Time-Travel In Khajuraho: Where Pan-Indian Dance Traditions Are Kept Alive – Essay
Khajuraho, a thousand-year-old temple town in the rugged heartland of Madhya Pradesh in India, is keeping alive ancient traditions of dance and music of the entire sub-continent. For a week every year, the Khajuraho Dance Festival brings together the finest dancers and dance troupes to showcase their performances at a stage created in front of the imposing Kandhariya Mahadeva Temple. February 2026 marked the 52nd year of the Festival; for the performers and the audiences it was a time-travel across centuries of turbulent history, to learn about the rise and fall of powerful dynasties, in the presence of mighty temples towering into the skies. Khajuraho remains a pilgrimage destination, even though these groups of temples built in the 10th century CE have become monuments, now protected as an UNESCO World Heritage site.
Reading Diana Eck's 'India - A Sacred Geography' is invariably a refresher to understanding the significance of such geographies. "I began to realize that the entire land of India is a great network of pilgrimage places - referential, inter-referential, ancient and modern, complex and ever-changing,” she wrote in the voluminous book published in 2012. “As a whole it constitutes what would have to be called a 'sacred geography', as vast and complex as the whole of the sub-continent. In this wider network of pilgrimage, nothing, not even the great city of Banaras, stands alone, but rather everything is a part of a living, storied and intricately connected landscape." Diana Eck shared her realization that no one pilgrimage was the centre, rather one of the multiple centres in a fascinating and polycentric landscape, linked with the tracks of pilgrimage.
For those fortunate to be witnessing the Khajuraho Dance Festival, and joining the dots with the equally fascinating dance of history and Time, it was an awe-inspiring experience to be in front of the majestic Kandhariya Mahadeva Temple, with its ornately carved shikharas. Then to glance at a physical map of India and plot Khajuraho, almost in the centre of the sub-continent. As Diana Eck said these temples are part of an ancient network, a sweeping arc from the east beginning with Bodh Gaya, moving onto Banaras, Prayag (Allahabad), Chitrakut, then Khajuraho in the centre. The sacred arc continues to Deogarh and Ujjain (Mahakala). That's when historians of art, religion or philosophy agree that no one centre can be presumed to be the 'most important sacred city of India'.
Each pilgrimage centre has its own unique sanctity and pre-eminence, yet it is part of a wider system marked by multiplicity. There is a network of sacred rivers - the Ganga, the Narmada, the Godavari and Kaveri, each laying claim to its heavenly origin and gracious powers; the network of famous Goddesses called the 'shakta pithas' or power seats of the Goddess. Come to think of it, the sub-continent emerges as a massive network of geo-physical, material and spiritual, divine energies. “It is a living landscape,” explained Eck, “in which mountains, rivers, forests and villages are elaborately linked to the stories of the gods and heroes. The land bears the traces of the god and the footprints of the heroes. Every place has its story, and conversely, every story in the vast storehouse of myth and legend has its place.”
In the same vein, the spectrum of classical dance performances – ranging from Bharatnatyam, Odissi, Manipuri, Kathak, Kathakali, Mohiniyattam, Kuchipudi and Chhau – were a panoramic presentation, a network of the living heritage of India. A fine opportunity for generations of Indian and global audiences to absorb it all under the night sky of Khajuraho, with the crescent moon moving between the temple shikharas and framing the dance stage below.
The Dance Divine
There was Vishavdeep, the young Kathak dancer from Delhi, trained under the Jaipur gharana (school) who held forth on the second evening of the Festival. His flaming red Kathak costume, his bright eyes and expressions kept the audience spellbound. The musical compositions for his dance were odes to love and divinity and Vishavdeep spun around on the stage, almost like a sculpture come alive. The hugely talented Navya Nair, a film and television actress based out of Kerala, showed similar brilliance on stage with her Bharatnatyam recital. Her ornate dress, flowers and jewellery made her the ‘apsara’ or celestial maiden as she descended down the temple steps and took command of the entire performance. She took pains to explain the nuances of her dance compositions; some purely divine, others risqué and mischievous. The musicians accompanying the performers were a class act in themselves: the percussions, the passionate singing and the playing of harmonium or violin were a treat in itself for music-lovers.
It was the Chhau dance troupe from Jharkhand, presenting the Manbhum Chhau dance, whose stage performance was truly electrifying. In their larger-than-life glittering attire, huge masks and gymnastic movements, they brought to life the epic story of ‘Abhimanyu caught in the Chakravyuh’ on the battlefield of Mahabharata. Trained under Guru Prabhat Kumar Mahato, the troupe built up the tensions of war, the sight of wounded warriors and dilemmas of morality – all of which, in many ways, reflected the present age with its horrors of war. (For those who wish to explore these performances online, the Madhya Pradesh Government’s Culture Department has created a channel providing the performances:
It was the Chhau dance troupe from Jharkhand, presenting the Manbhum Chhau dance, whose stage performance was truly electrifying. In their larger-than-life glittering attire, huge masks and gymnastic movements, they brought to life the epic story of ‘Abhimanyu caught in the Chakravyuh’ on the battlefield of Mahabharata. Trained under Guru Prabhat Kumar Mahato, the troupe built up the tensions of war, the sight of wounded warriors and dilemmas of morality – all of which, in many ways, reflected the present age with its horrors of war. (For those who wish to explore these performances online, the Madhya Pradesh Government’s Culture Department has created a channel providing the performances:
The veterans were in full flow too, graceful as ever: Thkchom Ibemubi Devi whose mastery over Manipuri dance form has made her a legend in her own lifetime; Saswati Sen, the Kathak danseuse from Delhi who continues to keep alive the multi-layered legacies of Birju Maharaj; Prathibha Prahlad and her dedication to Bharatnatyam is second to none. These celebrated artistes have become cultural ambassadors of India and have enthralled audiences throughout the world. At Khajuraho too, they demonstrated their class and dedication to their art, commendable beyond words.
