DAY 25, APRIL 15, KHAJURAHO & VARANASI

KHAJURAHO

Here is sculpture exquisite
Of love-making explicit --
Thousands of examples
In thousand-year-old temples.
It's a fun place to visit.

Eighty-four ways to get it on,
Several shown the walls upon.
These folks had the loving knack.
Press the middle of her back
To turn the lady on.

In a method most outstanding
The couple up are standing.
She bends low as this point he's pressing,
While her from behind he's addressing.
Not shown is her stool for standing.

If bade to enter standing from behind
And assuming that she didn't mind,
Against her back I'd press my chest,
And I'd reach round and hold each breast.
A slightly different plan he had in mind.

In the position most repeated,
While the man is properly seated,
His lady to him is clinging.
Great joy to them it's bringing
Ere the task is completed.


BUDDHISM IN INDIA

In Buddhism's birthplace today
You'll scarcely find Buddhism per se.
Hindus are telling you
Buddha was a visit by Vishnu.
And the philosophies are the same, they say.


Khajura means date palm. The "ho" was just somebody's mistake.

Setting out at 6:30 AM, before breakfast, we toured the main temples of Kajuraho, the west site first, then the east site. At the west site we visited the Lakshman Temple and the Kandariya Mahadeva Temples. These Hindu temples were built in the 10th to 12th century by the Chandelas, who then ruled in the area. They were important until about 1400 AD and lost their importance around 1500. They were subsequently damaged by Muslims and consequently are not active temples. (A damaged statue of a god is no longer considered as or worshiped as a god.) They came to be unknown and were discovered in 1830 by the British and were quite a shock to Victorian morality.

There are wall carvings in great profusion depicting affection and love-making. Erotic carvings are well distributed on the walls. Some of the positions are very complicated and “athletic,” and sometimes there are more than two persons in the grouping. It takes some study to associate arms and legs with their torsos of the figures. In one instance I still am unable to do so to in a way that makes sense to me. I have the book and will study it further. It certainly appears that a couple would need assistance to achieve and maybe to maintain some of these positions.

One panel, in particular, is a highlight with several shocking positions shown in succession. There is a some oral stimulation included, one of the positions being a 69.

The rear entry position in my verses was only seen once. Our step-on guide explained that the center of a woman's back was thought to be a woman's key point of sexual energy.

Our step-on guide told of an ancient Hindu book in which all of the 84 possible positions for sexual intercourse are listed and described. They're not all depicted. (We didn't see such simplicity as the missionary position.)

Our step-on guide pointed out how the statuary are very rich in many ways other than mere eroticism: emotions, humor, symbolism, interrelations among neighboring statues, differences according to the viewing angle, and on and on. I take his word for it. Although at first I thought I would, I couldn't understand him well at all.

Some other aspects of daily life are also depicted. A lot of elephants are shown.

Even though this is a very small town, we were nevertheless plagued (when getting on and off the bus) with plenty of the usual extremely persistent hawkers. And, as usual, we were told to just ignore them, not say “no” because that means “maybe.”

We flew to Varanasi, which was just a short flight of about an hour. Varanasi has a population of approximately three million and is densely populated. It is one of the oldest cities in the world – thousands of years old, even older than Hinduism.

Sarnath, once a city of its own, is incorporated into the Varanasi metropolitan area. Sarnath is the birthplace of Buddhism (544 BC).

We visited the Archeological Museum of Sarnath. The artifacts displayed were dug up in Sarnath by a British archeologist in the 19th century.

We visited the Buddhist temple in Sarnath. It is very modest. It was built in 1931, really by foreigners, so there would be a Buddhist presence at Buddhism's birthplace.

It was all explained both by Som and by our day-guide. But I hear so poorly and it's all very complicated to me. Only about 3% of Indians are Buddhists. There is some growth in Buddhism occurring because some Indians are converting to Buddhism simply because it has no castes. Buddha gave his first sermon in Sarnath, and it is surprisingly short and mounted on a plaque. But Buddhism never really took root here in the first place, according to what we were told. Yet we saw artifacts in the museum of Buddhism from up till about the 9th century. Within only a century of Buddha's death, we were told, Buddhism was moved to Sri Lanka. From there it took root and spread north. Som says there is no difference in the philosophy of Buddhism and that of Hinduism. He also says Hindus see Buddha as the ninth reincarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu (the Protector and one of the three most important Hindu gods). Som, a Hindu, sees Buddhism as a reformer of Hinduism, much like Jesus set out to reform Judaism. Som says Buddhism has changed greatly from what it started out to be – that Buddha did not emphasize the gods at all but rather a way of living that can lead to nirvana.

We had our last happy hour. It was in Som's room.

We had a splendid dinner in another hotel a short walk from our Radisson. This was part of an optional tour which all but one of us opted to participate in.

Bernie :-)