Īśānavarman (, , Iśânasena), rendered Yīshēnàxiāndài () in Chinese sources, was king of Chenla from 616 to 637, in the polity that later became the Khmer Empire. He was the son and successor of Mahendravarman, and took Īśānapura as his capital, a city generally identified with the temple complex at Sambor Prei Kuk.
Chinese accounts describe a sumptuous court at Īśānapura attended by five great ministers, and his inscriptions claim authority over several further cities. Two of his sons held the office of svāmi at Jyeṣṭhapura, a polity in what is now Sa Kaeo province, and two inscriptions from Mueang Phaniet in Chanthaburi are assigned to his reign. Michael Vickery reads his reign, with those of Bhavavarman II and Jayavarman I, as a period of more sustained Chenla intervention in what is now eastern Thailand. A marriage into the Champa royal house, and a disputed claim of descent on a copper plate from Mueang Uthong in central Thailand, have both been read as ties of kinship rather than as rule.
Name and accession The name derives from Śiva, and Īśānavarman was also styled protégé of the master Śiva. He took Īśānapura as his capital after Mahendravarman's death; the Sambor Prei Kuk complex has been identified as that city, and its main temples are said to have been founded by him. The Book of Sui, compiled in 636, records that Zhēnlà was ruled at the beginning of the 7th century by Yīshēnàxiāndài.
A gold medallion reported to have been found in the region of Angkor Borei in 2012 carries a short Sanskrit legend on each face. Arlo Griffiths read them as īśānavarmma[ṇaḥ] and īśānapu(ra), which identifies the piece as a production of this king, and the obverse shows a recumbent humped bull, the vehicle of Śiva. Griffiths has since amended the reading, holding that the case endings need not be restored on so short a legend. Nicolas Revire notes that the king took his name from the god, Īśāna being an old honorific of Śiva-Rudra, and that he named his city after the same deity.
An incomplete Sanskrit inscription from the south gate of the Jami Masjid at Jaunpur has been called an inscription of Īśānavarman, but is traditionally ascribed to the Maukhari king Īśvaravarman of Kanauj, of the first half of the 6th century.
Inscriptions and claimed authority Inscriptions at Prasat Toc, Prasat Bayang, Vat Chakret, Kdei Ang Chumnik and Sambor Prei Kuk are attributed to his reign. The latest of them is dated 627, while the only dated inscription of his successor Bhavavarman II is of 639. Further texts are recorded at Kdei Ang, dated 667, Roban Romas, Kuk Prah Kot, Wat Chakret and Wat Po, and these claim authority over Tamrapura, Cakraṅkapura, Amoghapura and Bhīmapura. Ma Duanlin described a sumptuous court at Īśānapura, the king wearing a gold crown set with precious stones and pearl pendants and attended by five great ministers.
An incomplete inscription of the reign styles him a king of kings whose rule reached Samudra-paryanta Suvarṇabhūmi, Suvarṇabhūmi as far as the sea, with neighbouring kings honouring his orders. Vong Sotheara of the Royal University of Phnom Penh has argued that the text shows Suvarṇabhūmi to have been Khmer.
Dynastic connections outside Chenla A claim of descent from him was made outside Chenla. A copper-plate inscription of the mid-seventh century recovered within the ancient settlement of Mueang Uthong in central Thailand, K. 964, records that its author, Śrī Harṣavarman, came to power by regular succession and was a grandson of King Śrī Īśānavarman. John Guy takes the plate, which also records the gift of a kośa or precious-metal sheath for a Śiva liṅga, as evidence of a lineage connection between the Chenla court and a ruling house in the western Chao Phraya plain. Phuthorn Bhumadhon has questioned whether the plate can be read as evidence for a local kingdom there at all, suggesting that it may instead date from a period of Khmer occupation.
