n soul and in images afford a good
theoretical basis for the worship of the Devaraja. It was also
agreeable to far-eastern ideas that religion and the state should be
closely associated and the Cambojan kings would be glad to imitate the
glories of the Son of Heaven. But probably a simpler cause tended to
unite church and state in all these Hindu colonies. In mediaeval India
the Brahmans became so powerful that they could claim to represent
religion and civilization apart from the state. But in Camboja and
Champa Brahmanic religion and civilization were bound up with the
state. Both were attacked by and ultimately succumbed to the same
enemies.

The Brahmanism of Camboja, as we know it from the inscriptions, was so
largely concerned with the worship of this "Royal God" that it might
almost be considered a department of the court. It seems to have been
thought essential to the dignity of a Sovereign who aspired to be more
than a local prince, that his Chaplain or preceptor should have a
pontifical position. A curious parallel to this is shown by those
mediaeval princes of eastern Europe who claimed for their chief bishops
the title of patriarch as a complement to their own imperial
pretensions. In its ultimate form the Cambojan hierarchy was the work
of Jayavarman II, who, it will be remembered, reestablished the
kingdom after an obscure but apparently disastrous interregnum. He
made the priesthood of the Royal God hereditary in the family of
Sivakaivalya and the sacerdotal dynasty thus founded enjoyed during
some centuries a power inferior only to that of the kings.

In the inscriptions of Sdok Kak Thom[284] the history of this family
is traced from the reign of Jayavarman II to 1052. The beginning of
the story as related in both the Sanskrit and Khmer texts is
interesting but obscure. It is to the effect that Jayavarman, anxious
to assure his position as an Emperor (Cakravartin) independent of
Java,[285] summoned from Janapada a Brahman called Hiranyadama,
learned in magic (siddhividya), who arranged the rules (viddhi) for
the worship of the Royal God and taught the king's Chaplain,
Sivakaivalya, four treatises called Vrah Vinasikha, Nayottara, Sammoha
and Sirascheda. These works are not otherwise known.[286] The king
made a solemn compact that "only the members of his (Sivakaivalya's)
maternal[287] family, men and women, should be Yajakas (sacrificers or
officiants) to the exclusion of all others." The restriction r