, the Khmer had close cultural, political and trade relations with Java, and later with the Srivijaya empire that lay beyond Khmer's southern border. Its greatest legacy is Angkor, in present-day Cambodia, which was the site of the capital city during the empire's zenith. Angkor bears testimony to the Khmer empire's immense power and wealth, as well as the variety of belief systems that it patronised over time. The empire's official religions included Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism, until Theravada Buddhism prevailed, even among the lower classes, after its introduction from Sri Lanka in the 13th century. Recently satellite imaging has revealed Angkor to be the largest pre-industrial urban center in the world.
The history of Angkor as the central area of settlement of the historical kingdom of Kambujadesa is also the history of the Khmer from the 9th to the 13th centuries. Arab writers of the 9th and 10th century hardly mention Europe for anything other than its backwardness but they consider the king of Al-Hind (India and Southeast Asia) as one of the 4 great kings in the world. The ruler of the Rashtrakuta Dynasty is described as the greatest king of Al-Hind but moreover even the lesser kings of Al-Hind including the kings of Java, Pagan Burma and the Khmer kings of Cambodia are invariably depicted by the Arabs as extremely powerful and as being equipped with vast armies of men, horses and often tens of thousands of elephants. They are also known to be in the possession of vast treasures of gold and silver.
Jayavarman II (r. 790-850) is widely regarded as a king who set the foundations of the Angkor period in Cambodian history, beginning with a grandiose consecration ritual that he conducted in 802 on the sacred Mount Mahendraparvata, now known as Phnom Kulen, to celebrate the independence of Kambuja from Javanese dominion. At that ceremony Prince Jayavarman II was proclaimed a universal monarch (Kamraten jagad ta Raja in Cambodian) or God King (Deva Raja in Sanskrit). According to some sources, Jayavarman II had resided for some time in Java during the reign of Sailendras, or "The Lords of Mountains", hence the concept of Deva Raja or God King was ostensibly imported from Java. At that time, Sailendras allegedly ruled over Java, Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula and parts of Cambodia.