Some towns and cities of India can boast of either a glorious ancient past or magnificent temples that were constructed by powerful rulers. But none can rival Khajuraho for the exquisite sculpture which forms part of the 22 temples that still exist in this town in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh. In its heyday, the town could boast of as many as 85 grand temples, but many of these were destroyed either by ravages of nature, neglect or plunder. The ones that stand, especially those that form part of what is known as Western Group of Temples, are a living testimony to what must have been.
But there is another uniqueness. It has to do with the kind of sculptures that we see on the temple walls. They are bold — even by modern definitions of boldness. For want of a better term, they have been termed as ‘erotic’. This word has gained such currency that one of the many single-room tour agencies, located just outside the precincts of the temples, calls itself ‘Erotic Temple Tours’. These depictions on the outer walls of the temples are that of various stages of foreplay and sexually explicit scenes. For obvious reasons, they have been widely misinterpreted, and even condemned as ‘pornography’. It is easy to forget in such damning comments the remark of Scottish historian James Fergusson in 1910: “The most beautiful in form as well as the most elegant in detail of any of the temples now standing in India”. Khajuraho has the most distinctive form of architecture, setting it apart from other famous monuments such as the temples in Konark and Puri, as well the Ajanta and Ellora caves… even Fatehpur Sikri and the Taj Mahal.
An oft-asked question is: Why did the Chandella rulers who reigned supreme between the ninth and the 10th centuries, commission these ‘erotic’ sculptors on the outer walls of the temples? The Chandella kings were devotees of Lord Shiva, were god-fearing, their married lives were far removed from scandals, they were not debauched, and they upheld the highest levels of ethics and morality both in their personal lives and in their role as kings. The short answer is: They were not just liberal in their thought and action but also had a high understanding of the spiritual and the temporal — realising both the connect and the disconnect between the two. They had the courage to depict reality, and through them make the larger point of seeking spiritual enlightenment by cutting through the maze of bodily pleasures.
The ‘erotic’ sculptures are many and it’s impossible in the constraints of space to highlight them all. In the Lakshman temple, there is the Surasundaria showing off her lover’s nail-marks; in the Kankariya Mahadev temple, one can see an explicitly erotic scene depicting three women engaged in sexual activity with a man; the Lakshman temple also has a sculptor of a man engaged in a sexual act with a mare. Scenes of copulation are many on the outer temple walls in the Western Group of Temples — the most famous of the three groups of temples.
Thus, it’s true that pure sexual fantasies and physical union find space alongside that of bestial impulses. These sculptures are symbolic representations and not a celebration of the crass. They show, according to WA Smith’s Khajuraho Unveiled, that primitive concepts of life often blurred the difference between man and animal; the familiarity between the farmer and his livestock; various folklores and beliefs which held that intercourse with animals had curative effects. But more importantly, the ‘erotic’ sculptures aggressively demonstrated that “there is no shame or degradation in the notion of sexual conceptions of life and the deepest arduous of religion”.
The astounding and deeply arresting bold sculptures of Khajuraho temples indicate that ideas and beliefs, howsoever revolutionary and unpalatable to many, had a free say during the Chandella period. There is nothing to suggest that the Hindu faith was revolted by them; after all, the temples and the architecture in them — both within the temple and on the outer walls — were blessed by religious leaders (the chief pujari, for instance) of the time. There is the influence of Tantric belief. Tantrism has belonged to both the Shaiva and the Vaishnava sects. Tantrism traditionally has not frowned upon sexual union or depiction of such union, as it considers sex as natural. Tantric philosophy, indeed, holds the coupling as an act of creation and expression, almost divine in nature. ‘Satisfy all desires, and one will be able to find his true mooring in life, including that of the spiritual or the religious, thereafter’, seems to have been the underlying principle.
Let us not forget that the Linga and the Yoni have been mentioned in various Hindu sacred texts for their symbolic importance. (Essentially, the problem lies in people interpreting the Khajuraho sculptures in the literal or visual sense rather than understanding the symbolic context. The coming together of the male and the female (man and beast copulating have already been explained) is also the union of Purusha and Prakriti. Sandhya philosophy holds that Purusha is the unreal essence and Prakriti is Shakti. The first is male and the second, the inseparable female. Thus, Shiva does not exist without Shakti. The cosmic being, Purusha, manifests himself through his female counterpart, and also in three different forms: Celestial, individual, and elemental (with a dose of eroticism).
The symbolism of the Khajuraho temples should not be lost on anyone. The erotic sculptures are on the outer walls, while the inner is replete with various gods and goddesses. One leaves on the outside the sensory pleasures and enters the inside which is a world of higher understanding — the religious and the spiritual.
(The writer is an author, political commentator and public affairs analyst)
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