Khmer Empire
▶ Explore on the mapThe Khmer empire dominated mainland Southeast Asia from the early ninth to the fifteenth century, with its capital at Angkor in present-day Cambodia. Jayavarman II declared independence from Java in 802 and took the title of a god-king, a devaraja, establishing the religious and political pattern of the state. Suryavarman II built Angkor Wat in the early twelfth century as a temple to Vishnu, the largest religious building in the world, and the bas-reliefs that run round its galleries record processions, battles and myths. Jayavarman VII, a Buddhist, built the Bayon with its smiling faces, the city of Angkor Thom and a network of hospitals, and under his successors the empire reached its greatest extent, taking territory from Burma to Vietnam. The state controlled water on a colossal scale: barays, reservoirs tens of kilometres long, fed canals that watered rice fields through the dry season. Decline came gradually from the fourteenth century, as the reservoirs silted, Theravada Buddhism spread, and the Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya sacked the city in 1431; the court moved south, and Angkor was left to the forest until its rediscovery by European travellers. Angkor's temples were oriented to the cardinal points and to Mount Meru of Hindu myth.