Erotic Art Sculptures-Khajuraho

"Let the Life enjoys traveling to Khajuraho"



One of the most popular tourist destinations in India, Khajuraho has the largest group of medieval Hindu and Jain temples famous for their erotic sculptures. It is located in the Madhya Pradesh, India located in about 385 miles southeast of Delhi.
The city was once the original capital of the Chandel Rajputs, a Hindu dynasty that ruled this part of India from the 10th to the 12th centuries. The Khajuraho temples were built over a span of a hundred years.
The whole area was enclosed by a wall with eight gates, each flanked by two golden palm trees. There were originally over 80 Hindu temples, of which only 22 now stand in a reasonable state of preservation, scattered over an area of about 8 square miles.
The Khajuraho temples, constructed with spiral superstructures, adhere to a northern Indian shikhara temple style. These shikharas -- subordinate and main -- attribute to the Khajuraho temples their unique splendor and special character. These temples of Khajuraho have sculptures that look very realistic and are studied even today.
The Khajuraho temples do not contain sexual or erotic art inside the temple or near the deities; however, some external carvings bear erotic art. Also, some of the temples that have two layers of walls have small erotic carvings on the outside of the inner wall. There are many interpretations of the erotic carvings. They portray that, for seeing the deity, one must leave his or her sexual desires outside the temple. They also show that divinity, such as the deities of the temples, is pure like the atma, which is not affected by sexual desires and other characteristics of the physical body. It has been suggested that these suggest tantric sexual practices. Meanwhile, the external curvature and carvings of the temples depict humans, human bodies, and the changes that occur in human bodies, as well as facts of life. Some 10% of the carvings contain sexual themes; those reportedly do not show deities, they show sexual activities between people. The rest depict the everyday life of the common Indian of the time when the carvings were made, and of various activities of other beings. For example, those depictions show women putting on makeup, musicians, potters, farmers, and other folks.