Banteay Kdei

Before I go too much further, I should mention that the temples at Angkor are both Hindu and Buddhist. The Angkorian period began in AD 802, when the Khmer Hindu monarch Jayavarman II declared himself a "universal monarch" and "god-king." It wasn't until the end of the 12th Century that a descendant of Jayavarman II (Jayavarman VII to be exact), departed from the faith of his ancestors and adopted Mahayana Buddhism. The temples built from this time until the fall of the Angkor Empire (in 1431) were Buddhist, not Hindu. Banteay Kdei was one of these first Buddhist temples to be erected at Angkor.