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The erotic component of Indian temple architecture has been called the most
debated subject of Indian history.1 After a
couple months of reading virtually nothing else, I am prone to agree, and thus
it is with no little trepidation that I presume to offer yet another solution
of the seeming conundrum--temple sex. This investigation of the literature,
with primary emphasis on epigraphic and textual sources of the 10th and 11th
centuries,2 stems from the lascivious
iconography, thread on Indology,3 a
discussion prompted the Communications Decency Act, a U.S. Congressional
attempt subsequently overturned in the courts, to proscribe potentially
offensive content from the Internet.4
What follows is a marshalling of some of the most telling written and visual
texts on the subject of medieval Hindu erotica (a troubling phrase, admittedly)
as they pertain to or are found displayed upon temples at Khajuraho,
justifiably the best known exemplars of sexual imagery in India. Any novel
interpretations or spins on conventional wisdom, remain hypothetical until I
can undertake my own corroborative inspection of the monuments themselves.5 Though tentative, they are offered here as
metaphoric lightning rods to elicit additional disclosure or conjecture from
others--proffered like the 19th-century folk stratagems Crooke documented,6 for employing nudity or obscene speech to
attract Indra's rain, or to repel his thunderbolts and hail. So read warily,
then fire away, oh ye indological gods or would-be keepers of decorum on the
Internet: and may the kavacas of KAma prove efficacious still!7
About the title: one requisite for understanding the Hindu Temple, is a
rich appreciation for its traditional nomenclature. In an excised portion of a
book review, I once complained8:
In the glossary, vimAna is identified simply as shrine, temple,
and nowhere in the text are the word's rich connotations explored. A.K.
Coomaraswamy, by contrast,9 chose only to
refer to the long and excellent discussion of this word in the P.T.S.
Pali-English Dictionary. From that dictionary's three-column entry, I
extract these phrases as a preferable definition for vimAna:
phantasmagorical castles in the air...the original chariots of the
gods.
Seen accordingly, the sensuous "ornaments" (alaMkAra) of the temples at
Khajuraho become surprisingly meaningful. Some of their connotative richness
is explored here--rooted in specificities of epoch and place--by contrast to
the untethered flights of Vedantic fancy (or Tantric revel) one sometimes
reads from apologists for ancient India's famous candor with sexual imagery.10
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1 R. Nath, The Art of Khajuraho (New
Delhi: Abhinav, 1980), p. 59.
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2 The period coincidentally, when successive
Hindu kingdoms were collapsing under the first onslaughts of iconoclastic
Islam.
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3 A listserv mailing list, at
[email protected]. For further information see the home page of Dominik
Wujastyk at this URL: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/indology.html
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4 Thomas J. DeLoughry and Jeffery R. Young,
Internet Restrictions Ruled Unconstitutional, The Chronicle of Higher
Education XLII:41 (June 21, 1996) pp. 17, 19, 20; and Jeffery R. Young,
'Indecency' on the Internet: Court hearing stirs fears of censorship of
student and college Web pages, The Chronicle of Higher Education
XLII:33 (April 26, 1996) pp. 1, 23, 25-26.
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5 I once visited Khajuraho as an
undergraduate, but my formal study of Indian art history has been concentrated
on Pallava-period Tamil Nadu.
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6 William Crooke, Religion and Folklore of
Northern India (1896, reprinted London: Oxford University Press,1926)
pp.70-76.
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7 In this experiment in writing for both
general browsers of the World Wide Web as well as for indologists active in a
wide variety of academic disciplines, an endeavor has been made to avoid
specialized terminology or else to gloss it thoroughly, even in throw-away
lines like the last wherein kavacas refer to protective amulets, lit.
armor plates, and KAma, like Cupid, is a love god. On kavacas, see
Monier Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, or Religious Thought and
Life of India as based on the Veda and other sacred books of the Hindus 4th
ed., (London: John Murray, 1891), p. 204. (reprinted as Hinduism (Delhi,
Rare Books, 1971)
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8 Review of the Encyclopedia of Indian
Temple Architecture (New Delhi: AIIS and University of Pennsylvania Press,
1983), for Journal of Asian Studies, 43:3 (May, 1984): 578-580.
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9 Indian Architectural Terms,
Journal of the American Oriental Society, 48 (1928), p. 274.
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10 Not that the latter don't make for
delightful reading. E.g., Mulk Raj Anand, Of KAmakalA: Some Notes on the
Philosophical Basis of Hindu Erotic Sculpture, in Homage to
Khajuraho, Marg vol X:3 (1957): 46-64; in French with hand-tipped
plates as KAma KalA (Geneva, 1958: & in English again, New York:
Nagel, 1962).
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