The Bayon Faces and Upper Terrace.

• The top of the Bayon Temple comprises the Upper Bayon Terrace and the numerous ''face'' towers of the Bayon. Each of these towers has two, three and sometimes four faces. These faces are all similar and have the same serene smile looking down. Hence the name '' Lokesvara '' [ as explained below ].
  
• There is a master central tower and numerous smaller towers located along the Inner Gallery each either above the entrances or above its corners and also above the chapels on the Upper Terrace. There is no recorded reason for the number of towers. Presently there are 37 but previously there were up to 49.
• The Central Tower was originally cruciform in shape but was later altered to its present circular form. The Bayon Tower height reaches 43 meters above the ground. When first constructed this Tower housed a stone image of Buddha which depicted Buddha seated in meditation beneath the Naga, ''Mucalinda'' shielding him with its many heads. When the Hindu resurgence destroyed much of Buddhist icons in the time of Jayavaram VIII, this image was removed, broken and dumped in a nearby well until recovered in 1933 by the French.
• The Bayon Temple and its surrounding Gates, walls and moats is Khmer Hindhu. The face on all these structures is probably that of the King, a God King, Jayarvarman VII, not that of Buddha and it portrays none of the classic art form styles of the Buddha. However the Temple originally did house a traditional Khmer Buddha stone iimage.
  

The meanings of ''Lokesvara'' and ''Bodhisattvas''

• Foreign Tourists from Thailand, China, Korea and Japan will find Angkor guide books on the meaning of Southeast Asia religious concepts confusing. This is because they parrot the writings of others whose minds are also constrained by the meanings of words and the scope of their imagination.
• The explanation of the Bayon faces is one such example. The Buddha was a teacher, not a God, who preached that there are no Gods. However many human beings can not accept this simple proposition as it leaves a vacuum in their structure of Society. This was particularly so in the Khmer Empire.
• Basically the ''Lokesvara'' is an Indian term to mean "Lord who looks down" and who is a member of the group of beings termed a ''Bodhisattva''. The origins of the term are Pali [ an ancient Indian language ] from the word ''Bodhisatta'' which was actually used by Buddha to refer to himself prior to his enlightenment.
  
• The term ''a Bodhisattva'' therefore connotes a being who is "bound for enlightenment", in other words, a person whose aim is to become fully enlightened. In the Pali canon, the Bodhisattva is also described as someone who is still subject to birth, illness, death, sorrow, defilement and delusion.
  
• The other issue of importance is that the face is always the same and many historians believe it also incorporates the image of Jayavarman VII himself. It was the practice of Khmer kings to mold their own images into the faces of images of the gods. In the Paris Museum, ''Musee Guimet'', is a contemporary Khmer image of Jayavarman VII which bears great similarity to the Bayon faces.
  
• So a modern day Buddhist tourist might wonder, what sort of ''Buddhist'' Temple is it ?
• Mainstream Theravada Buddhism, as in Thailand, does not worship any of the Mahayana Bodhisattvas. For them, this is not Buddhism. The Tower did house a classic Buddha statue being that in the form of Buddha Under Naga, always very popular in Thailand and other parts of Southeast Asia.