Indrapura

Indrapura is the name of the first court of Jayavarman II before the Khmer empire was founded in 802, as the Sdok Kok Thom stele records. The inscription does not fix its place, but the country it points to is the Mekong plain of central Cambodia, where the river runs wide between the Great Lake and Phnom Penh. Near Kampong Cham stands Banteay Prei Nokor, a Bayon-style temple of black sandstone and laterite built in the last years of Jayavarman VII, who is believed to have used it as a headquarters for a time.

After Angkor, the river became Cambodia's road. Stone inscriptions fade in the fourteenth century, by which time Theravada Buddhism had become the state faith. After a Siamese intervention at Angkor around 1431, the court moved south to the Mekong, and Srey Santhor, upstream of Phnom Penh, was briefly capital from 1431 to 1434. Through the sixteenth century Longvek, on the same river, thrived on maritime trade until the Siamese took it in 1594. From the seventeenth century the Cambodian kings swung between Siamese and Vietnamese overlords.

The later city of Kampong Cham lies here.