What is the Purpose of a Hindu Temple?

30 Friday Aug 2013

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The imagery of Khajaraho is too vast or one blog, so I have attempted to express the experience in four parts: the old village,
the purpose of a Hindu temple, the cultural heritage behind that built the site, and the meaning and word play of the sculpture.

The bus stops in Khajuraho and the first thing you see are rickshaw wallahs. Tourism is the only game in town and Madhya Pradesh tourism wants it cut. Khajaraho is a sacred place. The Khajuraho festival is a 19^th century addition, and the Kamasutra had no place in 11^th century Khajaraho.

Still, Tantric gimmicks may satisfy snickering tourists but they miss the point.

To the Colonial British – with his lustful double standards – Khajuraho does not match austere meditative contemplaton a cathedral, and the many loves of Krisha seemed to prove Jesus moral superiority. Perhaps they were reminded of the Demiurgic powers of a lower world: human, infernal and divine states of man in his lapsed and corrupted state.

Perhaps the coloured saris, powder pigments from markers, the architectural polychromies and colour extremes of Hindu temples were all to much for the understated faded hues of Britain. After a flurry of many Brits being enamoured by Indian flair, the Raj demanded the faded relation to life of its men counter to Indian love and the creativity of spirit.

It is easy to be enamoured the voluptuous, almond eyed beauties posed invitingly at play or be stunned by the intricate jewellery and gossamer dress so intricately carved. The Western fixation of Khajuraho ‘erotica’ forgets a whole culture has been fashioned in sandstone. Solitary figures outnumber couples, and females outnumber the males. Less than ten percent are erotic. After all, relief sculptures of amorous couples (mithunas) are also fond in the Buddhist caves of Karle, from 100 BCE, that symbolise as an analogy for man’s union with the divine.

However, I doubt Khajuraho was the sexual utopia of liberated women. Polygamous rulers clearly loved the delights of women, even a cheeky elephant sneeks a peek , and only men have multiple partners.

There twisted bodies in conjugal (even outright uncomfortable) bliss, with some large scale debauchery, reveal more about society of the time.

Vidya Dahejiya argues the huge presence of “women with overflowing foliage”, along with couples, are fertility symbols, similar to Renaissance Europe, as well a symbol of societal growth. As early as the 6^th century Medieval Varaha Mihira‟s Brihat Samhita , the 10^th century Agni Purana and the Silpa Praksha recommended decorating temple doors with mithuna (embracing erotic) couples as a symbol of auspiciousness (Krisnan, Y., 1972, “Erotic Sculptures of India” ).

To understand Khajuraho we must ask:

What is the purpose of a Hindu temple?

“As from a blazing fire thousands of sparks fly forth, each one looking self-similar to its source, So from the Eternal
comes a great variety of things, and they all return to the Eternal finally” claims the Mundaka Upanishad (II.1.1).
Lurianic Kabbalah uses a strikingly similar metaphor of divine sparks from the Middle Ages.

Filled with fragrances of ghee, camphor, honey, flowers and coconut, a Hndu temples purpose is transformation. It adjusts devotees mind as his subtle body responds to the rhythms, aesthetics and emotions of the temple: to become one with the temple and be qualified to realise the presence of god (Kramrisch, S., The Hindu Temple, vol 1: 232, 253).

Rather than god as aloof reaching down from an impenetrable cloud, Hindu geometry experientially unifies inner world with heaven. The macrososm of heaven has its analogy within man himself.

Seen as a silhouette, the temple cuts what Professor William Jackson calls a “fancy edge” between time and space , eternity and infinity, a microcosmic fractal of archetypal images in an unconscious pool of a greater mind which perhaps are revealed rarely in an enlightened sage.

Approaching noon, monsoon humidty saps me of spirit. Drenched in sweat, the long flights of stairs in Hindu temples is like exerting yourself upward , to Kalaish, the divine mountain of Shiva. Directed by shastras and agamas the temple is a fractal of cosmic order, the supreme shikara–a whole reflecting its parts – is a cosmic mountain rising through recursive self similar cluttered repetitions through infinite levels of experience. A wide base of ideas coexisting that that pyramid like the bricks of a vedic altar, ultimately lead to a single point, transcendence of ultimate oneness .and the pursuit of liberation or moksha.

The Self similar recursive geometry repeats rhythmically inward to the hidden depths of meditative cave aligned directly beneath the shikaras highest point. The lingam and yoni are in shadow, beyond a uterine tube, from which believers are reborn transformed. Entered from the east, the unadorned inner sanctum, garbhagrha, or “womb room”, we experience darshan, visitation, in cave unting both the beyond and within, blessed by light of burning camphor.

