Khajuraho, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is a group of temples, both Hindu and Jain, about 350 miles south of Delhi. My hosts and I travelled there on the overnight train from Nizamuddin Station in Delhi (a hellhole; I was standing on a filthy platform in the cold, waiting for a train that was six hours late, as it turned from 2014 to 2015) to see these amazing buildings.
These are among the most stunning temples of India, more impressive than the ones at Bishnipur that I wrote about the other day, and rivaling the marble Dilwara Jain Temples at Mt. Abu in intricacy. (I saw those on my last trip to India.) What makes the Khajuraho temples even more amazing is their state of preservation: though they have been deliberately damaged in some places by both Muslims and collectors of artifacts (each small sculpture is worth a fortune), a large portion of the original carving is preserved. That’s amazing given that they date from the 10th and 11th centuries, and are thus a millennium old, and are also made of sandstone.
The buildings themselves are spread out over a wide area, but I’ll show photos of the main group in the town, which is amazingly untouristed given its world-class attraction.
The temples were, amazingly, built without mortar—held together only by skilled fitting and by metal joints. I show an original joint below, photographed at a temple outside of town that is being partly restored.
Some of the temples in town:
How did they build them? The sandstone was quarried nearby, dragged to the site, and then, like the pyramids, the buildings were constructed by starting at the bottom, and then building up earthen ramps as the temples grew taller. After completion, the earth was removed from around the building.
And original metal fastener between the sandstone blocks, pointed out to me by the supervisor of a temple being put back together. This is the only one I saw the whole time:
But it is of course the sculptures that made this place famous, and many are erotic, which are especially titillating to the tourist. I’ll show both types, but first a large-scale view of the decorations:
You can spot some of the erotic sculptures in the photos below:
Some of my favorite sculptures. First, Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of good luck:
Two apsaras, beautiful celestial females. The first one twerks, the second admires herself in a mirror; the third removes a thorn from her foot:
Woman reading what is apparently a distressing letter, which she holds (it’s a scroll) in her right hand:
Vishnu and consorts:
I was told this was unusual in two respects: the god has the head of a felid, and although it is supposed to be a male god, he had breasts to show his female aspect:
Musicians playing for the king:
The king:
Note sure who this is, perhaps Vishnu:
Large sculpture of woman and lion in front of a temple:
Woman tugging on her husband’s beard:
The famous statue of Nandi the bull, Shiva’s mount, in the “Nandi temple”:
Finally, a few of the many famous erotic sculptures. This is one religion that didn’t demonize sex!
Our guide told us that this represented a man playing with a monkey to keep the woman interested and thus prolong their intercourse:
The famous bestiality sculpture: man has congress with a horse while a woman watches in dismay:
Female masturbation: the woman on the left fondles her breasts, the one on the right her genitals:
Dismay over “doggy-style” intercourse:
The sculping is extradinary and impressive.
Aside: the Incas used to put H-shaped gold fasteners between their biggest stone blocks, because they were paranoid about earthquakes. Most if not all of these fasteners were useless, however, because the weight of the stone itself was far stronger any ‘staying force’ the fastener could provide. I wonder if the same is true for the Indian buildings?
The Greeks also used concealed metal fasteners to align and help secure stone work in certain situations. The Parthenon is the best known example (in ancient Greek architecture).
That’s because they didn’t have the concrete know how the Romans were forced to figure out (fewer quarries). I like to say “they knowa the cement” in an Italian accent when speaking about Romans. It’s why the Pantheon has the boring entrance that Agrippa sponsored with its post and lintel very Greek-y architecture and how the rest is a cavernous add-on created after perfecting cement and all it could do for them.
I should say “concrete” for the last sentence. My joking in Italian made me make an error.
It is called a cramp. In St.Paul’s Cathedral Christopher Wren used lead poured around the cramps to protect them from rusting & hold them in place. It worked to a limited degree but if the lead did not flow or was skimped on (no doubt some was flogged on the side!) then it rusted like the example above, & as the iron rusts it will crack huge blocks or lift stones out of place.
Ancient Greek cramps were typically made of bronze. Lead was commonly used to secure the bronze cramps in their sockets. The Greeks also commonly used dowels of various types, both wood and metal, to align stonework and prevent movement.
