Suryavarman I

Suryavarman I (Khmer: សូរ្យវរ្ម័នទី១; posthumously Nirvanapada) was king of the Khmer Empire from 1002 to 1050. Suryavarman usurped King Udayadityavarman I, defeating his armies in approximately 1002. After a protracted war with Udayadityavarman's would-be successor, Jayavirahvarman, Suryavarman I claimed the throne in 1010. His own inscriptions do not derive his title from his predecessors. K.275 states that he was born into the family of Indravarman I, and K.380 and K.660 that his queen Vīralakṣmī belonged to the line of Harṣavarman I and Īśānavarman II, while K.136 and K.161 concede that he had no claim by descent from the kings who immediately preceded him and took the kingdom by battle. Proposals that he originated instead in a ruling family in what is now Thailand or on the Malay Peninsula have been described by Michael Vickery as ingenious speculation for which convincing proof is lacking. The best known of those proposals, that he was the son of a king of Nakhon Si Thammarat, was Cœdès's own, and rested on the Tamnan Mulasasana, the Jinakalamali and the Cāmadevivaṃsa; in the study he published with Jean Boisselier in 1965, translated into Thai by Subhadradis Diskul, he no longer held it, and treated Lopburi art as descended from Dvaravati work rather than imported from Cambodia. Suryavarman was a MahayanaBuddhist who was also tolerant of the growing Theravada Buddhist presence in the Khmer kingdom.