Word: avalokitesvara
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...most of the Angkor-related books hawked in the tatty gateway tourist town of Siem Reap. Those are mostly bogged down with encyclopedic elucidations of Hindu and Buddhist iconography, with which Zhou hardly bothers. The Bayon, with its weird smiling heads, widely considered to be hybrids of the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara's face and that of the Bayon's famous Buddhist builder, Jayavarman VII, is for Zhou simply a "gold tower." The few times he does play the amateur art historian or archaeologist, he gets it wrong, as when he mistakes a massive recumbent bronze Vishnu (now at Phnom Penh...
...forms and imagery arose from Indian roots. These early images appear fully formed, without any of the archaic crudity that normally attends the birth of a style. They can be marvelously refined, like the 7th century to 8th century standing figure of the Buddha of the afterlife, the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. There is a perfect balance between the abstraction of the limbs, the rich linear detail of the costume and the benign, almost feminine roundness of this Buddha's torso...
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