The book offers a deep insight into the religious life of ancient Southeast Asia, which had provided the backdrop to the veneration of Avalokitesvara, the Buddhist personification of Compassion. The visual representations portray him in an amazing variety of forms, reflecting the local adaptations of imported norms, to meet the spiritual obligations and the aesthetic aspirations of each community. Their iconographic details symbolically personify a series of religious ideologies, of human hope, basic needs and of yearning faith.