Yogini temples
Lost temples, their locations identified from surviving yogini images, are still more widely distributed across the subcontinent, from Delhi in the north and the border of Rajasthan in the west to Greater Bengal in the east and Tamil Nadu in the south.
[3] They are linked with the Bhairava cult, often carrying skulls and other tantric symbols, and practising in cremation grounds and other liminal places.
[6] The scholar Shaman Hatley writes that the archetypal yogini is "the autonomous Sky-traveller (khecari)", and that this power is the "ultimate attainment for the siddhi-seeking practitioner".
In 1986, Vidya Dehejia recorded that the shrines were "remote and difficult of access", scarcely explored for a hundred years, and frequented by dacoits, gangs of robbers, who used the temples as places of refuge unknown to the authorities.
[10] The Yogini shrines are usually circular enclosures, and they are hypaethral, open to the sky, unlike most Indian temples.
In the Bhedaghat temple, the yoginis are seated in lalitasana, the royal position,[12] and are surrounded by cremation-ground scenes complete with "flesh-eating ghouls" and scavenging animals.
"[15] Chapter 9 of the Kaulajnana Nimaya, attributed to the 10th-century sage Matsyendranath, describes a system of 8 chakras represented as eight-petalled lotus flowers, the total of 64 petals denoting the 64 yoginis.
Those who stay awake that night, performing the great festival of song and dance, and worship the circle of kulayoginis at daybreak, acquire the Kaula knowledge from them ... All Yoginis delight in that abode in the centre of Varanasi.
[23] Dehejia writes that It seems probable that the Kaula Chakra [tantric ritual circle] was formed within the circle of the Yogini temple, with offerings to the Yoginis of matsya [fish], mamsa [meat], mudra [gesture], madya [alcohol], and finally maithuna [tantric sex] too.
[25] The small 9th-century yogini temple at Hirapur, only 25 feet in diameter,[26] is in Khurda district, Odisha, 10 miles south of Bhubaneshwar.
The circle is reached via a protruding entrance passage, so that the plan of the temple has the form of a yoni-pedestal for a Shiva lingam.
[27][28] At least 8 of the yoginis stand on animal vehicles representing signs of the zodiac, including a crab, a scorpion, and a fish, suggesting a link with astrology or calendrical work.
[28] The scholar István Keul writes that the yogini images are of dark chlorite rock, about 40 cm tall, and standing in varying poses on plinths or vahanas; most have "delicate features and sensual bodies with slender waists, broad hips, and high, round breasts" with varying hairstyles and body ornaments.
[30] The Chausathi Yogini Pitha in Ranipur-Jharial, near the towns of Titilagarh and Kantabanjhi in Balangir district, Odisha, is a larger hypaethral 64-yogini temple.
[32] It was constructed with 65 shrine cells (10 on the front, 11 at the back including the one for the central deity, and 22 on each side), each with a doorway made of two squared granite pillars and a lintel stone, and each with a tower roof.
The outside of the temple is adorned with small niches that once held statues of couples with maidens on either side, but most of these are now lost or heavily damaged.
[44][45] The temple at Dudahi, locally named Akhada, near Lalitpur in Uttar Pradesh, now in ruins, had a circular plan with niches for 42 yoginis.
A set of twenty images, nearly all theriomorphic, the figures having the heads of animals such as horse, cow, rabbit, snake, buffalo, goat, bear, and deer, has been recorded.
[50] The site of Hinglajgarh, on the border of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, was cleared of statuary for the building of the Gandhi Sagar Dam.
[51][52][a] Some 150 miles north of Khajuraho on the south bank of the River Yamuna, in the Banda District, Uttar Pradesh, are the fragmentary remains of what seems to have been a rectangular 64-Yogini temple in the Rikhiyan valley.
[54] Also photographed in 1909 were three three-Matrika slabs; Dehejia suggests that these formed part of a rectangular shrine to the Eight Matrikas accompanied by Ganesh.
[55] Dehejia publishes and discusses yogini images of the Chola period, around 900 CE, recovered from northern Tamil Nadu.
The British Museum yogini is ascribed to Kanchipuram; the collection site is not known, but many sculptures of the same style were recovered from a large "tank" (artificial lake) at Kaveripakkam, seemingly derived from nearby temples.
The image was identified as one of those published in Dehejia's book, and the collector Robert Schrimpf was contacted by the National Museum, Delhi.
His widow donated the sculpture to India in 2008, and it was returned in 2013, described as "priceless" by the Deccan Herald and welcomed "home" to the National Museum with a special exhibition.
[65] Padma Kaimal has written a travel book about the processes by which the yogini statues have been turned from religious images to artworks to be looted, smuggled, purchased, and collected in the western world.
