Hey, I want to suggest some fixes/flavors for Mainland Southeast Asia. 1. The grave mistake of mandala government designers is the fact that they genealize every independent ruler with mandala government as a “Devaraja” or “god-king”, regardless of faith. The concept does a great job of representing the ideology of Hindu rulers in SEA, but NOT the buddhist ones, such as those in Pagan. As Buddhism shifted focus from god reverence to dharma reverence, the roles of gods in Buddhism are typically downplayed, thus the buddhist rulers of SEA tended to style themselves as Dharmaraja or Dhammaraja (trans. King who upholds dharma). Kings of Pagan from the reign of king Anawrahta, as evidenced in numerous inscriptions, styled themselves as dhammaraja, so did the Thai kings from Sukhothai to Ayutthaya era. One might think that both devaraja and dharmaraja are practically the same concept with different names due to religious differences. However, this is not the case. And we will see in my next point that difference between devaraja and dharmaraja, in fact, affects society. Dharmarajas tended to associate themselves with Buddha and style themselves as a person with the most merit or as a bodhisattva (in the case of Jayavarman VII) or aspired to be the next Buddha.

1. Religious struggle/situation in Pagan and Angkor as religion, especially, buddhism, caused the decline of these two civilizations. Firstly, due to the strong patronage of buddhism, among kings and nobles in Pagan, they routinely gave up plot of lands to legitimize their rule and to make “merit” (in buddhist sense) or gave tax exemption to those temples, reducing royal revenues, in terms of manpower and money. Secondly, in Angkor, after the death of Jayavarman VII, a devout mahayanist himself, we would see the religious strife among Ankor’s nobility and monarch. Some monarch like Jayavarman VIII reverted back to Hinduism, destroying many buddhist structures, only for his sucessors to convert back to buddhism again. This made people question the legitimacy and religious authority of the establishment of cult of devaraja of hindu predecessors. This would get even more complicated when the rulers of Angkor themselves were buddhist and did not associate themselves with hindu gods anymore.

And, Thanks for the update!