March 15, 1999
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HERITAGE: KHAJURAHO Beyond the Erotica As Khajuraho prepares to celebrate its millennium, a host of new theories sprout to explain the enigma of sexuality in Indian culture. By S Kalidas and photographs by Bandeep SIngh
The timing couldn't have been more perfect. As the world prepares for the year 2000, the exquisitely adorned 10th and 11th century temples in the sleepy village of Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, complete a millennium of their own existence. On March 6, President K.R. Narayanan flags off the millennium celebrations which are slated to last a full year till the spring of next year. Ever since its "re-discovery" by an East India Company military officer, T.S. Burt, in 1839 Khajuraho has foxed historians and art lovers alike by its explicit sexual friezes. People have been so obsessed with the erotic motif on the walls of these temples that virtually all articulation about them has been limited to glib pillow-book copy replete with epithets like "The High Noon of Hindu Sexuality", "Temples of Love" and "Celestial Erotica".
So while Khajuraho has spawned a whole sex-tourism industry and tomes of glossy coffee-table erotica, it is only now that public gaze is being diverted to look beyond the sexual and see the temples as the last great flowering of Hindu architecture, temple iconography and Tantric cult worship. That Khajuraho has recently become the focus of serious study and debate by some historians and sociologists is in itself a pointer to changing attitudes. Till about a decade ago Khajuraho, even from the academic point of view, was a distinctly uncomfortable subject. Today the two newest works on it are authored by women. This shedding of vestigial Victorian values may well lead to a better understanding of the significance of sexuality in Indian society before the coming of foreign conquerors. Over the past two or three years at least two new theories have been put forth by historians to explain this fascinating facet of Hindu religious iconography. And now the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is also planning excavations in the vicinity of this World Heritage Site in the hope of unearthing more evidence to substantiate the hypotheses propounded by art historians.
Experts agree that while the ancient Hindus viewed sex without any embarrassment and that sringara or the erotic has always been the essential emotion in all Indian art, they were never so obsessed with it as to negate all other aspects of life. "Its importance depended on the stage of life you were in," says Pushpesh Pant of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, "As a grihastha or householder, kama (sex) and artha (money) were considered to be of prime importance. Just as learning was during brahmacharya (youth) and asceticism in sanyasa (old age)." The problem with Khajuraho in our times was that people were so wrapped up with those mithuna (erotic poses) friezes -- which incidentally cover only 8 to 10 per cent of the temple walls -- that "till recently scant attention was paid towards achieving a holistic view of the site," says A.K. Sinha, director of ancient monuments at the ASI.
What led the builders of Khajuraho to indulge in such a carnal celebration? Historian Romila Thapar says that the period around 1000 a.d., when the Chandela dynasty built these temples, "was an age of abandon, the lifting of puritan impress of Buddhism -- which associated pleasure with guilt -- led to a more uninhibited reference to sexual behaviour in both literature and the arts". Thapar cites the great "outburst of erotic poetry which is characteristic of this period" and says that while the devotional cults provided the theme of Radha-Krishna love as in 13th century poet Jayadeva's Geeta Govinda, "others such as Bilhana in Chaurapanchashika introduced erotic descriptions with a candour that did not require the disguise of a religious theme". However, now art historian Devangana Desai, who has been working extensively on erotic sculptures and religious iconography of India, finds this reading inadequate. "This symbology has always existed in our society. It did not suddenly manifest itself around the 10th century. The symbols of the yoni and the linga were there from pre-Aryan times, just as the unabashedly sensual works of Vatsayana (writer of the Kamasutra) and Kalidasa preceded Khajuraho and Geeta Govinda by over 600 years," says Desai. Her book The Religious Imagery of Khajuraho is considered the first serious unravelling of the complex symbology that lies behind the obvious eroticism found in the sculptures of Khajuraho. Another recent work on the subject that has attracted much attention and debate is Shobita Punja's Divine Ecstasy. Part