Located one kilometer east of Angkor Thom, on the southern edge of the Eastern Baray, it was built during the reign of Jayavarman VII as a monastery and Buddhist Mahāyāna University under the name Rajavihara (King's Monastery). Jayavarman VII is the only Khmer king to have built two great temples. The first of the two, Ta Prohm was consecrated in 1186 and dedicated to the family of the king: the main idol (Prajnāpāramitā, the personification of wisdom) modeled on his mother, while the two satellite temples of the third enclosure were consecrated one to his guru (north) and the other to his older brother (south).

He will then build the Preah Khan in honor of his father, identified with Lokeśvara. A great builder, he also provided Angkor with many smaller buildings including the Banteay Kdei and built throughout the Khmer Empire of the time.

Unlike most other Angkor monuments, Ta Prohm was left in a state close to its re-discovery in the early twentieth century.

It has been chosen for this purpose by the French School of the Far East as "concession to the general taste for the picturesque" (Glaize).

Nevertheless, much work was needed to stabilize the ruins and to allow access to them, in order to maintain "this state of apparent negligence" (Freeman and Jacques).

An inscription on the Ta Prohm indicates that 12,640 people served in this temple alone. She also reports that more than 66,000 farmers produced more than 2,500 tons of rice a year to feed the multitude of priests, dancers and temple workers.

If we add three large temples (the Preah Khan and the two even larger ensembles of Angkor Wat and Bayon), we quickly reach 300,000 farmers, which is about half of the estimated population of Greater Angkor.

source