Anthropology of Worship, Fertility and Art : A Study of 64 Yogini Temple Hirapur

This paper situates the historiography of temple dance with respect to the architecture of the 64 yogini temple poses and charts its unconventional veracity. Worship is a performance at this tantric temple in Orissa, pivoting the nature of this performativity of worship which stimulates the visual as well spiritual this paper focusses on fertility and fecundity as tropes that find manifestation amongst its devotees. The temple, placed within an agrarian, indigenous, socio-cultural continuum locates the feminine as the fertile in terms of biopolitics. This paper discusses the loci of this fertility cult, its many economies of expression through female ‘bratas’ and other related practices that conceive of the woman as the creator.   The paper will attempt to read both the feminized, and the feminine attributes related to the physical, social and cultural representation of these deities. The paper draws from an ethno-literary working project on 64 Yogini temple at Hirapur, Orissa and attempts to situate a living archive about what may be understood as a continued and performative afterlife of the ritual practices, tantric chants, dance forms and artistic influences of the said temple in modern day Orissa. The folklore being the basic pivot this project, the paper will be unique because it establishes a continuum between the local memory and the age old oral and written stories, myths legends and performances surrounding the 64 Yogini temple promoting a new kind of economy.