Khajuraho

Khajuraho is a city in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, located in Chhatarpur District. One of the most popular tourist destinations in India, Khajuraho has the country's largest group of medieval Hindu and Jain temples, famous for their erotic sculptures. The Khajuraho Group of Monuments has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986 and is considered one of the "seven wonders" of India. The town's name, anciently "Kharjuravahaka", is derived from the Sanskrit word kharjur meaning "date palm".

Quotes

• ....before finally taking leave of the seven temples, I shall state my opinion, that they are most probably the finest aggregate number of temples congregated in one place to be met with in all India, and all are within a stone’s throw of one another (Burt 1840: 162-167).
  • T.S. Burt, quoted in Jain, M. (2019). Flight of deities and rebirth of temples: Espisodes from Indian history.145

• “perhaps the largest group of costly Hindu temples that is now to be found in Northern India.”
  • A. Cunningham, quoted in Jain, M. (2019). Flight of deities and rebirth of temples: Espisodes from Indian history.145ff

• The Moroccan traveller, Ibn Battuta (1304-1369) who visited Khajuraho in 1335, provided the earliest record of Muslim iconoclasm at the site. He wrote that at Kajarrti,
  ..there is a great pond about a mile in length near which are temples containing idols which the Muslims have mutilated. In the centre of that pond there are three cupolas of red stone, each of three storeys; and at the four corners of the pond are cupolas in which live a body of the jogis who have clotted their hair and let them grow so that they become as long as their bodies and on account of their practicing asceticism their colour had become extremely yellow. Many Musalmans follow them in order to take lessons from them. Itis said that, whoever is subjected to diseases like the leprosy or elephantiasis lives with them for a long period of time and is cured by the permission of God.
  • (Ibn Battuta 1953: 166). quuoted in Jain, M. (2019). Flight of deities and rebirth of temples: Espisodes from Indian history.144

• We went from Parwan [Narwar] to Kajarra [Khajuraho], where there is a large tank about a mile long having on its banks temples with idols, which have been made examples of [i.e. mutilated] by the Muslims.
  • • Ibn Battuta. Travels in Asia and Africa 1325- 1354, trans. by H.A.R. Gibb, Low Price Publications, 1999 reprint, first published 1929. p 226, quoted from Jain, M. (editor) (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. New Delhi: Ocean Books. Volume II Chapter 5