 Bayon
was the state temple of Jayavarman VII, a powerful ruler in the late 13th
century. The temple sat at the center of Angkor Thom, a walled city that
served as the capital of the Khmer Empire. Four of the city's five gates
sat on axis with the temple, and the walls of the city substituted for
the enclosure walls normally found at Khmer temples. The walls sit at
such a distance from the temple that the temple seems to rise abruptly
from the ground like an artificial mountain. In fact, the temple was intended
to evoke the form of Mt. Meru--the cosmic mountain at the center of the
world in Buddhist cosmology. In keeping with this cosmic symbolism, the
plan of the temple is based on a "yantra", a symbol used by
Tantric Buddhists as the basis of mandala diagrams that represent the
layout of the universe. The temple honored not just one deity, but a host
of gods found throughout the Khmer empire. Its central shrine held an
image of Jayavarman VII, who perhaps imagined himself as a god-King ruling
in the name of the Buddha.
 
The temple is best known today for the gigantic face sculptures that
adorn its thirty-seven surviving towers. Facing in four directions on
each tower, the faces are thought to represent Lokeshvara, a Buddhist
deity that projected benevolence outward to the four directions.
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