India is home to several heritage sites, from the Taj Mahal in Agra to Qutub Minar in Delhi. These monuments are a testament to India’s rich culture and heritage. Another such monument, which is located in the heart of India, is the Khajuraho Temples.
The Khajuraho Temples, a UNESCO World Heritage Site (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), are especially famous for their erotic sculptures and are also known as Kama Sutra Temples. However, the temples are more than that. So let’s take a look at some of the fascinating facts of this heritage monument:
Interesting Facts About Khajuraho Temples
Located in Madhya Pradesh, about 175 kilometers southeast of Jhansi, the temples are relatively isolated today and even in their heyday they were more than 56 kilometers from their capital, Mahoba. However, it was due to this fact that undoubtedly contributed to their forgotten era when Turkish invaders seized the kingdom in the 13th century. It was rediscovered by a British army captain, TS Burt in the 1830s.
The temple’s structures are sculpted from a sandstone buried on the banks of the River Ken, and must have taken vast amounts of capital and labor to move.
Dedicated to two religions, Hinduism and Jainism, the Khajuraho Temples have only 10 percent of the carvings devoted to erotic creative expressions. The other 90 percent, which most people are unaware of, depict the life of the common people who lived during the golden age of the Chandela Dynasty between the 10th and 11th centuries. There are sculptures of potters, musicians, farmers and women, but nobody talks about those carvings.
Khajuraho was originally part of a larger complex of about 85 buildings, of which only a group of about 20 buildings remain. Spread over an area of 23 square kilometers, these magnificent monuments offer a glimpse into the history, antiquity, mystery and isolation of a remote region of present-day India.
The temples are named after a ‘date palm bearer’. Khajur is Hindi for date palm and it is said that the city was once surrounded by date palms and that is how it got its name.
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