The erotic sculptures of Khajuraho have been studied by several scholars from the field of archaeology, history, anthropology, etc, however, a sociological approach to study them in terms of their social representation during the medieval period in India needs further scrutiny. The main objective of this paper is to highlight the socio-sexual dynamics of this medieval Indian sculptural site through the erotic sculptures of Khajuraho. The importance of visual data in anthropological sciences is very important, to understand social reality and construct meanings out of them. In this paper, we look into the erotic sculptures of Khajuraho, which will be studied using semiotics. The source of data is visual and textual, which is analyzed using descriptive analysis. The importance of embodying visual data is gaining equal prominence in sociology where visual sociology closely combines with anthropological sciences especially, in this paper, where I looked at the frozen visual depictions on the walls of Khajuraho. The method of data collection is natural observation where social semiotics is used to understand the symbolic representation of these sculptures and establish meanings to apply them to social reality. Thus the relevance of visual data in this paper becomes more important as it deals with 11th and 12th century AD in India. Therefore as a nonparticipant observer, in anthropology and sociology, the importance of visual data gains more prominence as we record data from an individual observer’s perspective. Thus, this paper analyzes the visual depictions of the erotic sculptures at Khajuraho and associates them with the embedded gender and sex norms of that period. How the embedded gender and sex norms are reflected in the construction of these sculptures, will also be analyzed, therefore the use of visual depictions from Khajuraho, is primary to understand the larger social context of socio-sexual dynamics of medieval India.
