The Bayon Smile
The Bayon smile is the serene, downcast smile of the great stone face-towers of the Bayon temple at Angkor Thom, built in the twelfth century under the Buddhist king Jayavarman VII. Scores of colossal faces, each several metres high, gaze from the four sides of the towers, and scholars debate whether they portray the king himself, the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, or the fusion of the two in the king's consecrated image. Khmer legend and local tradition read the many faces as the king's presence watching over his kingdom from every direction, a gaze both compassionate and sovereign. The temple