Notice the scorpion on the left leg

Nine hundred years ago, the plain was flooded, claims Anand. The ancient name of Kharjura-vahaka can mean either “date-palm bearer”, and golden kharjlira trees at its gate, or “scorpion-bearer” which suggests Shiva in his Aghora, or fierce, aspect, wearing a garland of scorpions, is the cities protector.

While, there are few palms today,perhaps the temples, on their high plinths, ascending from formless waters, shimmering in reflection sandstone and palm trees.

As Anand directs me toward the sandstone three spires of the temple before me he claims reflect Buddhist stpa,a cathedral, then Hindu layout. Built without mortar, they held by gravity locked in place by mortise and tenon joints.

The temple is also a Divine axis where heaven and earth meet a column, tree or spine connects the worlds. Each branch is individual and the temple images catch ephemeral glimpses of personality as fleeting as leaves.

Circambulate outside clockwise and a divine story unfolds: gods, goddesses, dancers and lovers and the divine within reach. Circle the inner sanctum, around the deity, you circle the universe. It’s antarjyoti or inner light fills the heart, reveals the divine within. A hidden prayer of penance to untie the knot of ignorance.

In praying the Gayatri Mantra believers request the divine light mirrored in three levels of existence. Singing aarti with a thali of prasad and dancing flame, we are reminded of Indra rescuing the stolen cows. Hidden under a mountain, they fled like the light-filled clouds of dawn.

The Divine Purusha – Drawing from George Michell’s book, The Hindu Temple

The temple floor plan geometrically represents the Prime Person or principle behind existence whose self sacrifice is sung over 90 times in the Vedas. This grid like vastupurusha mandala is microcosm of the universe, and simultaneously symbolizes the pantheon of Vedic gods– “each square [is] a seat of particular deity.” The gods altogether make up the composite body of the formless Purusha and like the Vedic altar, the construction ritually enacts the restoration of the Purusha’s body.

At the Kandariya temple Shiva and Shakti unite: spirit and body, god and creation together as one. Perhaps a symbol of in divine love infusing life. Not a dead universe that occidentally discovered life, but a cosmos where the star dust is the mitochondria of a living being, and rocks live, though in a subtler form than a flower or tiger.

We all seek fulfilment in a larger even universal context. I feel as if my personality hangs like a thread from this vastness of sculptured being, a foetus floating in a primal ocean in sympathy with earth, soul and anima mundi. unsure where heaven begins and I end.

Isn’t that the point? A sense of oneness pervades Hindu thought. I imagine deeply meditating sadhu’s intuiting the fractal repetitions in life into an embracing theology.

Old Town Khajuraho

07 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by opus125 in Madhya Pradesh

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Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh

The imagery of Khajuaraho is too vast for one post, so I have attempted to express the experience in four parts: the old village, the purpose of a Hindu temple, the cultural heritage behind that built the site, and the meaning and word play of the sculpture.

The bus stops in Khajuraho and the first thing you see are rickshaw wallahs. Tourism is the only game in town and Madhya Pradesh tourism wants it cut. Khajaraho s a sacred place. The dance festival is a 19^th century addition, and the Kamasutra had no place in 11^th century Khajaraho.

Still, Tantric gimmicks may satisfy snickering tourists but they miss the point.

As rickshaw drivers swarmed I put them off

“Nahi. Mai Bhatat mai teen sal rahta hun. I know what your like. I want a cup of chi.”

I persist, turn my back and order tea. The chai wallah points out they are still fighting over who will get my business. I chose a quiet unobtrusive man who discretely avoided he frey.

A local from the old village, Lalu, is a better read of character, and I will recommend him to any tourist.

There are two towns in Khajaraho: 6000 live in the modern town of tourist operators, and the Old City, divided into four sections by caste, seems oblivious to Khajaroho’s erotic reputation.

It is of the tourist town I have heard web complaints “Do you want a woman?” or upsetting respectable Indian ladies by hawking crudely made kamasutra figurines. Except for a meal of paneer, I avoided it, I cannot agree or disagree.

The opening of the Khajuraho Motel in the 70’s spawned a hotel, an express way and now 5 star hotels have changed a 200 year old village from farmers and businessman to tour guides. The tourist town never sleeps.

I knew to visit the Old City, fitting it in after temples of the East and South, and before the massive Western Complex. My bus arrived 90 minutes late, so I ran out of time.

My auto-rickshaw driver, Lalu, is from the old village. He needs the tourism. 500 rupee to tour the temples is the government price. He charges 800 for the entire day. He even stayed with me until I had boarded my 7PM bus, negotiated a difficult passenger using my lack of good Hindi when swiping my seat, and was worth the extra.

