Mahendresvari who is the divine form (vrah rupa) of the lady Sri
Mahendralakshmi.

The presiding deity of the Bayon was Siva, adored under the form of
the linga. The principal external ornaments of the building are forty
towers each surmounted by four heads. These were formerly thought to
represent Brahma but there is little doubt that they are meant for
lingas bearing four faces of Siva, since each head has three
eyes. Such lingas are occasionally seen in India[281] and many metal
cases bearing faces and made to be fitted on lingas have been
discovered in Champa. These four-headed columns are found on the gates
of Angkor Thom as well as in the Bayon and are singularly impressive.
The emblem adored in the central shrine of the Bayon was probably a
linga but its title was _Kamraten jagat ta raja_ or _Devaraja_, the
king-god. More explicitly still it is styled _Kamraten jagat ta
rajya_, the god who is the kingdom. It typified and contained the
royal essence present in the living king of Camboja and in all her
kings. Several inscriptions make it clear that not only dead but
living people could be represented by statue-portraits which
identified them with a deity, and in one very remarkable record a
general offers to the king the booty he has captured, asking him to
present it "to your subtle ego who is Isvara dwelling in a golden
linga."[282] Thus this subtle ego dwells in a linga, is identical with
Siva, and manifests itself in the successive kings of the royal
house.

The practices described have some analogies in India. The custom of
describing the god of a temple by the name of the founder was known
there.[283] The veneration of ancestors is universal; there are some
mausolea (for instance at Ahar near Udeypore) and the notion that in
life the soul can reside elsewhere than in the body is an occasional
popular superstition. Still these ideas and practices are not
conspicuous features of Hinduism and the Cambojans had probably come
within the sphere of another influence. In all eastern Asia the
veneration of the dead is the fundamental and ubiquitous form of
religion and in China we find fully developed such ideas as that the
great should be buried in monumental tombs, that a spirit can be made
to reside in a tablet or image, and that the human soul is compound so
that portions of it can be in different places. These beliefs combined
with the Indian doctrine that the deity is manifested in
incarnations, in the huma