A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c13.s3.7

c13.s3.7

Plate X (*ante*) gives some slight indication of the sculptured wealth of the greater temples at Khajurāho erected during the tenth and eleventh centuries by the kings of the Chandēl dynasty. I visited the temples many years ago and can testify that the crowd of figures is far more numerous than would appear from the photograph. But this ‘peuple de pierre’, as M. Le Bon calls it, was designed for the purpose of architectural decoration in the mass, not as an assemblage of individual works of fine art; and it is doubtful if any single image or group could be excerpted which would deserve illustration on its own aesthetic merits. Very many of the figures, like those in Orissa (*ante*, p. 190), are disgustingly indecent. Nobody having thought it worth while to photograph the sculptures in detail, it is impossible to reproduce examples, even of the decent ones.