Banteay Kdei Temple

This guide to Banteay Kdei in Siem Reap begins with a 2000 excavation just north of the temple's eastern causeway, where a digger struck a headless Buddha and archaeologists from Sophia University uncovered a pit holding 274 beheaded sandstone Buddha fragments, sheltered under carved serpent hoods. Every head had been removed, yet nothing else about the statues was damaged, and someone afterward buried the pieces with apparent care rather than leaving them scattered. The guide considers thirteenth-century king Jayavarman the Eighth's turn away from Buddhism as one likely explanation, and asks who took the trouble to bury broken gods instead of discarding them.