Dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva, the eleventh-century Kandarya Mahadeva temple was built as part of the Khaj-raho complex in north<entral India.
In accordance with Hindu custom, the temple site was chosen and prepared with care. Brahmans, priests of the highest social caste, would have banished the native spirits of the locality before planting the 'seed' of the building—a casket from which the temple was believed to germinate in the same way as a living organism.
Deliberately constructed to imitate the peaks and valleys of a sacred mountain, Kandarya Mahadeva owed the richness of its exterior texture to more than 900 carvings of gods, animals, dancing girls, and demons. Pilgrims entered its darkened interior to make offerings of flowers and oil at shrines dedicated to the consort of the patron deity. Repeating a soundless prayer that they be led from illusion to reality, death-in-life to immortality, the faithful pursued a ritual clockwise movement toward a central pillared hall (inset). From here it was possible to make out, but not approach, the holy of holies, the 'womb house,' which at Kandarya Mahadeva housed a marble lingam, symbol of Shiva, potency, and the life force. Even in the near darkness the walls were decorated with intricate carvings, often of an erotic nature since Hindus held the sexual act to s> mbolize the unity of the cosmos.
On the outside, above the shrine, towered the sikhara, the highest peak of the stone mountain. When a newly built temple was to be consecrated, a priest would climb to the top of this spire and pierce it to create an aperture, representing the eye of the temple opening to the celestial sphere.
World History
