01Open to the sky
Yogini temples are round and open to the sky, the shape of the chakra worshipped in Kaula sadhana. At Hirapur the entrance is a narrow passage, so low you bend to enter. Inside, each Yogini stands on her vahana: one on an antelope, one on a ram, one on a corpse, one on a lotus. In the centre is a small mandapa, the Chandi mandapa, and the presiding Devi in the circle is Mahamaya. The outer wall has nine female guardians in niches.
02Rediscovered
The village never stopped worshipping Mahamaya, but scholars came to the temple only in 1953, when the Odisha historian Kedarnath Mahapatra reported it. Some images were damaged over the centuries and a few are missing. It is one of only a handful of Yogini temples in Bharat, with Ranipur-Jharial in Odisha and those at Bheraghat and Mitaoli in Madhya Pradesh.
The life of this place
- 9th centuryThe circular temple and its sixty-four Yoginis are made.
- 1953Kedarnath Mahapatra brings the temple to scholarly notice.
Open daily; the temple is small, so go in early morning when the priest is present and the light falls inside.
