The Western Group

The western group of temples which the visitor encounters first, is situated along the Bamitha-Rajnagar road to the west of the Khajuraho village. This is the largest and most important group with most of its constituent temples laid out roughly in two rows.
The two monuments described first are the farthest ones of the group and not spectacular, but they are of considerable significance for the early history of the local architectural style.

Chausath-yogini temple
The Chausath-yogini temple , made of a coarse granite is the earliest building at Khajuraho and is situated on a low granite outcrop to the south-west of the shiva-sagar tank. The temple has an exceptional plan and design. Standing on a lofty (5.4 metres high) platform, it is an open-air quadrangular (31.4 m by 18.3 m) structure of sixty -seven peripheral shrines, of which only thirty-five have now survived.

The shrines are tiny cells, each entered by a small doorway, and are severely plain and roofed by a curvilinear sikhara of an elementary form. The shrine in the back wall, facing the entrance, is the largest and constitutes the main sanctum. A few simple mouldings on the façade are all the decoration that the temple displays, but in spite of its uncouth appearance and rugged bareness, it possesses an elemental strength and reveals some basic traits of the Khajuraho style, such as a lofty platform and a jangha (wall ) divided into two registers.
Of all the yogini temples in India, this is the most primitive in contruction and unique in being quadrangular and not circular on plan. Cunningham surmised the existence of a shrine at the center of the courtyard, but excavation revealed no such evidence.

The three surviving images, representing Brahmani, Maheshvari and Mahishasuramardini, are massive and squat in form and are among the oldest sculptures of Khajuraho. The latter two are inscribed as Mahesvari and Hinghalaja. The evidence of the sculptural and of the short labels on the images, indicates that the temple is probably datable to the last quarter of the ninth century.

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