The plate's date is itself disputed. A palaeographic study by Kangwon Katchima, supported by Anurak Depimai, places its script in about the 8th or 9th century, well after Īśānavarman I's reign. On that reading the description of Harṣavarman as his nadda or grandson more plausibly denotes dynastic succession than literal descent, and Harṣavarman may have ruled Mueang Uthong as one of several Dvaravati capitals of the period. The mid-seventh-century reading nonetheless remains current. Robert Brown has argued that the Īśānavarman named in the plate can only be Īśānavarman I of Sambor Prei Kuk. Vickery holds that Śrī Harṣavarman probably headed a branch of Cambodian royalty with a centre of its own in what is now central or eastern Thailand. George Cœdès in 1958 and Claude Jacques in 1986 and 1989 had each questioned which Īśānavarman was meant, without proposing a replacement.
Revire warns against dating the plate from a single letter form. The short medial vertical of its ka is commonly read as a marker of post-Pallava script, and so of a date later than the seventh and eighth centuries. The same form appears in dated seventh-century inscriptions from southern Cambodia, K. 79 of 565 śaka (644 CE) and K. 50 and K. 582 of 589 śaka (667 CE), and he treats it as a possible regional variety instead. He adds that inscribed copper sheets, common in ancient India and Indonesia, are unknown in Cambodia, which bears on any suggestion that the plate reached Mueang Uthong from elsewhere.
Revire reports that the identification of the plate's Īśānavarman with the king of Sambor Prei Kuk is becoming increasingly accepted, while noting that Khmer epigraphy also knows a later Īśānavarman and two kings named Harṣavarman of the tenth century. On a tenth-century reading the term naptā used of Harṣavarman would mean a descendant, perhaps a nephew, rather than a grandson. He concludes only that the mainland polities of the period were probably linked by intermarriage, family ties or vassalage.
Two of his sons held the office of svāmi at Jyeṣṭhapura, a polity rather than a place name. It probably corresponds to the area around Prasat Khao Noi together with the ancient town of Mueang Phai (), both in Aranyaprathet district, present-day Sa Kaeo province. The Wat Kut Tae inscription (K. 1150 / P.Ch. 26) names Shivadatta svāmi of that polity and elder brother of Bhavavarman II, and Higham describes him as its governor. The badly worn Khao Noi inscription (K. 506 / P.Ch. 16), dated 637, records Vaiṣṇava dedications made there by Isvarakumara, likewise svāmi of Jyeṣṭhapura, who is styled bhṛtya or servant of a king whom Vickery takes to be Isanavarman I and Jacques to be Bhavavarman II. The title indicates subordination and not, in itself, descent.
Two further inscriptions, K. 502 and K. 503 from Mueang Phaniet in Chanthaburi, have also been assigned to his reign, and K. 503 carries the name Candhrapura, which Patcharaporn Ngernkerd and colleagues read as the polity at that town. Vickery instead places K. 502 in the time of Jayavarman I, with Īśānavarman named retrospectively.
Michael Vickery reads the reigns of Īśānavarman I, Bhavavarman II and Jayavarman I as a period of more prolonged and engaged political intervention. On his account each of the three maintained or sought relatively strong control of eastern Thailand.
Family Three sons are recorded. Shivadatta and Isvarakumara are named above; a third, the yuvarāja or crown prince, is not identified in any surviving record.
Īśānavarman also had a daughter, Sri Sarvani, who married a Cham prince, Jagaddharma, and became the mother of Vikrantavarman I of Champa (r. c. 653–686). Varis Domethong places Jagaddharma in the Gangaraja line of Champa. The marriage is recorded in a Sanskrit inscription from Mỹ Sơn (C. 96), dated 657 or 658. It states that Jagaddharma travelled to the town of Bhava, probably Bhavapura and perhaps a reference to Sambor Prei Kuk, and married the princess there. Their son Prakāśadharma took the Cham throne as Vikrantavarman I. This marriage, with the K. 964 claim of descent at Mueang Uthong, has been read as part of a network of kinship ties linking Īśānavarman's court to neighbouring polities rather than as direct administrative rule over them. On the same reading, Dvaravati and Si Thep, among others, ceased to be bound into that network not long after his death.
References
Sources Given as a paper to the colloquium Colloque George Cœdès aujourd'hui, Centre d'Anthropologie Sirindhorn, Bangkok, 9–10 September 1999.
External links
Cambodian rulers