India Guide
Orissa
Vaital Deul Mandir
Address: Bindu Sagar group of temples, 2km south of the city centre
Price: free
The Vaital Deul temple, one of the Bindu Sagar group's oldest buildings, is a real feast of Tantric art. The building was erected around 800 AD in a markedly different style from most of its contemporaries in Bhubaneswar, drawing heavily on earlier Buddhist influences. Among the panels of Hindu deities encrusting its outer walls, you can make out examples of some of India's earliest erotic sculpture.
Once past the four-faced lingam post at the main entrance (used for tethering sacrificial offerings), your eyes soon adjust to the darkness of the interior, whose grotesque images convey the macabre nature of the esoteric rites once performed here. Durga, in her most terrifying aspect as Chamunda, peers out of the half-light from behind the grille at the far end of the hall – her withered body, garlanded with skulls and flanked by an owl and a jackal, stands upon a rotting corpse. In front of her a man picks himself up from the floor, having filled his skull-cup with blood from the decapitated body nearby.