In 1838, a chance recommendation from a palanquin bearer led Captain T.S. Burt, a British Engineer, to make a remarkable discovery. Deviating from his usual route through the jungle, he encountered an obscure village where, beneath dense vegetation and earth, lay an abandoned complex of astonishing sculptures and edifices. A stone inscription dated 1002 suggested the site had remained untouched for over 700 years. Burt reported his finding to General Alec Cunningham, the regional governor and an enthusiastic archaeologist.
Over the next 150 years, archaeologists unearthed 22 temples built between the 9th and 12th centuries. The complex originally sprawled across 25 square kilometres and contained over 80 Hindu and Jain temples, each expressing a revolutionary spiritual approach.
The Khajuraho temples (900-1130 CE) communicated their message through intricate carvings, making complex ideas accessible to the illiterate masses. While traditional temple sculptures drew from dharmic philosophy—an ancient Indian system of rules and responsibilities dating back 4000 years to the Vedic period—these temples represented something new.
Between 500 and 900 CE, a shift occurred from rigid Brahminic traditions toward tantric philosophy. This new approach viewed the physical world as a pathway to transcendental enlightenment, rejecting the mind-body duality. In tantric thought, physical energies, including sexual ones, could fuel spiritual growth. Even ordinary experiences contained the potential for transcendental wisdom.
The genius of Khajuraho lies in its synthesis of dharmic and tantric philosophies. The temples present both worldly and divine scenes as parts of a continuous spiritual journey.
Their architecture serves as a three-dimensional manual for tantric principles, suggesting that physical experiences can lead to higher spiritual realisations when approached mindfully.
The temples’ facades tell this story vertically across three levels:
- Foundation: Depicting daily life, markets, family scenes, and royal processions
- Middle: Showing the transition through mythological stories and human-divine interactions
- Upper: Representing the celestial realm with divine forms and meditation scenes
Moving clockwise around each temple reveals progressive chapters of this spiritual narrative. The multiple levels can be “read” simultaneously, creating a three-dimensional mandala where physical movement mirrors spiritual growth.
The sculptures’ graceful poses celebrate the unity of body and mind in achieving both conscious awareness and spiritual transcendence—a stark contrast to the Cartesian mind-body dualism that has dominated Western thought for four centuries. And its continuing unintended consequences in many fields, in particular in medicine.