The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

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4 ii
causeways with bridges. On either side of the bridges
there are fifty-four stone demons, like stone generals,
gigantic and terrible. The five gates are identical. The
parapets of the bridges are of stone, carved in the
shape of nine-headed serpents. The fifty-four demons
hold the serpents in their hands. ... On the city gates
there are five stone heads ofBuddha, their faces turned
to the west, the middle one being adorned with gold.
The two sides of the gates are carved as elephants'
heads. The wall is entirely built of superimposed
blocks of stone. . . . The stones are carefully and
solidly joined, and no weeds grow on them. 23
We shall presently recognize all the elements
mentioned in this precise account. Referring
specifically to the Bayon, Chou Ta-kuan writes
'The centre of the realm is marked by a tower of
gold surrounded by more than twenty towers of
stone and a hundred stone chambers', a succinct
description of the sanctuary with its multiple
spires and maze of galleries.
In its
present form the monument has the
essential pyramidal elevation of many earlier
examples [339]. The most distinctive feature is
the carving of gigantic masks of the Bodhisattva
Lokesvara - 'the Lord of the World' - on the
four sides of each and every one of the towers. 24
Similar heads are repeated on the towers of the
chapels, at the corners of the city wall, and, as
Chou Ta-kuan noted, over the gateways at the
four points of the compass. The Bayon is in the
centre of the square city plan, from which intersecting
avenues radiate to the portals in the
walls [341]. These walls may be regarded as the
outer enclosure of the sanctuary and symbolically
intimately related to it.
The temple proper was the central mountain
or Meru, like the centre of earlier Khmer
341. Angkor Thorn
capitals ; here the symbolism extends to the city
walls, which stand for the cakravdla, the
circumambient mountain ranges around the
mythical world mountain; and the outer moat
completes the magic image as a likeness of the
ocean that girdles the world. The import of this
vast complex in architecture is completed by