III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY
The Sculpture of Khajuraho
▶ Listen · narrated
The temples at Khajuraho are famous for erotic sculpture. What they actually offer is a near-complete carved encyclopedia of eleventh-century life, of which the erotic panels form a small, deliberate fraction.
At a glance
- Built
- 885–1000 CE, Chandela dynasty
- Original count
- 85 temples across 20 square kilometres
- Surviving
- About 25 temples
- Material
- Sandstone
- Religions
- Hindu and Digambara Jain
Look closer
The proportion that is actually erotic
Estimates place the erotic sculpture at roughly ten per cent of the total carved programme. The remaining ninety per cent depicts gods, celestial beings, royal processions, musicians, dancers, soldiers, animals, hunters, women at their toilets, farmers, acrobats, and the ordinary transactions of courtly and village life. The erotic panels are placed among these other subjects, not separated from them, which means the viewer encounters them as one category of human activity within a much larger carved world.
Figures carved almost free of the wall
The sandstone sculptures are worked in such high relief that many figures stand nearly detached from the background, held only at the shoulders or hips. This creates deep shadows and allows light to model the forms as it would free-standing statuary. The effect is of a wall populated by bodies rather than decorated by images. The technique required stable stone and confident carving, since an error could sever a figure entirely.
The stacked registers
The temple walls are divided into horizontal bands, each carrying a separate frieze of figures. Lower registers often show earthly scenes — armies, hunts, processions. Middle bands present semi-divine beings, apsaras and musicians. Upper registers hold gods and mythological episodes. The erotic panels appear in the middle zones, neither at the base nor the summit, integrated into the celestial and courtly tiers rather than set apart.
The story
The Khajuraho temples were built over roughly a century, from 885 to 1000 CE, under the Chandela dynasty in what is now Madhya Pradesh. At their peak the site held eighty-five temples spread across twenty square kilometres. About twenty-five survive. They are built in the Nagara style, with high curving towers and elaborate carved exteriors, and they serve both Hindu and Jain worship, suggesting a degree of religious pluralism in the region.
The temples are now famous for their erotic sculpture, but this fame rests on a misapprehension of proportion. The erotic panels — figures engaged in sexual activity, often in complex poses — make up an estimated ten per cent of the total carved programme. The remaining ninety per cent depicts a broad catalogue of life and divinity: gods in their various forms, celestial musicians and dancers, royal processions, soldiers, hunters, farmers, women dressing or holding mirrors, animals real and mythical, acrobats, and scenes from daily labour and courtly ceremony. The erotic images are not segregated. They appear among these other subjects, in the same registers, carved with the same attention.
What the temples offer, then, is not a gallery of erotic art but a comprehensive carved world in which erotic activity is one subject among many. The figures are worked in high relief, many nearly detached from the wall, so that they cast deep shadows and occupy space almost as sculpture in the round. The walls are divided into horizontal bands, and the subject matter is loosely stratified: earthly scenes toward the base, semi-divine beings in the middle zones, gods and myth at the top. The erotic panels sit in the middle registers, neither at ground level nor in the divine summit.
Why the erotic sculpture is there has been debated. One explanation, recorded in later tradition, holds that the temples were part of a larger complex where young men lived as brahmacharyas — celibate students — and that the carvings served an educational function, preparing them for the householder stage of life. This account is not documented in Chandela-period sources, and it may be a retrospective rationalisation. What is clear from the carvings themselves is that they treat erotic activity as part of a complete depiction of human and divine existence, not as a separate or secret subject.
The temples were abandoned after the Chandela dynasty declined, and the jungle grew over them. They were known locally but not widely recorded until 1838, when Captain T. S. Burt, a British engineer, visited the site and published his findings in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. His report brought the temples to European attention, and they have been studied, restored, and visited ever since. In 1986 they were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
The Kandariya Mahadeva Temple, the largest and most elaborately carved of the surviving structures, carries hundreds of figures across its exterior. If you count them, the erotic panels number in the dozens. The non-erotic figures number in the hundreds. The temple is not an erotic monument with some other decoration. It is a carved encyclopedia with an erotic chapter.
