BEYOND THE EROTIC- RATHER EXOTIC!!!!!!

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A BOOK REVIEW IN HINDU BY CHAMPAKALAKSHMI ! PL READ !!!

 

The Religious Imagery of Khajuraho by Dr. Devangana Desai, Franco-

Indian Research Private Ltd., Mumbai, 1997.

 

KHAJURAHO has been the subject of both scholarly and popular

literature, and the fascination for Khajuraho seems not to diminish.

With Dr. Devangana Desai, it is a magnificent obsession, and her

study of this medieval Chandella temple town spans nearly three

decades and covers every conceivable aspect of its religion, art and

philosophy. Her work represents the most scholarly and thorough

reading of the temples and their imagery.

 

 

The present book is perhaps the most significant of all her works, as

it dispels many of the misconceptions that exist in the popular and

scholarly understanding of the art of Khajuraho. Dr. Desai

establishes beyond doubt that it is time to delink Khajuraho's

sculptures from the Kamasutra, the secular handbook on love. She

demonstrates that Khajuraho has erroneously become synonymous with

erotic sculpture. Erotic sculpture, in fact, constitutes not even one-

tenth of its imagery and indeed belongs, as in the case of other

medieval temples, to a different tradition in which both religious

and worldly interests merge. The religious imagery of Khajuraho far

outweighs the erotic in numbers and importance, and iconology is the

key to the understanding of the conceptual basis and the

architectural and iconographic scheme of the temples.

 

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It is in this context that the positioning of the erotic figures

becomes significant, for they are mostly found in the juncture

(kapili) connecting the shrine and the mandapa, that is, the meeting

point of the divine and the human (or twilight zone), as they are

figures in conjunction and speak a sandhya bhasha or intentional

language with double meaning or pun (slesha). Marriage scenes,

conjoint images and pairing of divinities are other ways in which the

ordering of images is determined. Female figures (sura sundaris) both

as auspicious and fertility motifs and protective symbols figure

commonly in medieval temples. "

 

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Dr. Desai writes on one aspect of this representation: "On the sandhi

juncture of the hall for devotees (jivas) and the womb house of the

divinity (Siva), on the juncture of the phenomenal and transcendental

worlds, the juncture, 'which is neither here nor there', where the

opposite energies of two architectural yantras meet, the architect-

priest of the grand Kandariya Mahadeva temple has imaginatively and

intentionally placed the scene of physical union to project the non-

communicable experience of the Non-Dual state through the homologies

and equivalents of Sandhya Bhasha."

 

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FOR ART LOVERS, A MUST READ BOOK!!!