Bayon Buddha

The Bayon Buddha is a large stone Buddha image seated on a naga, found in pieces in 1933 beneath the central shrine of the Bayon in Angkor Thom. The statue was reassembled, and in 1935 King Sisowath Monivong had it reconsecrated on a Buddhist terrace about 500 meters (1,640 feet) from the Bayon. It is often linked with King Jayavarman VII, who built the Bayon, and when it was found it was at once taken to be the temple's central image.

The Bayon Buddha in its shrine at Preah Vihear Pram Pi Lveng, Angkor Thom, 2014. Photo: Michael Gunther, CC BY-SA 4.0

Cultural object details
Object type	Sculpture
Material	Sandstone
Period	Late 12th century
Subjects	Religion & Spiritual Life; Visual Arts & Design

Description

The Buddha sits in meditation on a many-headed serpent, or naga, whose raised heads form a canopy over him. Glaize described the statue as sitting on the naga's coils. Cambodianess describes the serpent as having seven heads. The statue is 3.6 meters (11.8 feet) high and weighs 15 tonnes (16.5 short tons). In a footnote, Polkinghorne, Pottier and Fischer give the same height of 3.6 meters, 4.7 meters (15.4 feet) including the pedestal, and a width of about 1.67 meters (5.5 feet).

The image is carved in an unusual white sandstone. In a further footnote, the authors set it apart from the stone typical of Bayon-style sculpture. Its excavator, Georges-Alexandre Trouvé, at first mistook the stone for limestone. The face, body and pose resemble the statues often called portraits of Jayavarman VII. Meditation shows in the half-closed eyes, which evoke compassion. The hair is carved in small, low-relief spirals. The ears are stylized and join the torso, and the chest appears bare; the way the left arm joins the body hints at a robe. Maurice Glaize wrote that the statue's features probably portrayed Jayavarman VII himself, and he called the statue the "Buddha-King".

The statue sits on an octagonal pedestal of interlocking blocks, in four eight-sided courses and two round ones. Polkinghorne, Pottier and Fischer wrote that not all of the pedestal's sandstone blocks were recovered from the shrine, and that laterite took the place of the missing blocks during restoration.

Discovery

In August 1933 Trouvé, newly appointed conservator of Angkor for the École française d'Extrême-Orient, had his workers clean the inner room of the Bayon's central shrine. On August 16 a square pit showed beneath the floor. The next day the first fragments of the Buddha, beginning with the head, came out of the pit. Glaize gave the depth of the find as 14 meters (46 feet). Polkinghorne, Pottier and Fischer wrote that almost all the fragments lay in the top 5 meters (16 feet) and the deepest finds at 12.5 meters (41 feet). In their account Trouvé dug down to 14 meters, where he reached the water table.

Through August and September the whole statue and its pedestal were lifted out, and by October it had been put back together in a lower courtyard of the Bayon. Among the deepest finds were two of the statue's thumbs and the head of a much smaller Buddha image. Trouvé received a medal of the Royal Order of Monisaraphon for the discovery.

Reconsecration

The Buddha was at once taken to be the Bayon's original image. On May 17, 1935, it was presented to King Sisowath Monivong. Polkinghorne, Pottier and Fischer wrote that on that day the king had the statue set up on Prasat Prampil Lavaeng (Buddhist Terrace No. 1) and consecrated again. The terrace lies beside the Royal Way opposite the Terrace of the Elephants, and the statue was there as of 2013. Glaize located it on the south side of the Victory Gate road, near Angkor Thom's royal square, in a small pavilion roofed with tiles. Elsewhere he described a large pool on each side of the road to the Victory Gate, in a corner formed by the Prasat Suor Prat, each 80 by 60 meters (262 by 197 feet) and edged with steps. Behind the southern pool, he wrote, lies a Buddhist terrace in good condition, altered to receive the statue.

Meaning

Cœdès believed that the statue was also a deified image of Jayavarman VII. Mus and B.-P. Groslier saw it as a symbol of the king as the "great genie of the kingdom", gathering the earth's territorial spirits at his feet. The statue is not recorded in any inscription, either at the Bayon or at any other monument from Jayavarman VII's reign.

The statue is taller and wider than the doors of the room where it was found. Jacques and Cunin held that it was set in place before the central tower was built, while Dumarçay suggested that it was carried in lying lengthwise, as Trouvé later took it out. If it could pass the doors that way, Polkinghorne, Pottier and Fischer wrote, it could have been brought in at any later time, so it cannot be confirmed as the temple's first image. Similar images were found at Nokor Krau, on the north bank of the eastern part of Angkor Thom's north moat, and at Ta Prohm. In a footnote the authors record that both lack their heads and naga hoods, and that each is about 2.1 meters (6.9 feet) tall, measured from the neck down to the bottom of the coils.

Date and burial

The statue probably dates from the late 12th century. Its burial in the pit has usually been treated as part of a destruction of Buddhist images that followed Jayavarman VII's reign. In a footnote, Polkinghorne, Pottier and Fischer cite Cœdès and Jacques for the notional attribution of the first phase of that destruction to Jayavarman VIII, and write that it rests only on hypothesis. Cambodianess wrote that no conclusive evidence had pointed to the statue's exact origin or to why it was broken.

Polkinghorne, Pottier and Fischer judged it implausible that the statue played a part in that destruction. In their view the octagonal pedestal, unlike any other in Khmer sculpture, was made in the 15th century at the earliest, probably replacing an original square base. They read flat chisel marks on its blocks as evidence of a restoration of the pedestal in the 16th century or later. Small dowel holes in all but the two lowest courses of the pedestal, with traces of metal, suggested to them that the pedestal once carried a metal cladding. On grounds of style, they attributed the small Buddha head found in the pit to the early 15th century and the early style of Ayutthaya. They also noted that, once reassembled, the statue does not appear to bear the defacing that a ritual removal of its sanctity would require. They concluded that from the late 12th century until at least the mid-15th, the statue was probably the Bayon's central image. If the statue was thrown into a pit dug by looters after its 16th-century restoration, they wrote, its part in the so-called destruction said to have taken place in the 13th century is open to question.

Following Trouvé, they considered it probable that the statue was broken by vandals or by looters who had robbed the Bayon's sacred deposit, and that its pieces were used to fill their pit. In the Bayon's South Library, Chinese ceramics were excavated from a ritual pit that had been looted. The authors suggested that robbers may have left the ceramics behind while plundering the library's sacred deposit, which could date the plundering to the 18th century. In their reading, the looted pit in the central shrine was filled at the same time.

Location

As of August 2026, the statue is in a shrine on a terrace at the site known as Preah Vihear Pram Pi Lveng Pagoda. The terrace lies beside an Angkorian road that runs to the royal palace, about 500 meters (1,640 feet) from the Bayon. The Buddha sits on a pedestal of several tiers. Visitors to the shrine meet the smell of burning incense and the light of candles. Signs of erosion and of restoration are visible at the site. Pilgrims have visited the statue for decades. The site lies within the Angkor Archaeological Park, which international visitors enter with an Angkor Pass.

References