The Bayon was the principal temple built by Jayavarman VII, situated within the walls of the City of Angkor Thom. Jayavarman VII was a Buddhist, but the Bayon contains elements of both Buddhism and Hinduism. It was originally dedicated to the god, [G 29 / Siva], and the initial plan was for only two levels to be built. During construction, it became a [G 21 / Mahayana] Buddhist temple and a third level was built and decorated with Buddha statues.
The early construction of the Bayon was similar to [G 26 / Preah] Khan, Ta Prohm and Banteay Kdei temples, all of which were horizontal temples. Jayavarman evidently later decided to build a pyramid temple, with the same symbolic form of Mount Meru being used again, only in a Buddhist temple. The third level with massive towers and mysterious [P 026 / carved faces] were added.
The whole building process took several decades and later structures were superimposed on the earlier design. This resulted in a mass of dark narrow corridors, some of which were in fact the spaces between walls dating from different periods. Sometimes stones laid later on destroyed earlier carvings made in the walls of the temple.
In the time of Chou Ta-Kuan (late 13th century), the towers of the Bayon were covered with gild, and on the east side of the temple there was a golden bridge guarded by golden lions. This gold was looted, probably by the Thais in the mid-15th century when they sacked Angkor. By the late 19th century, the Bayon had suffered great damage from the encroaching jungle. Unlike Angkor Wat, which had become a Buddhist shrine and had been carefully cleared of vegetation by Buddhist monks over the centuries, the Bayon had been left entirely to the mercy of the jungle for 450 years.
This third level of the Bayon temple is remarkable. There are [L3 214 / 54 towers], each headed by four faces of [G 02 / Avalokitesvara] which stare at the visitor from all angles. [L3 215 / P 029 / The bas-relief carvings at the Bayon] show an extraordinary tableaux of contemporary Cambodian life on the first level, and stories from the Hindu myths on the second level.