Devotion and piety were amply demonstrated by the dance troupe from Guwahati’s Sattriya Kendra, trained under Dr Pratibha Sharma. Readers may not be aware that Sattriya is the dance form introduced by Shrimant Shankardev, hailed as the Jagat Guru and Mahapurush, for he gave the region of Assam its cultural identity in the 15th and 16th century CE. Through music and dance, language and literature, he laid the foundations of a new community, a society built on bhakti, peace and harmony. The Sattriya troupe, comprising several young talented dancers, performed on Day 3 of the Festival; like a mighty river they flowed and shimmered under the lights, praying and dancing together, appealing to divine powers on a stage created by the powerful Kings of the Chandella dynasty a thousand years ago. The cross-currents of time, space, history and geography remain truly inspiring and engrossing for 21st century audiences.
Pages of history
What is fascinating about Khajuraho’s history can be found in the archives of the Archaeological Survey of India and in the first accounts of how the region was ‘accidentally’ discovered in the early 19th century, after being over-run by forests for over five hundred years. In 1839 Captain T.S. Burt of the Royal Bengal Engineers published in the pages of the prestigious Journal of the Asiatic Society an account of his discovery of an overgrown and abandoned Hindu temple complex in central India.
The good captain, writing in the restrained style of the early Victorian era, noted that: "I found in the ruins of Khajrao seven large diwallas, or Hindoo temples, most beautifully and exquisitely carved as to workmanship, but the sculptor had at times allowed his subject to grow rather warmer than there was any absolute necessity for his doing; indeed, some of the sculptures here were extremely indecent and offensive..." Andrew Forbes, writing in the CPAMedia, adds more details: The carvings Captain Burt had discovered, we now know, formed but a part of an epic story set in stone at the order of the Chandella Kings of central India during the 10th and 11th centuries AD. The Chandellas, scions of a powerful Rajput clan who claimed the moon as their direct ancestor, were devout Hindus who, over a brief period of about one hundred years, built a total of 85 temples to the glory of God, the creation, and the Hindu pantheon.
Eclipsed by the Mughal conquest, the rise of rival dynasties, and the passage of time, the temples languished in the harsh sun and monsoon rains of central India, gradually becoming lost in the jungle. At the time of their re-discovery in 1839, they were so completely overgrown that Burt thought no more than seven temples had survived. Happily, this proved far from the case, for when the undergrowth was hacked back and the complex restored, no fewer than twenty two of the original structures were revealed standing, explained Forbes.
Sir Alexander’s words
It is Sir Alexander Cunningham, the first Director General of Archaeological Survey of India, whose note on Khajuraho provides historical cues for readers. He wrote: “The ancient city of Khajuraho, the capital of the Chandela Rajputs, is situated 34 miles to the South of Mohoba, 27 miles to the east of Chhatrapur, and 25 miles to the north-west of Panna. It is inserted in sheet No. 70 of the Indian Atlas as Kujrow, in north latitude 24° 51 ', and east longitude 80°, just 4 miles to the south of Rajnagar, and within 8 miles of the west bank of Kane River. The earliest mention of this capital by name is by Abu Rihan, who accompanied Mahmud in his campaign against Kalinjar in A.D. 1022. He calls it Kajuroh, the capital of Jajahuti, and places it at 30 parsangs, or about 90 miles to the south-east of Kanoj. The true direction however, is almost due south, and the distance about twice 30 parsangs, or 180 miles. The next mention of Khojuraho is by Ibn Batuta, who visited it about AD 1335. He calls it Kajura, and describes it as having a lake about one mile in length, which was surrounded by idol temples. These are still standing, and form, perhaps, the largest group of costly Hindu temples, now to be found in Northern India.
The earliest mention of the province is by Hiuen Tsang in AD 641. He calls it Chi-chi-to or Jajhoti, and places the capital at 1OOO li, or 167 miles, to the north of Ujjain. The bearing is sufficiently accurate, but the distance is about double 1,000 li, or upwards of 1OO miles, whether we take Mahoba or Khojuraho to have been the chief city at the time of Hiuen Tsang's visit. He describes the capital as being 15 or 16 li, or upwards of 2 and a half miles in circuit, and the people as being mostly heretics or worshippers of the gods. There were many dozens of monasteries, but only a few monks, while there were about l000 Brahmans attached to 12 temples. The king himself was a Brahman, but a staunch Buddhist. The country was famous for its fertility. and was much frequented by learned men from all the parts of India. The very name of Mahoba or Mahotsavanagara, the ‘city of the great jubilee’, is specially connected with the rise of the Chandela dynasty. It is most probable that Khajuraho must have been the capital of the earlier dynasty of Jajhotiya Brahmans. It is therefore as old as the beginning of the seventh century and if we may judge from the many dozens of Buddhists monasteries seen by the Chinese pilgrim in 641 AD, its date must reach back to the first century of the Christian Era.” The 52nd Khajuraho Dance Festival is truly a tribute to such a rich glorious past.