Yashovarman I (r. 889-910 c. e.) Yashovarman I (Protege of Renown) succeeded his father, Indravarman I, as king of Angkor in Cambodia in 889 c. e.
He moved his capital from hariharalaya to a new capital named yashodharapura. His state temple, known as the BAKHENG, was built atop a sandstone hill that dominates the flat plain north of the great lake. In addition to completing the INDRATATAKA, his father’s reservoir (baray), and its island temple of lolei, Yashovarman had the massive Yashodharatataka (eastern baray), a reservoir of unprecedented size northeast of his capital, built. Temples were also constructed on top of the other hills in the vicinity of angkor during his reign, and the king also founded ASHRAMAS, retreats for ascetics.
Yayoi During the late 18th century a number of burials were investigated in the vicinity of Fukuoka on the northern shore of Honshu Island, Japan. They were associated with bronze objects of clear chinese inspiration or origin, including mirrors, halberds, and daggers. Stone molds for casting such items were also recovered. Between 1781 and 1789 several bronze mirrors and iron swords were found in a burial urn at Ihara near Fukuoka. In 1822 the site of Mikimo on the northern shore of Kyushu facing Korea yielded bronze swords, spears, and halberds as well as 35 mirrors of a style attributable to the former HAN dynasty. There were also glass beads similar to specimens found in Korea. This site also contained prehistoric burial urns of a type now known to be typical of the Yayoi culture. The rediscovery of this site in 1974 led to the recovery of further bronzes and glass beads and posed the key issue of the relationship between the prehistoric people of Japan and the sophisticated states that existed to the west and north. The word Yayoi is taken from a suburb of Japan where characteristic pottery was first recognized in 1884. There are three major phases: early (300-100 B. C.E.), middle (100 B. C.E.-100 C. E.), and late (until 300 C. E.). In many respects, the Yayoi period remains controversial. The degree to which its origin resulted from a major movement of people into Japan from the mainland has clear implications for the origins of the Japanese themselves. Alternatively, was there minimal settlement but a strong current of diffusion of new ideas into islands long occupied by complex hunter-gatherers? During six or seven centuries of expansion and change, did the Yayoi people establish a state as complex as that described in the Chinese texts? These questions remain under review, but there can be no doubting the importance of the period in the establishment of the quintessential basis of Japanese statehood, the stable community of cultivators.
Yayoi is a vital phase in East Asia because it was during these six centuries that the foundations of Japanese civilization were created. These rested on the firm base of rice cultivation, linked with bronze and iron metallurgy and increasing contact with China and Korea. The issue of the origins of Yayoi have not been clearly resolved, even if the main points are evident: Rice farming in prepared fields, following the developed Chinese method, was established by about 300-200 B. C.E., along with local skills in bronze casting and iron working. During the middle Yayoi there was a marked expansion of agricultural settlement from Kyushu past the Inland Sea and into Honshu, while sharp social divisions and large regional polities were forming during the late Yayoi.
BEGINNINGS OF YAYOI CULTURE
At the inception of the Yayoi culture, however, Japan had for millennia been occupied by hunter-gatherer groups known collectively as Jomon. By the beginning of the first millennium b. c.e. knowledge and practice of rice cultivation were spreading into Korea, and it was only a matter of time before it crossed into the Japanese islands. The basic issue is whether rice farming was introduced along with bronze and iron metallurgy into northern Kyushu by a wave of immigrants or more gradually entered social contexts involving Jomon groups who in due course integrated rice farming into their long-established economy. At Itazuke, an important site in northern Kyushu, archaeologists have recovered early Yayoi style potsherds in association with Yusu ware. The Yusu ware has been assigned to the late Jomon culture, although there is a school of thought that assigns it to the Yayoi proper. Resolving this issue is relevant to the question of Yayoi origins, because the remains of wet-rice fields at Itazuke have been found in association with Yusu pottery alone. The recovery of rice fields in Kyushu with late Jomon material culture, however, should not occasion surprise; rather, it indicates contact with established rice-farming communities in Korea or even mainland China, a movement that must have involved the settlement of immigrant groups. This point does not rely only on the archaeological record of new subsistence activities and types of artifact. Although not abundant by any means, the remains of the actual people disclose that the Yayoi were taller than their Jomon counterparts, and their heads were of a different shape. Estimates of the population of Japan during the late Jomon period and that typical at the end of the Yayoi in terms of settlement sizes and numbers also indicate that there must have been a considerable degree of immigration.
Adoption of Rice Cultivation
The Yayoi rice fields represent from the beginning a sophisticated method of cultivation. It is known from Han tomb models in China that the construction of bunds around field plots to control the flow of water, linked with plowing and transplanting, underpinned the production of vital rice surpluses. This system appeared fully fledged in Japan, and it is hard not to see it as a wholesale adoption of an established system. The Yayoi people permanently occupied moated villages in proximity to their fields and maintained long-term cemeteries. Their tools of cultivation, as seen at the TORO site, were solidly constructed of wood. However, it is necessary to emphasize that there were other crops as well, some of which were better suited to dryland cultivation than to the marshy wetland cultivation suited to the rice plant. These included two varieties of millet, wheat, and barley. A range of fruits were consumed, and acorns and nuts collected. There is little evidence for the maintenance of domestic stock, but hunting and fishing were undertaken.
World History