I just saw an episode of NOVA where they explained the architectural arms-race of building ever higher, internally spacious cathedrals. It was absolutely fascinating to learn about the various tricks they used to build a mountain of stone, seemingly suspended on air.
Arches….it’s all about arches that the Romans perfected with concrete.
Your Khajuraho link leads to American Red squirrel
Fixed, thanks.
Gorgeous architecture, and art. Nice pics Jerry. I think number 7 is my favorite architectural pic. Of the statuary the horse & woman is my favorite. The curves of each figure are pleasing in themselves, and the way the curves of the two figures compliment each other such that they seem to flow together very naturally is beautiful.
Astonishing. Added to my travel wish list.
And Jerry, your pics are way better than the Wikipedia article!
Jerry, thanks these are fantastic. It was great to see both the close-up pictures of sculptures, but also the longer shots that show the vast variety of sculptures in a single temple. This brought back great memories of my trip to Khajuraho, one of the most impressive and best-preserved temple sites in the world.
Are there any studies or commentaries about the nature and structure of the society that celebrated eroticism so openly?
And was it just the preserve of the upper castes?
Religion at its finest.
Human bonobos, practically.
Great question. The Kama Sutra is another magnificent gift to civilization.
Who the constructors were is well known, and nothing suggests that they were outside mainstream Indian society of the time. Khajuraho is also not the only temple complex in India to feature what would today be considered “erotic” sculptures.
It is interesting to contrast this openness with the prudishness of modern far right Hindu groups, who seem to have borrowed their notions of morality from Victorian England. It bears noting that the first Europeans to “discover” (in as much as something that was well known to the locals for centuries can be “”discovered”) Khajuraho haven been reported to describe it as a product of a “depraved” culture.
They should put some replicas of those gangbang sculptures in the Great Hall of the US Dept of Justice, just in case John Ashcroft ever returns.
Someone should organise Disapproving Tours of the site for Catholics.
It says something wonderful about a society that would devote such resources to public art.
b&
I want me dream house to look like that. And I am not sure the woman is looking on in dismay when her cohort is getting busy with the horse.
The multi-layered, complex, almost “fractal” appearance of these types of temples brings neurology to mind, especially that regarding the effects of psychotropic drugs and the architectural-type visions one can have while under the influence. It has never been firmly determined exactly what the “soma” referred to in ancient texts was; both powerful hashish and hallucinogenic mushrooms have been posited as candidates.
As someone who loved India, I’ve enjoyed your photos and discussion of the food (sublime…absolutely sublime.)
On a side note, we fired a ”local guide” who, as a Muslim flat-out REFUSED to show us any of the erotic carvings. We didn’t tip him for the first part of his ”service”, either.
Absolutely stunning.
Fabulous! Thanks!
I love the photos! The architecture is stunning!
6 hours late! I’m surprised that India still can’t get the trains running on time. But it reminds me of a story I heard from an Indian.
Some decades ago, he’d gone to the train station and settled in, like everyone else, for a long wait, as the train was expected to be at least 8 hours late, as usual. (The station officials would never admit it, repeatedly saying things like “There’s been a minor delay, but the train should arrive within half an hour!” But all the passengers knew the game.)
But to his absolute astonishment, the train pulled up right on time! And he was so overcome with surprise that he ran into the locomotive to congratulate the driver. “This is the only train that I’ve ever seen on time! You must be the best train driver in India!” Etc. And as he was showering the driver with praise, the driver looked more and more embarrassed, until he let out a groan and admitted “I am exactly 24 hours late!”
Re “6 hrs late”:
This is “fog season” in North India, and Railway rules demand that when visibility is lower than (I think) 500m, trains are not allowed to run faster than 30kmph (the usual speed would be in the regions of 100kmph). This of course causes very long delays for longer distances trains. I was recently in north India and a bout of rain on January 1 washed down the fog and had all the trains running on time right the day after our host’s journey (which was sort of annoying for me because I had factored in the fog delay for my travel, and hence had to reach my destination a good 10 hours before I wanted to) before the fog returned after a couple of days.
Amazing and disconcerting stuff. I am pretty sure that the sculpture you have credited as ‘dismay over doggy style intercourse’ is actually a rape scene though. It beggars belief, given the context, that a perfectly normal sexual act would be scandalous and the second man holding his erect penis looks a little menacing. What else could the onlooker be dismayed about except that the sex was forced?
Let’s be thankful that Christian rule was never imposed on India.