reportage, part oral history with a dash of creative conjecture, Punja's highly readable and racy account dwells on the annual Shivratri festival which draws huge crowds to Khajuraho's only functioning temple, the Matangeshwar Mandir, with its huge Shiva linga. Basing her account on the belief of the rustic bhaktas (devotees), Punja picks up popular wisdom and postulates that the temples were built to commemorate the divine marriage of Shiva and Parvati. That explains the erotic motif and the presence of the beautiful women, who, according to Punja, were women of the town who had come out to watch Shiva's wedding procession. The erotic scenes depict the consummation of the marriage. A heavenly honeymoon, if you like. However, Desai and others, including the ASI, dismiss Punja's claim with a touch of disdain. "The account reads like fiction," asserts Desai. The bhandya chitra (erotic figures), according to Desai, are to be found in almost every temple built before -- or in many cases even after -- the coming of Islamic rulers. "While they may not be as obviously displayed or in such numbers as in some of the Khajuraho temples, such images were very much a part of the vaastu shilpa principles that governed temple building," she says. She attempts to explain the imagery of the Khajuraho erotica in the context of certain esoteric Tantric cults. Citing the use of double entendre in much of Tantra through the elaborate use of Sandhya Bhasha (the twilight language), she claims that the erotic figures actually hide within them the forms of certain yantras, or Tantric diagrams. "They even used images as puns. For example, the use of a scorpion on the thigh of a disrobing apsara points to the name of the place Khajuraho also -- the Sanskrit word for scorpion being kharjura," Desai says. "At the same time the scorpion also signified poisonous lust." The idea was to convey the secret message to the initiated while delighting and enticing the lay viewer to venture further in the spiritual field. Taking the theme of dualism further she observes that most of the erotic panels are to be found in the area between two important parts of the temple, the mahamandapa and the garbhagriha -- the sandhi (juncture where dualities meet) zone. For all the lascivious interest that the temples have evoked, very little is known about life in Khajuraho at the time of its Chandela builders apart from what has been salvaged from the ruins. While there are some stone and copper-plate inscriptions in Sanskrit that give us the names of the Chandela kings and their genealogy there are very few details about the reasons that caused these temples to be built or the occurrence of the erotic imagery. Besides, while most other old temple sites have some continuity of social and cultural institutions to boast of -- like the craftsmen, the weavers or the devadasis -- as in the temples of Orissa and Tamil Nadu, Khajuraho seems to exist in an unpopulated vacuum. Were there houses, palaces, schools and other secular buildings at the site? When were they abandoned? What were the social mores of the Chandelas? Were they a highly hedonistic and permissive society or simply pious adherents of Tantric cults? To solve such riddles the ASI is now planning to publish a definitive book on the life and times of the Chandelas. To be written by the well-known archaeologist Krishna Deva who has done a detailed study of the temples from an architectural viewpoint in the past. This new book is slated for release by March next year. Says Ajai Shankar, ASI's director-general: "We are not only in the process of conserving the temples but starting this year we plan to systematically dig some sites in the area which we have identified." Hopefully these will yield more information on the Chandelas and the community that inhabited the place which was once the capital of their vast kingdom. Given the national apathy towards its past unless the ASI begins soon there might not be much left to salvage from these mounds. There are several such mounds strewn all around Khajuraho. A visit to one of them shows not only the ravages of history but also the vandalism of man. A big Shiva linga perched over a hillock of broken figurines, fragments of friezes, a pedestal of an icon gone missing ... In places there are obvious telltale signs of freshly dug holes. As a solitary old man sits under a distant tree spinning thread, a host of village urchins emerge out of nowhere demanding bakshish. "Looking for the statues, are you?" asks one as you walk away, and the old man adds, "There are many in our village who have built whole houses out of the stones from this mound." But what is needed now is for the ASI to re-construct a whole story from these stones. |
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