Indian temples reveal erotic carvings

Of all the countries where sex is joyously celebrated, sex in ancient India is perhaps the most remarkable. The Hindu religion shows a remarkable freedom both in sexuality and in nudity. Not only were bodies displayed in the nude, but fertility was openly celebrated by the display of sexual intercourse. And the Hindu tradition produced one of the great classics of sexual literature in the Kama Sutra.

There are some splendid examples of the Hindu tradition in their temples. A good example is the Jagdish temple in Udaipur, built in 1652 and covered with carvings.

Many of them show bare breasted ladies, who are extremely voluptuous – the Hindus clearly loved big breasts. However the breasts are enclosed with elaborate strings of jewellery that form a lattice over their whole body and presumably kept them ‘decent’. At their waist there was an elaborate arrangement with a stiff roll of clothing falling down to their feet: was it deliberately made in the suggestive form of a penis pointing at their cunts?

Four naked, or at least topless ladies. The two on the pilasters are playing drums, but the lady. on the right is performing a very ecstatic dance.

By contrast to the lady above, they all have rather small breasts.

This lady appears to be totally nude – except for a necklace, a belt, an elaborate bracelets.

There is even a hole for her cunt – or is this simply where the stone is chipped off?

And here the lady has her leg up, presumably to conceal the fact that she is fucking the gentleman, and has his lingam up her yoni, as they say in Sanskrit.

When I first saw this, I assumed that it was the gentleman who had his leg up to preserve the lady’s modesty, but in fact it is clearly the lady who has her leg up.  One wonders whether some Hindu epic is being celebrated.

But whenever it was, it looks back to era of luscious sexuality that makes one realise how much we have lost with the strange preconceptions of Christianity.

On to The Kama Sutra

18th February 2014