Cambodian temple art reveals a remarkably intimate dialogue between Brahmanical Hinduism and Buddhism, most visibly in the way deities are placed in shared visual space. Sculptures of Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma appear alongside images of the Buddha and bodhisattvas, and in some cases the same royal, ornamented style is used for both, so that a crowned Buddha visually echoes the splendor of Hindu gods and kings. Hindu gods such as Brahma and Indra may function as attendants or guardians in settings that are otherwise clearly Buddhist, suggesting not a replacement of one tradition by another but a reordering of a shared sacred hierarchy. This shared pantheon extends to royal imagery, where kings are portrayed simultaneously through the lens of the Hindu devarāja ideal and as bodhisattvas, embodying both divine sovereignty and Buddhist compassion.

Narrative reliefs further embody this fusion by placing Hindu and Buddhist sacred stories side by side on the same temple walls. Episodes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata are carved in stone near depictions of Jātaka tales, so that the heroic exploits of Rama or the Pandavas coexist with accounts of the Buddha’s previous lives. Great mythic scenes such as the Churning of the Ocean of Milk continue to adorn temple galleries even when those spaces are reoriented to Buddhist worship, allowing Hindu cosmogony to frame a Buddhist devotional environment. In this way, the narrative field of the temple becomes a shared scriptural landscape, where different paths of dharma are visually acknowledged rather than sharply divided.

Architectural and cosmological symbolism also bear the marks of this synthesis. Temple towers shaped as Hindu prasats can be crowned with Buddhist elements and filled with Buddha or bodhisattva images, while the overall layout still evokes Mount Meru, a cosmic axis meaningful to both traditions. Nāga balustrades and guardian figures, long associated with Hindu royal and cosmic symbolism, guide the devotee toward sanctuaries that now enshrine Buddhist images, and apsaras—celestial dancers rooted in Hindu mythology—grace the walls of thoroughly Buddhist monuments. Even when a shrine’s central image changes from a linga or Vishnu statue to a Buddha, the older Brahmanical carvings on lintels and pediments are often left intact, so that the stone itself bears witness to a spiritual continuum rather than a sharp break.

Within this shared sacred space, royal iconography becomes a particularly eloquent expression of fusion. Kings may be represented with attributes associated with Hindu deities while simultaneously embodying the virtues and salvific role of a bodhisattva, a visual theology that binds political authority to both Vedic sacrality and Buddhist soteriology. The coexistence of lingas and Buddha images, or the reuse of linga pedestals for Buddha statues, does not merely indicate practical adaptation; it hints at a vision in which different manifestations of the sacred are understood as complementary. Cambodian temple art, in this sense, does not simply juxtapose Hindu and Buddhist elements, but orchestrates them into a single, layered iconographic cosmos where multiple paths converge around a shared center of meaning.