Jayavarman V

JAYAVARMAN V, king of the KHMER EMPIRE from 968 AD to 1001 AD, in front of the 10th century temple of Banteay Srei in Angkor. The Khmer Empire emerged out of the previous kingdom of Chenla in 802 AD, centred around modern-day Cambodia, but also including the territories of modern-day Thailand and Laos, reaching as far north as southern China. The Khmers were the superpower of mainland Southeast Asia during the Medieval period, until 1431 AD, when their empire was finally conquered by the Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya, and Angkor was abandoned to be devoured by the jungle.

THE RISE OF THE KHMER EMPIRE: In 802 AD, only two years after the king of the Franks Charlemagne was proclaimed “emperor of the West”, in the opposite edge of Eurasia, the king of Chenla Jayavarman II returned from his exile in Java (then the naval superpower or maritime Southeast Asia) and founded the Khmer Empire, with its new capital at Angkor. The early Khmer kings were predominantly Shaivite Hindus, until the devout Buddhist king Jayavarman VII established Mahayana Buddhism as the state religion in 1177 AD. During its long history, the Khmers mostly rivalled with the neighbouring Champa kingdom of Vietnam. The Khmers originated from the native Austroasiatic-speaking tribes of mainland southeast Asia, known in Han-dynasty Chinese sources as the “Yue”, known for their tattooed bodies and animistic beliefs. Direct trade with India exposed those tribes to Hindu-Buddhist influence and Sanskritization since the turn of the Christian Era. From 50 AD to 627 AD, the Hindu-Buddhist kingdom of Funan emerged around the Mekong Delta, a distant trading partner of the Roman Empire. The fall of Rome and the subsequent Islamic expansion marked the end of Indo-Roman trade, and around the 6th century, the trade route linking the Mediterranean and India with China shifted to Java, making Funan lose its strategic commercial importance. While Java suddenly became heavily Indianized, Funan started drifting apart from India. Funan was succeeded by Chenla, a new state more focused on rice agriculture than international trade, and Chenla was in turn succeeded by the empire of Angkor.

I want to thank my friend Arjunan Ullas Kandanat for his hypothetical reconstruction of the tattoos based on available evidence, using script and motifs from the period, and making them appropriate for a Shaivite king of the 10th century. The idea was to avoid using modern “Sakyant” traditional Khmer tattoos that are done in a much later script, a later art style and with mostly Buddhist symbology and sacred texts.