Preah Khan is a modern name means ‘sacred sword’ of Khmer kingdom, a copy of which is kept in the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. The original name is Nagarajayashri means ‘the fortunate city of victory’. It was built by king Jayavarman VII between 1184 and 1191 for dedicating to his father ‘Dharanindravarman’, identified with the bodhisattva Lokeshvara. Pheah Khan was a university of Buddhist during that time.

…., there were according to the stele at Prah Khan more than 20,000 images in gold, silver, bronze and stone spread all over the kingdom, The service of their cult required 306, 372 servitors, living in 13,500 villages, and consuming 38,000 tons of rice yearly. And what riches were accumulated in these temples! Thousands of kilograms of gold and silver, tens of thousands of gems and pearls, without counting the enormous quantities of supplies of all sorts requisitioned for their sacred service (Coedes, p.105, 106).

Inside the temple of Prah Khan, the central image was surrounded by a whole pantheon, about which we know from the little inscriptions at the entrances to the chapels. A stele found in 1939 tells us there were 430 images. As at Ta Prohm the Sanskrit inscription gives us the list of necessary furnishings for the sacred service and for the maintenance of the personnel. They are the same provisions but even more plentiful, furnished either from the royal stores, or by the 5,324 villages, totaling 97,840 taxpayers of both sexes (Coedes, p. 97)

The stele at Prah Khan mentions one hundred and twenty-one ‘houses with fire’ constructed along the roads that fanned out over the kingdom, fifty-seven on the road from Angkor to the capital of Champa, seventeen on the road from Angkor to P’imai in the plateau of Korat, forty-four leading to some cities of which we still do not know the location, one at Phnom Chiso, two unidentified. These were rest houses of which a few have been found, and which were spaced from twelve to fifteen kilometers apart, a distance which could be covered in four or five hours on foot. We know eight of the seventeen which bordered the road from Angkor to P’imai. Beng Mealea, Ta Prohm, Prah Khan, Banteay Chmar, each has its own, constructed in the temple enclosure to the east of the temple entrance (Coedes, p. 101)