Latest / The Hidden History of Bengal: Kingdoms, Empires, and Revolution — Fexingo History / The Temple of 64 Yoginis: Bengal's Forgotten Sacred Circle
Transcript
- Lucas: So, Luna, we've talked a lot about Bengal's political history—the Nawabs, the Company, the famines. But today I want to take us somewhere completely different, a place that feels like it's from another world entirely. Luna: I'm intrigued. Where are we going? Lucas: A stone circle in the middle of a paddy field in Birbhum district, about a hundred and fifty kilometres from Calcutta. It's the 64 Yogini Temple. If today's conversation turns out to be useful to you—and I think it will—remember that this show stays ad-free because of listener support, so if you can, buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. But let's get to the circle. Luna: A stone circle? Like a ritual space? Lucas: Exactly. Imagine a circular wall of grey basalt, about five metres high, with a single narrow entrance on the east. Inside, arranged in a ring, are sixty-four niches, each one housing a crudely carved stone goddess. And the whole thing has no roof. The sky is the ceiling. They call it the 64 Yogini Temple, and it's one of the oldest surviving examples of tantric architecture in the subcontinent. Luna: No roof? That's odd for a temple. Lucas: That's the thing—it's not really a temple in the conventional sense. The yoginis were fierce goddesses associated with the tantric tradition, and their shrines were deliberately open to the sky, because the ritual involved sky-clad worship—that's a polite way of saying the practitioners were naked. But by the time the temple was built, that practice had evolved. The circle itself is the key. Sixty-four is the number of yoginis, and they're arranged in a mandala, a cosmic diagram. Luna: So these yoginis were a big deal in Bengal? Lucas: For a few centuries, yes. The cult of the yoginis peaked between the eighth and twelfth centuries, and Bengal was a heartland. We have inscriptions and texts like the Kubjika Tantra that link the yoginis to the Kaula sect, which was a left-hand tantric tradition. The Kaulas worshipped the goddess through transgressive practices—drinking wine, eating meat, even ritual sex—all as a way of breaking social taboos to attain liberation. And the yoginis were the female powers that guided the practitioner. They weren't always benevolent; they could be terrifying, winged, or animal-headed, like the ones you see in the temple. Luna: But then what happened? Why did it disappear? Lucas: The decline is tied to the rise of Brahmanical orthodoxy. The Sena dynasty, which we've talked about before—Lakshman Sen and his predecessors—they were devout Vaishnavas, and they patronised the mainstream Brahmanical sects. As they consolidated power in the twelfth century, the tantric cults were pushed to the margins. The Kaulas and the Kapalikas, who used to carry skulls and wander the cremation grounds, they were increasingly seen as heretical. So the yogini temples fell out of royal favour, and many were simply abandoned or repurposed. Luna: So Lakshman Sen didn't necessarily destroy them, but he didn't support them either. Lucas: Right. There's no record of active persecution, but the patronage dried up. And without royal support, these temples couldn't sustain their rituals. The one at Hirapur is an exception—it survived because it was so far off the beaten path. In fact, it was only 'rediscovered' by British officers in the nineteenth century. One of them, a man named F. Buchanan-Hamilton, described it in his survey but dismissed it as 'a place of no consequence.' Luna: But the locals never forgot it, right? Lucas: Exactly. The villagers in Hirapur still call the goddesses 'Mother' and they still light lamps there on certain days. There's a living folk tradition around the temple, even though the full tantric context is long gone. They've absorbed the yoginis into their own village deities. It's a beautiful example of how religious memory can outlive the formal theology. Luna: So what do we actually know about the rituals? I mean, beyond the scandalous stuff. Lucas: That's the fascinating part—we know very little. The Kaula texts are deliberately cryptic. They use coded language, called sandhabhasa, meaning 'twilight language,' so that the uninitiated can't understand them. But we have some clues. The yoginis were believed to be the embodied energies of the goddess Chamunda. In the temple, one of the central figures is Chamunda herself, depicted as a skeleton with a sunken belly, seated on a corpse. That image tells us the yoginis were associated with the cremation ground and with the destruction of ego. Luna: And the temple's open roof—was that to let the goddesses fly in and out? Lucas: You're thinking like a tantrika. Many scholars believe that was exactly the idea. The yoginis are described in the texts as flying beings, able to travel through the sky. So the roofless design allowed them to descend into the circle during rituals. And the architecture itself mirrors a mandala, which is a map of the cosmos. So when a practitioner stood in the centre, they were literally at the hub of the universe, surrounded by the divine female powers. Luna: Wow. I never thought of a temple as a cosmic diagram. Lucas: It's a brilliant piece of design. But here's a question: why Bengal? Why did this tantric movement flourish specifically in the eastern part of the subcontinent? Some scholars point to the strong presence of indigenous goddess worship, especially in the Sundarbans and the villages, which predates the Brahmanical tradition. The yogini cult might have been a synthesis of those local mother goddesses with imported tantric ideas from the northwest. That's a theory, but it's compelling. Luna: So it's a meeting point of two worlds. Lucas: Absolutely. And that meeting point is still visible in the stone itself. The carvings at Hirapur are not the refined, classical art of the later temples. They're crude, almost primitive, with bulging eyes and exaggerated features. That's a hallmark of tantric art—it's meant to be raw and direct, not beautiful. It's designed to shock the practitioner out of complacency. Luna: And that's why the temple feels so different from, say, the terracotta temples of Bishnupur. Lucas: Exactly. Bishnupur is all about refined craftsmanship and mythology. Hirapur is about raw power. And that's why it's such a gem. It's one of only a handful of surviving 64-yogini temples in India—others are at Hirapur in Odisha, and at Dudhai and Bhedaghat in Madhya Pradesh. But Bengal's is unique because it's the only one in the region, and it's still in active use by the local community, even if they don't know the tantric origins. Luna: I want to go see it now. Is it easy to get to? Lucas: It's a bit of a trek. From Calcutta, you'd take a train to Bolpur, then a bus or a cycle-rickshaw to the village. But that journey is part of the experience. You're walking through the same countryside that the tantrikas would have traversed, past the same palm groves and rice paddies. When you finally see those grey stones rising out of the greenery, it feels like stepping back eight hundred years. Luna: And twenty-first-century visitors can just walk in? Lucas: Yes, it's open to the public. The Archaeological Survey of India has done some conservation work, but they've been careful not to over-restore it. You can still see the original stonework, and if you go at the right time, you might catch a local woman offering flowers to one of the niches. It's not a museum piece; it's a living site. Luna: That's so different from the stuffy museums I'm used to. Lucas: And that's the beauty of studying history on the ground. You can read all the texts, but nothing prepares you for the feeling of standing in that circle and looking up at the sky, exactly as the tantrikas would have done centuries ago. It makes you wonder what they were really seeking—and whether we've lost something in our modern, sanitised forms of worship. Luna: I have to say, Lucas, you make history sound like an adventure. Lucas: Because it is. And it's not just about kings and battles—it's about the strange, beautiful things people built and believed. The 64 Yogini Temple is a reminder that Bengal's history is far more complex than the textbooks tell us. It's a land of goddesses, tantra, and stone circles that still hold their secrets. Luna: Well, I'm sold. Next time we do a road trip, that's our destination. Lucas: Deal. And maybe we'll even light a lamp for the yoginis.