Yashovarman builds the Lakshmana temple at Khajuraho

The temple is dated by an inscribed slab found some time after 1843 among the ruins at its base and now set into the wall of its entrance porch. Dated in the year 1011 — a Vikrama year, 953/954 or, if reckoned as expired, 954/955 — and composed by the poet Madhava, it traces the Chandella line from Nannuka, credits Yashovarman with wars against the Gaudas, Khasas, Kosalas, Kashmiris, Mithilas, Malavas, Chedis, Kurus and Gurjaras and with the conquest of the fort of Kalanjara, and says that he erected ‘this charming splendid home’ of Vishnu, which rivalled the peaks of the snowy mountains and whose golden pinnacles lit up the sky. It also tells the story of the image of Vaikuntha set up in it: the lord of Bhota (Tibet) had obtained it from Mount Kailasa; Shahi, king of Kira, received it from him as a token of friendship; Herambapala — whom F. Kielhorn identified with the Pratihara Mahipala I — obtained it from Shahi in exchange for a force of elephants and horses; and Yashovarman received it from Herambapala’s son Devapala, the Pratihara ruler of Kannauj. The inscription was set up after Yashovarman’s death: it describes his son Dhanga as ruling from Kalanjara to the Yamuna and Gwalior, yet ends by naming Vinayakapala (the reading is not quite certain), the Pratihara king whose supremacy, according to D. C. Ganguly, Dhanga still acknowledged. Historians accept the conquest of Kalanjara and probably some of the wars with neighbours such as the Chedis and the Paramaras of Malwa, but take the victories over the Kashmiris, Khasas and Kurus for a poet’s exaggeration.

Built of sandstone on a high platform (jagati), the temple has an ambulatory round its sanctum and is a panchayatana: four subsidiary shrines stand at the corners of the platform, and this is the only temple at Khajuraho where all four survive. The sanctum holds a three-headed, four-armed image of Vaikuntha, with a human face between the heads of a boar and a lion. Two bands of sculpture on the walls show deities, couples and erotic scenes, and friezes on the platform depict elephants and horses, battles, hunting scenes and processions. The Archaeological Survey of India dates the building to about 930–950; it was followed by the Vishvanatha (c. 999–1002) and the Kandariya Mahadeva (c. 1030). Under Dhanga, the first fully independent Chandella king, more temples were raised at Khajuraho; according to the early 17th-century Persian historian Firishta, the raja of Kalinjar — evidently Dhanga — also joined the Hindu Shahi king Jayapala against the Ghaznavid Sabuktigin about 989, a report whose authenticity has been questioned. The Khajuraho group of monuments was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1986.