Khajuraho

[mrabe at artic.edu]

While I'd like to see another thread pursue questions of historical
precedent, back at least to the vedikA yakzis of Satavahana Sanchi and
Kusana Mathura, I'm convinced by Herman Goetz* that the most blatantly
erotic imagery of Khajuraho, is an ANOMALY:  "the most splendid shrines of
India erected by the then most powerful rulers of the North for a depraved
sect held in contempt by the most cultured people of that time." [*"The
Historical Background of the Great Temples of Khajuraho,"ed. H. Kulke,
Studies in the History, Religion and Art of Classical and Medieval India
(Weisbaden, 1974), p. 110]

This is not, let me hasten to add, gratuitious condemnation by an
unsympathetic outsider, but the official (& an orthodox Vaishnava) line as
advanced in the allegorical Sanskrit drama, the Prabodhachandrodaya of
Krishnamizra, a "....caustic condemnation of the Kaula-KApAlika teachings
and practices," written to celebrate the abhisheka of Chandella king
KIrtivarman in c. 1060!  Exclamation is called for by the fact that the
largest temple at Khajuraho, not coicidently the most prolific in its
sexual imgery, namely the Kandariya Mahadeo, was not yet 50 years old,
erected at the behest of earlier Chandella kings.  The plural alludes to
the very plausible suggestion by Goetz that the three successive panels of
copulating kings-&-multiple-yoginis stacked on its antarala walls (between
vimana and mandapa) may well portray the successive Chandella kings Dhanga,
Ganda and VidyAdhara (c. 999- c.1050).

Perhaps to say more, an illustrated article for IJTS is called for, huh, Enrica?


Michael Rabe
Saint Xavier University
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago