khajuraho

[Noel Salmond]

There have been oceans of ink spilled trying to explain the erotic 
temple carvings of India. To my knowledge, the most serious attempt 
in this field remains Devangana Desai, _Erotic Sculptures of India: A 
Socio-Cultural Study_ New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1975.

Desai reviews explanatory theories of this material and offers her 
own analysis. I believe the book is an outcome of her doctoral 
dissertation from the University of Bombay.

To my mind, the Khajuraho sculptures are a good example of the 
phenomenon which often occurs in art history wherein we lack 
explicit textual sources that tell us precisely what the intention of 
the visual artists was. Lacking this explicit explanation all we can 
do is juxtapose the visual record with texts that appear to be 
correlated with it. In terms of explanation sometimes this works, 
sometimes it doesn't. Erwin Goodenough demonstrated how the anomolous 
figurative frescos on the walls of the 3rd century synagogue of Dura 
Europus cannot be explained by reference to the Talmud.

Noel Salmond
Dept. of Religion
Bishop's University