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In numerous ways, this fragrance and mystique of the feminine permeates all temples in India. "The most magnificent temple and the most inconspicuous village shrine", writes Maury, "do not differ on their emphasis of the Feminine, but merely in the numerical and artistic elaboration of its depictions. The same intensity that has molded the otherworldly mood and suggestion of the celebrated sanctuaries of Khajuraho, Konark and Bhubaneshwar equally dominate their less familiar counterparts everywhere. Whether as a companion of a canonical deity, or as a member of a merrymaking group of supernaturals; whether as a lonely dancer or a musician disclosing her charms, or as the gracefully sinuous guardian of the gate; whether voluptuously enlivening a pillar, or upholding its capital; whether enchanting the beholder from rows of recessed niches along a temple's circumference, or from circles of high reliefs surrounding its lofty cupola, the countenance of the earlier yakṣi wields her inescapable magic. The individual figure may be called surāsundari or apsarā, devikā or mohini, yogini or nāyikā, it is always an embodiment of the Feminine, in its sensuous loveliness perpetuating the immemorial nature of the lotus goddess, giving contour to the physical fertility and psychic desire that are the promise of eternal regeneration."
The Indian temple -- Jain, Buddhist or Hindu - is a synthesis of many symbols. "By their superposition, repetition, proliferation and amalgamation," writes Kramrisch, "its total meaning is formed ever anew.... The vivifying Germ (garbha) and the Embryo of splendour (Hiranyagarbha) are within the walls of the Garbhagsha and have their images in the construction of the temple."
In the elaborate architecture of the Indian temple, all other buildings within the sacred precinct are accessory and subservient to the garbhagrha, the womb. This is the sanctum sanctorum; this is where the presiding deity of the temple resides. Symbolically, this is the centre of creation and of birth; this is where the sacred 'seed' dwells; this is where the fruition takes place.
The seed, bindu, according to Tantrism, is "an unlimited entity, the productive point of potentiality....the empirical substance that can transform a man into godlike being." The image of bindu is central to the Indian spiritual thought as it is to many others.. Again and again, in art, myth and iconography, this thought finds an exquisite expression: In an eighteenth century painting of Guler school, Vişnu lies on the coils of a thousandhooded serpent inside the Golden Egg, floating in the Cosmic Ocean. In another painting of the same period, two Manipuri dancers dance within an egg creating the dance of life. Hiranyagarbha - 'Embryo of Splendour' _ is portrayed as an egg encompassing the universe. In the Elephanta Caves, Ardha- narīśvara — Siva as half-man, half-woman - dances the Cosmic dance celebrating the words of Lao-Tzu:
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