Khajuraho

Small village in the Chattarpur district of
the northern state of Madhya Pradesh,
renowned for a magnificent collection
of temples built about a thousand years
ago by the Chandella dynasty. It is
unclear why these temples were built in
such an inaccessible place, although its
remote location is believed to have
spared the temples from iconoclasm
during Muslim incursions. The most
famous Hindu temples at the site are the
Kandariya Mahadev, Lakshmana, and
Vishvanath. There are many smaller
temples to other Hindu deities and several Jain temples as well.
The temples at Khajuraho were built
in the northern Indian Nagara style. The
building replicates a sacred mountain
with the highest point directly over the
primary image. The outside of the temples were decorated with sculptural
images, and the most famous of these
depict women in various explicit sexual
encounters. The significance of the erotic
sculptures is much debated. Some claim
that the sculptures sanction carnal pleasure as a religious path, while some
interpret them to represent human
union with the divine. Still others view
them as teaching that the desire for
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Khajuraho
pleasure must be transcended to attain
the divine. For further information see
Benjamin Rowland, The Art and
Architecture of India, 1971.