Bayon (heritage site)

The Bayon (ប្រាសាទបាយ័ន, Prasat Bayon) is the state temple of King Jayavarman VII at the center of Angkor Thom, in Angkor, Cambodia. Its towers carry great smiling stone faces that look out in every direction.

Illustration inspired by the temple's towers seen across a clearing.

Heritage site details
Khmer name	ប្រាសាទបាយ័ន
Also known as	Jayagiri (Chey Kiri)
Site type	Temple
Location	Angkor Thom, Angkor
Country	Cambodia
Period	Late 12th or early 13th century
Subjects	Religion & Spiritual Life; History & Remembrance

Name

The surviving evidence does not give a definite contemporary name for the monument, and no records of the temple itself survive. Its original name is given as Jayagiri, also Chey Kiri, meaning "Victory Mountain" or "Mountain of Brahma." The one contemporary inscription that may refer to it, in the reading of historian Michael Vickery, calls it madhyadri, "central mount." The name "Bayon" is a 19th-century French transcription of a name heard from local informants, and it likely comes from the Sanskrit paryanka, "a pedestal for sacred statues." Another account traces it to "Banyan Temple," as pronounced by Khmer restoration workers.

History

Jayavarman VII, who ruled from 1181 to about 1220, broke with Khmer tradition and adopted Mahayana Buddhism. He had the Bayon built around 1200 as the state temple of his new capital, Angkor Thom. It was the last state temple built at Angkor and the only one built mainly for Buddhist worship, though it also held many minor and local gods standing for the districts and cities of the realm. It was originally conceived as a Mahayana Buddhist monument centered on the cult of the Bodhisattva of compassion, and it was designed as the heart of the royal cult and as the king's own mausoleum. At its consecration the king was joined in symbol to the Buddha, and at his death his ashes would have been placed beneath the Buddha image. Work began near the end of his life.

Later kings remodeled the Bayon rather than building new state temples, adding both Buddhist and Hindu imagery. During the reign of Jayavarman VIII in the mid-13th century, the Khmer Empire reverted to Hinduism and the temple was altered. Many Buddhist images were defaced, and the central Buddha image was removed. Later, Theravada Buddhist changes were made, and Buddhist devotion at the temple returned as Cambodia turned to Theravada Buddhism in the 14th and 15th centuries. The temple was eventually abandoned to the jungle.

For a time dense jungle hid the temple's place at the center of Angkor Thom. It was first linked, wrongly, with Yasovarman I and the ninth century. A pediment found in 1925 showing Avalokiteśvara identified the Bayon as Buddhist and moved its date forward by about 300 years. Its first form, and the order in which it was built, are still not settled.

Architecture and layout

The Bayon stands at the exact center of Angkor Thom, and roads from the city's gates at the four cardinal points lead to it. The temple is oriented east, with its buildings set back west within enclosures running along an east-west axis. Unlike many Khmer temple complexes, Bayon has no separate enclosing wall or moat, relying instead on the defenses of Angkor Thom. Angkor Thom was laid out as a mandala, a diagram of the cosmos, with the Bayon at its center.

Its plan consists of three levels, with square galleries on the first two levels and a circular central sanctuary above them. The three levels were built to form a mountain linked in symbol to Mount Meru, the center of the cosmos in Buddhist and Hindu belief. The enclosures are tightly packed, creating a more compressed space than the open, monumental layout of Angkor Wat. Passages, stairs, and galleries form a maze in which the levels can be difficult to distinguish, while narrow walkways and low ceilings limit the available light. The first gallery was probably once roofed, perhaps in wood.

The circular central mass is an unusual feature in Khmer architecture. The central tower rises from a raised cross-shaped platform that once held the main image. It rises 43 meters (141 feet), and in the 13th century it was gilded, so that it stood as a golden mountain at the heart of the city. The Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan wrote that this Golden Tower marked the center of the kingdom.