Why it mattered then
The Chandela dynasty ruled a prosperous region and built temples as expressions of royal power, religious devotion, and artistic achievement. The temples at Khajuraho were not isolated monuments but part of a larger ritual and social landscape. Their elaborate carved programmes would have been read by visitors as demonstrations of the dynasty's wealth, the skill of its craftsmen, and its command of both religious iconography and the visible world. The inclusion of erotic imagery within a sacred context was not unique to Khajuraho, but the scale and prominence of the carvings here are unusual. If the tradition that young brahmacharyas studied at the site is accurate, the temples may have served a pedagogical function, treating sexuality as a subject to be understood rather than concealed. Whether or not that specific explanation holds, the carvings suggest a culture in which erotic life was considered part of the complete human experience, appropriate for depiction alongside warfare, worship, music, and labour. The temples also demonstrate religious coexistence. Hindu and Jain structures were built in the same complex, during the same period, by the same patrons. This does not mean there was no religious tension in the region, but it does mean that the Chandela court commissioned temples for both traditions and that the site was shared. The carved programmes reflect this: Hindu temples show Hindu deities and myths, Jain temples show Jain tirthankaras and cosmology, but the style and technique are continuous.
Why it matters now
Khajuraho matters now partly because it has been misrepresented. The temples are marketed and remembered almost exclusively for their erotic sculpture, which has made them famous and brought millions of visitors, but it has also distorted what they are. They are not erotic monuments. They are comprehensive carved programmes in which erotic imagery is one subject among many, integrated into a larger depiction of human and divine life. Recognising the actual proportion changes what the temples mean: they become documents of a culture that did not separate the erotic from the rest of existence, rather than monuments to eroticism itself. The temples also matter as evidence of what survives and what is lost. Eighty-five temples once stood here. Twenty-five remain. The jungle claimed the others, and their stone was likely reused. What we see now is a fragment of a much larger complex, and the carved programmes we study are incomplete. This is true of most historical sites, but Khajuraho makes the loss visible: we know how much was here, and we can see the empty ground. Finally, the temples demonstrate the difficulty of reading art across time. The erotic panels have been explained as educational tools, as tantric symbols, as celebrations of fertility, as apotropaic devices meant to ward off evil, and as simple decoration. None of these explanations is conclusively supported by Chandela-period texts, and all may be partially correct. What remains certain is that the carvings were made with skill, integrated into a sacred context, and considered appropriate for temple walls. That alone tells us something about the culture that made them, even if we cannot recover the full explanation.
The surprising detail
The temples were forgotten by the wider world for centuries and rediscovered by a British engineer in 1838. Captain T. S. Burt was surveying the region when he was told of ruins in the jungle. He visited the site, recorded what he saw, and published his findings in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. His report brought Khajuraho to European scholarly attention, but the temples had never been entirely lost — local communities knew of them, and some were still in use. What had been lost was the site's prominence and its connection to the historical record. Burt's visit restored that connection, but it also began the process by which the temples were reframed for a colonial and then a global audience, with the erotic sculpture increasingly emphasised and the rest of the programme increasingly overlooked.
What is disputed
The explanation that the erotic sculpture served an educational function for young brahmacharyas is a later tradition and is not documented in sources from the Chandela period. It may be correct, but it should be treated as one interpretation rather than established fact. Similarly, the exact proportion of erotic to non-erotic sculpture varies depending on which temples are counted and how the categories are defined; the ten per cent figure is an estimate, not a precise measurement.
Remember this
Ten per cent of Khajuraho's sculpture is erotic. The other ninety per cent depicts gods, daily life, and courtly ceremony — a complete carved world.
Test yourself
If the erotic sculpture makes up only about ten per cent of the total carved programme, why has it come to dominate the way Khajuraho is remembered and marketed?
Because the erotic panels are unusual in a sacred context by the standards of later European and colonial viewers, and because they are visually striking and easily reproduced. When the temples were rediscovered in the nineteenth century and brought to wider attention, the erotic sculpture was the element that seemed most remarkable or scandalous to outside observers. That emphasis was reinforced by tourism and popular media, which found the erotic imagery more marketable than the surrounding programme of gods, musicians, and daily life. The result is a feedback loop: the erotic sculpture draws attention, so it is photographed and discussed, which draws more attention, which further entrenches it as the defining feature of the site. The temples have become famous for the smallest and most surprising fraction of what they contain, while the majority of the carved programme — which is equally skilled and more representative of the site's purpose — remains less known.