Bayon Temple

You walk in under the trees, and slowly you feel that you are being watched. You look up. A face looks back at you from the gray stone, calm and still, the eyes half closed. Then you see another beside it. And another above. Soon you understand that the whole tower is made of faces, turned out to every side, smiling down on you in silence.

This is the Bayon. It sits at the exact center of the old walled city of Angkor Thom. A king named Jayavarman the Seventh raised it in the late twelfth century, after he drove out invaders and took back his land. It was the state temple of his reign. From this point, the four main roads of the city run out to the four gates in the wall.

The towers are what people come to see. More than thirty of them still stand, and many carry giant faces cut into the stone. Each face has heavy lids, a broad nose, and lips bent into a faint smile. The look is gentle and far away. The same calm expression repeats, again and again, until you lose count of how many eyes rest upon you.

Who is the face? Scholars still ask this. Many believe it shows Avalokiteshvara, the being of pure mercy in the Buddhist faith, who looks with care upon all living things. Others see the features of the king himself, joined with the holy figure. Perhaps it is both at once. The king watches over his people, and mercy watches over the king.

The Bayon was built as a Buddhist temple. But the faith of the kingdom did not hold steady. After Jayavarman died, later rulers turned back toward the Hindu gods. Images were cut away and changed. Then Buddhism returned once more. The stones here carry the marks of all these turns, layered one over the other through the centuries. Look with care, and you may see where old carvings were chipped out and new ones set in their place.

Come down from the upper level and walk the outer gallery. The walls here are covered with carved scenes, but not of gods. These show daily life in the kingdom long ago. Fishermen pull at their nets. Cooks bend over their pots. Women sell goods at market. Soldiers march to war against the Cham, their boats locked together on the lake.

Move slowly past these panels. They are a window into ordinary days, eight hundred years gone. A man plays a board game. A woman gives birth, helped by others. A cart rolls along a road. Two men lean close in talk. A cook turns a fish above the fire. The kings and the gods fill the grand temples, but here, on these walls, the common people of Angkor live on in the stone.

Step back into the heart of the temple. The plan is tight and complex, a maze of narrow halls and sudden stairs. Stone passages turn and cross. Light falls in hard shafts through the gaps above. It is easy to lose your way here for a while. Let yourself wander. Around each corner, another face waits to meet your eye.

Find a quiet spot and look closely at a single face. See how the stone has weathered. Moss has gathered in the carved lines. Rain has softened the edges over time. The nose of one face may be chipped, the brow of another worn smooth. And yet the smile holds. Whatever the carver felt when the work was new, that feeling still reaches you now, across all the years between.

The Bayon does not rise high and clean like Angkor Wat. It is darker, closer, more strange. It does not stand apart from you. It surrounds you and looks back at you. Many who come here say it is the most human of all the temples, because everywhere you turn, a face is there to meet your own.

Think of Jayavarman the Seventh, the king who made this place. He built roads and rest houses and places of healing across his land. He raised this temple of countless faces above the center of his city. He wished, perhaps, to be present everywhere, watching over all. Long after his death, in stone at least, that wish has held true.

Before you leave, find one last face and hold its gaze. The eyes are lowered, the mouth at rest. The stone has nothing to prove and nowhere to go. It has watched the sun cross this sky for eight hundred years, and it will watch tomorrow, the same calm smile turned out upon the quiet trees.