Bhadravarman I is the earliest Cham king known both from his own inscriptions and, probably, from Chinese annals, where he is generally identified with the ruler recorded as Fan Hu Da. Reigning around 400 CE over the northern realm of Amaravati, he set up at Mỹ Sơn the first great foundation of the Cham temple religion: a sanctuary of Śiva whose linga he called Bhadreśvara, fusing his own name with that of the Lord. That act made him the historical founder of the royal Śaiva cult that would organize Cham sacred kingship for a thousand years, and though he is remembered as a mortal ruler rather than worshipped as a yang, his name lives on divinized in the god he created.