Khajuraho, India - Travel Photos by Galen R Frysinger, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

Khajuraho

From the Gupta period onward Hindu temples tended to become larger and more prominent, and their architecture developed in distinctive regional styles. In northern India the best remaining Hindu temples are found in the town of Khajurāho in northern Madhya Pradesh.

the entrance

. The most important Khajurāho temples were built during the 11th century.

In the temple the god was worshiped by the rites of puja (reverencing a sacred being or object) as though the worshipers were serving a great king. In the important temples a large staff of trained officiants waited on the god. He was awakened in the morning along with his goddess, washed, clothed and fed, placed in his shrine to give audience to his subjects, praised and entertained throughout the day, ceremoniously fed, undressed, and put to bed at night. Worshipers sang, burned lamps, waved lights before the divine image, and performed other acts of homage.

The god's dancing girls (devadasis) performed before him at regular intervals, watched by the officiants and lay worshipers, who were his courtiers. These women, either the daughters of devadasis or girls dedicated in childhood, may have also served as prostitutes. The association of dedicated prostitutes with certain Hindu shrines can be traced back to before the Christian era.

Lakshmana Temple

the interior

the dome

With the 10th century, the conventions of North Indian sculpture became fairly well established. The style is represented by examples from such monuments as the Lakmaa temple at Khajurāho (dated 941), the Harasnāth temple at Mt. Harsha (c. mid-10th century), in Rājasthān, and numerous other sites scattered all over northern India. These works are executed in a style that has become harder and more angular, the figures covered with a profusion of jewelry that tends to obscure the forms it decorates. These features are further accentuated in the 11th century, when many temples of great size, adorned with prodigious amounts of sculpture, were erected all over northern India. There is a decline in the general level of workmanship: the carving is often entirely conventional and lifeless, the features rigid and mask like, and the contours stiff and unyielding. The ornamentation, consisting of a profusion of beaded jewelry, is for the most part as dull, repetitive, and lifeless as the rest of the sculpture. This phase of artistic activity is represented at important centers from Gujarāt to Orissa; one of them is Khajurāho, with a vast amount of sculpture, all in a good state of preservation but conceived and executed as perfunctory architectural ornamentation. Not all sculpture, however, is of inferior quality; the hard, metallic carving and angular, stylized line sometimes result in works possessing a cold brilliance.