The faces

The Bayon is best known for its towers carved on each side with serene, smiling stone faces. The faces share one style: broad smiles, open eyes, crowns and long earlobes with jeweled earrings. Most towers have four faces, while some have two or three, and the central tower has more than four. The faces once looked straight ahead; many had their eyes recut to look down.

Counts of the towers and faces differ. Britannica gives 54 towers, with 12 towers around the central one, and Encyclopedia.com gives 52. Only thirty-seven face-towers remain on the third level, while proposed reconstructions of the original number include both forty-nine and fifty-nine. One theory holds that 54 towers stood for the 54 provinces of the empire. The upper terrace carries 216 gigantic faces, and Tourism Cambodia counts more than 2,000 carved faces across the temple.

Who the faces show is not known for certain, in part because inscriptions that might have told may have been destroyed by later rulers. They are commonly read as images of Jayavarman VII and as signs of compassion and royal authority. Many identify them with Avalokiteśvara, or Lokeśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, and see in them the king's presence everywhere. Some faces appear to show the king in the form of Avalokiteśvara.

Art and inscriptions

The outer gallery reliefs were regarded as a major departure from earlier Angkorian examples in both subject and treatment. They are carved more deeply and less formally than those at Angkor Wat, usually in two or three rows. More than 11,000 figures fill the reliefs. The outer enclosure includes scenes of a marketplace and a woman having her fortune told, showing ordinary life in early-13th-century Cambodia. Other scenes show fishing, festivals, cockfights, jugglers, children at play and women nursing infants. The reliefs of the outer gallery also record conflict between the Khmer and Cham forces, including a naval battle on the Tonle Sap and army processions with musicians and war elephants. The galleries lack accompanying inscriptions, which makes the identification and sequence of some depicted events uncertain.

The inner gallery holds mainly mythological scenes. It was built in Jayavarman VII's time, though some of its reliefs were probably carved later. Among later additions is a depiction of Shiva in the southern section of the eastern gallery, probably from a later Hindu restoration. Vishnu appears almost only on the western side of the temple and Shiva most often on the southern side, while Buddhist images are on the north and east.

The inner sanctuary originally held a large sandstone image of the Buddha seated beneath the serpent Muchalinda. On the pillars of the entry towers, groups of three apsaras, celestial dancers, stand on lotuses, the middle one larger than the others.

Significance and conservation

The Bayon is a richly decorated Buddhist temple. Its reliefs of historical events, religion and daily life in the Khmer Empire make it an important visual record of Angkorian society. The Japanese Government Team for the Safeguarding of Angkor calls it "the most striking expression of the baroque style" of Khmer architecture. The Bayon is one of the earliest places of Buddhist worship in Cambodia and remains one of the country's main pilgrimage sites. It is part of the Angkor World Heritage property.

The École Française d'Extrême Orient led conservation during the first part of the 20th century, restoring the temple by anastylosis, a method of taking a structure apart and rebuilding it with its original stones. The Japanese Government Team for the Safeguarding of Angkor (JSA) was formed in 1994 under the UNESCO/Japan Funds-in-Trust, directed by Professor Takashi Nakagawa of Waseda University. Since 1995 it has been the main conservation body at the temple. The project works closely with the APSARA National Authority, and in 2005 it gave rise to the Japan-APSARA team for the Safeguard of Angkor.

The north library was in danger of collapse. When its foundations were taken apart in 1996, the team found that decayed building materials had caused them to sink. They packed the sand beneath with a traditional tamping tool called an "elephant's foot," added slaked lime and reused the original stones. The work was completed in August 1999, and a ceremony under the royal patronage of Queen Norodom Monineath marked it on September 29, 1999. JSA has held a symposium on the Bayon every year since 1996 with Cambodian authorities and international experts. On April 4, 2025, UNESCO marked 30 years of work by UNESCO, Japan and Cambodia to safeguard the temple.

Visiting

The Bayon stands 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) from both the north and south gates of Angkor Thom. A road surrounds it, and it can be entered from any side. The main entrance is from the east, where steps lead up to a terrace. The temple is part of the Small Circuit of the Angkor temples.

References