It was one thing to build an empire, and quite another to hold it together—something the descendants of Genghis
Jayavarman VII
The name Pachacutec is hardly a household word for most Westerners, even in America, though it deserves to be—and much the same can be said of Cambodia's Jayavarman VII (c. 1120-c. 1219). Just as Pachacutec built, but did not establish, the Inca Empire, so Jayavarman took the already established Khmer (k'MEER) or Angkor (AHNG-kohr) Empire to a much greater level than before. Not only was he—again like Pachacutec—an empire-builder in the sense that he conquered other lands, he too built in the literal sense. As Pachacutec rebuilt Cuzco after its destruction by enemies, Jayavarman built up two of the world's most extraordinary monuments, the temple cities of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom (TOHM).
The Khmers, as the Cambodians of medieval times were known, had long been in contact with India, and had adopted the Hindu religion from the latter. The first powerful Khmer king, Jayavarman II
(ruled c. 790-850), founder of the empire, established Hinduism as the state religion. Some time after 900, the Khmers carved Angkor Thom out of the jungle. Angkor Thom covered some five square miles, and included a moat, high walls, temples, palaces, and a tower, all carved in detail with images of Hindu gods.
Suryavarman II (ruled 1113-50) began the building of Angkor Wat, which is the more famous—though actually the smaller—of the two temple cities. He also conquered a number of surrounding kingdoms, but after his death the empire went into a period of decline when it was ruled first by the father and then the brother of Jayavarman VII.
Little is known about Jayavarman's early life, though it is clear he grew up as a member of the royal family in Angkor. His first wife was a devout Buddhist who strongly influenced him, but given the many similarities between Buddhism and
Khan, for instance, failed to do. Given their lack of a written language, it was all the more important for Pachacutec to impose a single spoken language on the people he conquered as a way of knitting them together. Soon the Incas' language, Quechua (KECH-oo-ah), became the region's lingua franca, a common language for people whose native languages differed.
To reduce threats from potentially hostile groups, Pachacutec sometimes ordered tribes to relocate. Thus he separated them from their homelands, where they might develop a base of support for future resistance. In line with his pol-
Hinduism—including its belief in reincarnation, or the cycle of repeated death and rebirth—this did not bring him into conflict with the established religion. After the death of his first wife, he married her sister, also a strong Buddhist.
Meanwhile, the empire weakened under his brother's rule, and the Champas in what is now Vietnam took the opportunity to invade. They even occupied Angkor Wat until Jayavarman VII drove them out in 1181. After achieving victory, he was crowned emperor at the age of sixty-one.
Jayavarman would live for thirty more years, during which time he expanded the empire into parts of what is now Vietnam, Laos, Malaysia, and Burma. Despite these conquests, however, he devoted most of his attention to extensive programs of building and rebuilding. Much of the glory of Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat are a result of his efforts to expand and beautify those cities; in addition, he built a
Large network of highways complete with rest houses, as well as some one hundred hospitals.
The pace of Jayavarman's building projects was extremely quick, and in some cases the workmanship shows this fact. It is likely that he felt a sense of urgency due to his advanced age. It is also possible that he suffered from leprosy, a dreaded disease involving gradual wasting of muscles, deformity, and paralysis, which was relatively common until modern times. Whatever the case, he lived to the age of ninety-one.
When he died, Jayavarman left behind considerable physical evidence that he had once ruled a great and mighty em-pire—an empire that, like the Incas', was doomed to be overtaken by outside invaders, in this case from Thailand. In 1431, about the time Pachacutec was beginning his career, the Thais completed their conquest of the Angkor Empire.
Icy of not making Inca rule too harsh on the conquered peoples, however, Pachacutec's government pursued its relocation policy with care, for instance not moving people from the lowlands to the high mountains where the thin air and cold climate might cause deaths.
World History
