Khajuraho – another UNESCO site – is famed for its ‘erotics’ (sexually explicit sculptures). Built in the tenth to twelth centuries, the temples were abandoned or destroyed soon after they were built because of waves of Afghan invaders. They fell into disuse and were covered in jungle by the sixteenth century where they remained until the British brought them back into the public eye in 1838.
It is hard to convey just how intricately carved these temples are. There are many, many sculptures – all different. We worked our way round six temples during the course of the day. This morning, it was absolutely freezing and foggy and yet we were gripped as our excellent guide (another one) pointed out some of the most beautiful.
The sculptures are so lively and immensely detailed that it is hard to restrain onself – so perhaps the best thing to do is to introduce a few themes, and suggest you home in on the details of those that interest you. Remember that these are carved stone made in the tenth century! To get you tuned in, let’s start with the elephants. Zoom in to see the detail of their decoration and the people on their backs, and the people they are trampling:
Every elephant is different – and they surround the whole of this particular temple:
It’s impossible to convey the intricacy without now showing you where the row of elephants fit into the whole structure:- again zoom in to see more:
Okay – so now for some of the themes.
First – apsaras. These are celestial beings often shown dancing. But here we saw them undertaking a host of activites: putting red dye in their hair, taking thorns out of their feet, stretching when they got out of bed, looking in mirrors and dancing:
Next – gods. We have been learning the main pantheon (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva) but we completely lost it today when there appeared to be many, many variations of gods and goddesses we’d never heard of. How do we know they are gods? Because they have various symbolic objects in their hands and they have vehicles associated with them (eg Ganesh, the elephant god below, is associated with the rat as his vehicle):
And now for the erotic sculptures. They were on four of the temples we saw, but on the later one (built in the twelfth century) they were hidden away in an inner layer of carving. On one, they were a really major feature and this temple was thought to be Tantric (we learnt that there seven Tantric mother goddesses … I give up!). There are various theories as to why there were so many and why so exuberant – some suggesting that they were a guide to love-making (really?) – a visual Kama Sutra, some suggesting that they were associated with the Tantric cult which uses sex as an essential part of its ceremonies.
Here’s the temple where they are a major feature:
And here are some details of just a few of the sculptures from this temple. You do need to home in on the details:
Here are some from a couple of the other temples. Do look at the one with the elephant – all the other elephants were facing forward except for this one. But the others will probably raise eyebrows too.
Well = that’s probably enough of that now. We await comments!
Very impressive camera work, capturing all that gorgeous closeup detail high on the temple walls. And impressive sexual athleticism and imagination. Twould be fun to read the first Brits’ reactions to all this.
In terms of the sexual athleticism, our guide said the local name for some of the positions was : ‘ Mission Impossible’. I agree about wanting to know how those early Brits reacted when they started to uncover the temples – looking on the bright side, at least they didn’t hack off the erotic sculptures and ship them to private clients in Surrey…
Amazing carvings – they were obviously having a good time! At Konark were there are some similar carvings (but not as extensive) we were quaintly told how the erotic ecstasy was just a reflection of the spiritual ecstasy. Good story but……….. Much love to both of you
That’ll be the tantric explanation then for the very explicit carvings!
So they had a lot of fun.. in those days??
Great photos. One time we went, there was a large group of elderly Indian women giggling hysterically at the erotic carvings and wanting their photos taken with the carvings in the background. Maybe they though their love life needed spicing up though it seemed to me that there was a serious risk of injury in some of the poses.
That’s such a nice image of the giggling women – and see comment above about sexual positions and Missions Impossible
I’d say so! Some of the statues of women were extraordinary in the depiction of female desire ( a scorpion somewhere on the woman symbolised desire but you didn’t really need the scorpion to get the message)..
Response out of order!
Enitrely agree with Alson, above, about the risk of injury (not least, kicking horses) but I expect the depcitions are as much to do with a male sculptor’s fantasies than reality. But who knows!
I’m sure you’re right – we’ve seen impossibly large sculpted phalluses elsewhere in India!
What temples!
Fabulous erotica!
The carving was extraordinarily beautiful and expressive – and yes, the erotica certainly put Khajuraho on the map!