Madhya Pradesh notoriously poor roads may have smoothed as I bused toward Kaharaho, but between the villages the rickshaw bounced sickeningly across crumbling cement roads. I began my day first with the South then Eastern temple groups

The sculptures exude sensuality with deep tantric symbolism beyond beyond Kama sutra.

I had wanted to know of the spiritual significance and was asked at the southern temple complex why the temples were built. I replied lyrically about the legend that the moon, Chandrama, seduced Hemvati, the beautiful widowed daughter of minister to a Banares king. Their son, Chandravarnan, after years being hidden in the forest, founded the Chadrella dynasty, compensated for his mothers lapse with temples of the union of Purush and Prakriti, man and nature as source of life and creation.

“No”, assured the first guide, a war ravaged people meditating in deep religious piety, needed to be taught the art of love. War weary men were outnumbered by women 60 to one.

About 10% of the sculptures are sexual.

Refusing a tip, he offered to take me – for a price – to the nearby cobra Village that “no one will take you. This is my village.”

It is not that the Old City had forgotten the temples of Khajaraho. I had read, that for centuries they did their best to preserve them before the British revealed the overgrown buildings to the Empire. But if these these towns folk trace back two centuries…..?

Regardless, the old town seemed oblivious to Khajaraho’s erotic reputation. I was offered chai in the home of the towns four mayors and shown the school run without government funds.

Children stood as I entered refusing to sit until I, as honoured guest, bid them sit down.

In a world of their own, I found the streets remarkably clean – a fresh contrast to rubbish stewn by in Indian cities. I had wondered if this town, has realized the importance of cleanliness for tourism. Lalu told me tourism is the only job in town, although my young tour guide spoke of some working on farms. The town was quiet because people were at work.

They were genuinely polite.

“If you want to take photographs, that’s OK. People are friendly here. If you want to photo a lady please ask.”

They have learned good manners and a friendly smile funds projects like the school or a newly built well. Guide and the teacher spoke if foreign aid behind the towns progress. They were clear none came from the Indian government.

As I passed a worker of brass worker quietly in front his door. Some children asked I photograph them, I did, which was immediately followed with “Money please”.

“Don’t give them money” said my guide, unofficially since like every other boy is learning to be a guide when he is older and wants practice. He added solemnly. “It is bad for their education.”

“If tourists give them money they will learn not to go to school.”

The 300 students are run in split shifts with 65% attendance. I could not adequately find words to ask politely whether most students could write beyond their own name. Many teachers are volunteers, and the students motivated. The two class school goes to 9^th standard.

I am also ware that professors Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee write of India’s ineffective education of the rural poor. It is not always an issue of resources or teacher incentives. When poor parents need labour, you hear parents label their kids “This is the genius” and “this is the stupid one”. They love their children, but I feel they must justify the hard choice of deciding who is educated. Sometimes it spills into how educators teach to the top end of the class and let the rest fall behind.

Has tourism changed parental expectations?

“At school all are equal. Caste is not an issue,” claimed

I fell in love with the town

When after lunch I was asked by whether I wanted to see his village, I told my budding tour guide I visited hoping to see it. Still, I was suspicious; in Jaipur two years previous, a guide admitted he was paid 50 rupees when he sent tourists to a weaver whether they bought or not. We went to help him respecting his honesty. Was this the same?

“There are only Hindu’s here” he said, unlike the new city. The town is clearly divided by caste, marked by different wall decor, and road makings, like speed bumps, between city sections. We begin in the , or untouchable part of town and it is as clean as the rest, then, the farmers, then the warrior caste. Perhaps Brahmins avoid the tourists.

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Over the years items specific to each castes trade and worship, and are placed in a temple, near the caste dividing line.

“We do not need police here. Problems are solved by a magistrate and four mayor’s. There is a mayor for each caste. We do not use police. Police take money. Indian police are corrupt.”

I then was invited by one of the mayors, Jagdith Khare, to chai. I declined, explaining I had just had lunch, but was a little cautious aware of my natural weakness to allowing indebtedness to suck me in to a hard sell.

I need not have worried. Mayor Jagdish Khare rightly promotes his obvious talents, but there was no hard sell, just polite insistence.

I genuinely liked his traditional engraving and 2000 rupee lighter. I have learned to prefer the traditional craftwork over cheap tourist gimmicks.

However, I was a little put off when, after my purchase he took me to his attic explaining all thee brass work there – for sale – had been found by villagers. Although probably not archeological treasures, was this ethical?

As it was I rushed to spend several hours at the Western Complex, the lateness of the hour and a storm prevented me from seeing the Cobra Village.

Other Images Can be found here.