Eternal dances of India. They were born thousands of years ago with the story of Shiva and the Creation. From the Judeo-Christian ethic, the sacred and profane are ostensibly never blended whereby in Hinduism its straddles the limits and pushes the boundaries into forms indivisible and theoretically as eternal as the cosmos where in its highest state spirituality and sensuality intersect..
Oddly enough, after surviving for so many centuries, Indian dancing almost died. The young girls of ancient times who were dedicated to the temple and served within its confines as dancing devotees were in time replaced by girls who were no longer servants of Shiva alone. The Chinese Buddhist monk Hsuan Tsang, traveling in India in the seventh century A.D., remarks that “butchers, fishermen, dancers, executioners,scavengers, and other have their abodes without the city.” But, as a Buddhist, he was probably speaking of secular dancers, since Buddhism did not permit dancing in its establishments.
—But India is a land of extremes. While ancient India gave me the vision of an erotic universe lost in ecstatic love play, modern India is suffocating in a swamp of sexual repression which shrouds sexual truths in silence, obstructs sex education, and glorifies female virginity and chastity. Anyone who cares to peek behind the facade of rigid moralism will uncover shame, hypocrisy, and horrendous sexual abuse. Many Western people have heard of the barbaric bride-burnings that are still common in India, but few know about India’s shocking epidemic of sexual slavery—read More:http://www.aislingmagazine.com/aislingmagazine/articles/TAM22/Aphrodite.html…click image for source…
In the thirteenth century a historian could still describe the temple dancers in accents of piety; but by the sixteenth century, in the last years of the South Indian Vijayanagar empire, the traveler Nicolo de’ Conti was writing of the throngs of dancers in every temple, among whom prostitution was encouraged.
The institution of temple dancers, and their conversion from a purely religious function, is not unknown elsewhere in the world. And in India,where even today almost every conceivable variation of belief is embraced by the term Hindu, it is not surprising to find that at certain times there existed groups among whom all forms of sexuality were regarded as a religious activity.
—Tantric rituals are often linked to dark occult practices, but it is also a philosophy that centres on sexual energy as being part of the cosmic circle of re-birth arising from death and destruction. The arousal of sensual passion also brings with it a karmic awakening, and a god such as Shiva, the Destroyer and the malevolent goddess Kali, are yoked to pure energy (“shakti”) a force that fuels the universe and all things within it. Temples throughout the country display Shiva-Lingams-an erect “lingam” (phallus) cradled in the “yoni” (vagina), symbolizing the mystical power of creativity. —click image for source…
The pornographic sculptures contorting around the lower walls of the Sun Temple of Konarak should not be thought of as an illustration of purely licentious impulses. In their context they are religious. On this same temple there are delightful female dancing figures with drums, their simple village charm giving no hint of lasciviousness. After the degeneration of the religious dance, however, several hundred years of British influence in the subcontinent so raised the prestige of things Western, and so diminished the attractions of indigenous art, that by the end of the nineteenth century dancing had become a despised profession and the dancers themselves were considered little more than prostitutes.
No respectable Indian family would have thought of allowing its daughters to learn dancing. The very idea was much more shocking than for a nineteenth century family in Europe or North America to allow a daughter to go on the stage. ( to be continued)…
ADDENDUM:
(see link at end)…As a student of Indian dance, I was taken to thousand-year-old temples on whose sculpted walls voluptuous dancers mingled with lovemaking couples. Gazing at these breathtakingly erotic sculptures, I realized that though modern Indian women seemed to be just as repressed as Western women or more so their ancestors were obviously not. On the temple walls, they artfully arrange their necklaces to show off their full breasts. They turn their luscious backsides to the viewer, tossing radiant smiles back over their shoulders. They stand with a lover, arms thrown around his neck as they kiss him fervently. They gaze
you with peaceful eyes as they squat, letting their menstrual blood flow into the earth.
—In gross violation of High Court directives, local cultural troupes as well as those from other districts have been staging obscene dances during temple festivals here.
At Kabilarmalai under Jedarpalayam police limits last week, such dances were performed under the guise of cultural dance programmes for close to five days, informed sources said. Scantily-clad female artistes would dance to the tunes of obscene hit songs.
Lewd gestures, lascivious movements and touching of private parts are common scenes at these ‘cultural dances’ that go on till late night. The sources noted that a similar dance programme was staged at Keelpalapatti and Kurukkupuram under Mohanur and Puduchatram police limits respectively in recent days.
It is alleged that the police remained mute spectators to such performances.—read more:http://newindianexpress.com/states/tamil_nadu/Lewd-show-at-temple-fest-raises-stink/2013/05/01/article1569555.ece…click image for source…
One day, I asked one of my spiritual teachers about the fascination with sex and erotic play that is so evident in the sacred art of India but contrasts so strikingly with the more austere attitudes of Christian religion. In response, he told me an ancient Indian creation myth:
In the beginning was the One, and It was infinite in all directions, neither male or female. But It was alone, and loneliness is not good for the soul. Alone, the divine being yearned to love and be loved, to know and be known, to touch and be touched. And so It split Itself in two. One half was male and the other female. The male half we call Shivapure, formless, unmoving spirit. The female half we call Shakti, our mother, who is matter and energy and form. Shiva and Shakti have always been one and will always be one, but to our eyes they appear as two.Read More:http://www.aislingmagazine.com/aislingmagazine/articles/TAM22/Aphrodite.html
COMMENTS