Prathivindravarman

Prathivindravarman emerges as a ruler conventionally placed in the mid-5th or mid-6th century through the testimony of the Wang Pai Inscription (K.978), which identifies him as the ruler of Si Thep, a principal city associated with Qiān Zhī Fú. The inscription, inscribed in Sanskrit with Pallava script, discovered approximately 10 kilometers north of Si Thep, was composed to commemorate the coronation of a king described as the grandson of a Cakravartin and the son of King Prathivindravarman, whose power is explicitly compared to that of King Bhavavarman I or Bhavavarman II or another Bhavavarman. The identity of this Cakravartin is itself disputed: George Cœdès proposed identifying him with Rudravarman, the last ruler of Funan's Candravaṃśa dynasty, whereas Claude Jacques has suggested instead that Prathivindravarman was a son of Devanika, a ruler whose name is recorded in Devanika Inscription (K.365), an identification that has in turn been disputed by Zakharov.

This ambiguity has generated sustained scholarly debate, particularly concerning the dynastic relationships implied by the text. Earlier historiographical traditions identify Bhavavarman I as the biological son of Vīravarman. More recent interpretations, however, propose that Vīravarman may instead have been Bhavavarman I’s stepfather, having married the widowed queen of Prathivindravarman. Under this reconstruction, Bhavavarman I would be understood as the biological son of Prathivindravarman and the adopted son of Vīravarman, a scenario that repositions Prathivindravarman as the foundational progenitor of this royal lineage. This reconstruction depends on treating Prathivindravarman's own son as Bhavavarman I; if instead, as argued below, the Wang Pai king was a separate local ruler, Vīravarman's paternity of Bhavavarman I would stand without requiring a stepfather arrangement, consistent with the Wat Ban Khwao inscription, which names Vīravarman as father of both Bhavavarman I and Mahendravarman.

Further controversy arises from palaeographic considerations. Some scholars argue that the letter forms employed in the Wang Pai Inscription correspond to post-627 stylistic conventions, raising the possibility that the Bhavavarman referenced in the text is not Bhavavarman I but rather Bhavavarman II, or another ruler bearing the same regnal name who was unrelated to both Bhavavarman I and Bhavavarman II of Chenla. Anurak Depimai has supported this redating and argued further that the king cannot have been Bhavavarman II either, since the Wat Kud Tae inscription identifies Bhavavarman II as a son of Isanavarman I rather than of Prathivindravarman; on this reading the Wang Pai king was most plausibly a local ruler of Si Thep who adopted Chenla-style royal titulature. Depimai likewise considers it unlikely that the king was the later, largely conjectural Bhavavarman III proposed by Claude Jacques for the period of Chenla's division into "Land Chenla" and "Water Chenla" (roughly the early-to-mid 8th century), a period considerably later than the inscription's redated script.