Bhavavarman I (; ) was a king of Chenla, which would later become the Khmer Empire.
Biography Though the full dates of his reign are uncertain, Coedès placed it at around the year 550, while Sharan's later epigraphic study dates it more specifically to 580–598. From his reading of the Ta Prohm Stèle, George Coedès understood a princess named Kambujarajalakshmi to have been Bhavavarman's queen, and that it was through her that he inherited the royal lineage. Coedès thought he was also very likely the grandson of the king of Funan, a neighboring and more powerful Cambodian kingdom. However subsequent research by the epigraphist Claude Jacques revealed that Kambuja-raja-lakshmi was the queen of another king, Harshavarman I, who reigned in 910–923 AD, long after the Funan period and so she could not have passed on the royal lineage to Bhavavarman.
According to Coedès, the main accomplishment of Bhavavarman's reign was the expansion of Kamboja into the Mekong river valley, attacking both Funan. The reasons for these attacks are not clear, but most likely revolve around the accession of Rudravarman to the throne of Funan; Rudravarman killed the legitimate heir to the throne, and Bhavavarman may have seen himself as a rightful member of that lineage. It is not clear, however, if he wanted to claim the throne of Funan for himself, or to simply see Rudravarman unseated so that the next legitimate heir could take it.
Bhavavarman's own parentage is disputed. An older reconstruction, following Michael Vickery, holds that his biological father was Prathivindravarman and that Vīravarman was only his stepfather, having married his widowed mother — under which Bhavavarman and his successor Mahendravarman would be maternal half-brothers rather than full brothers.Michael Vickery. (2003). Funan Reviewed: Deconstructing the Ancients. Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 90/91, 101–143. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43732647 This reconstruction rests in part on identifying Bhavavarman with the king named in the Ban Wang Phai inscription (K.978), found near Si Thep, Thailand, whose text describes its subject as the son of Prathivindravarman. Palaeographic redating of that inscription's script to after 627 CE by Kangwon Katchima, supported by Anurak Depimai, falls after Bhavavarman I's own reign on either dating above, making the identification unlikely; Depimai reads the inscription's king as probably a local Si Thep ruler unrelated to either Bhavavarman I or Bhavavarman II. On this reading the Wat Ban Khwao inscription, which names Vīravarman directly as father of both Bhavavarman and Mahendravarman, stands without needing a stepfather arrangement, making the two full brothers. He was succeeded by Mahendravarman, born Chitrasena, who took that reign name at his accession.Higham, C., 2014, Early Mainland Southeast Asia, Bangkok: River Books Co., Ltd.,
Chinese records of the time indicate that Chitrasena was responsible for the conquest of Funan. The Chinese records also indicate that, around this time, the king of Funan was replaced, and that the new king was a 'wicked king' who did not support Buddhism. Bhavavarman belonged to the traditional Shaivite religion of Kamboja.
References
George Coedès, "The Making of South-east Asia." London: Cox & Wyman Ltd, 1962. George Coedès, "La Stèle de Ta-Prohm", Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient (BEFEO), Hanoi, VI, 1906, pp. 44–81. Claude Jacques, “'Funan', 'Zhenla'. The reality concealed by these Chinese views of Indochina”, in R. B. Smith and W. Watson (eds.), Early South East Asia: Essays in Archaeology, History, and Historical Geography, New York, Oxford University Press, 1979, pp. 371–9, p. 373. Ha Van Tan, "Óc Eo: Endogenous and Exogenous Elements", Viet Nam Social Sciences, 1-2 (7-8), 1986, pp. 91–101, pp. 91–92.