Lakshmana Temple

Built under Chandela king Yashovarman and completed by his son, the Lakshmana Temple is the best-preserved and most precisely datable of the Western Group, giving scholars a fixed reference point for the stylistic development of Khajuraho's Nagara architecture. Its panchayatana layout, with four corner shrines on a shared platform, became a template repeated across the site. Sculptural registers running the full circumference of the plinth show royal processions, hunting scenes, and battle formations alongside the erotic and celestial imagery typical of the school, offering a rare narrative record of tenth-century Chandela court life. The sanctum's rare Vaikuntha form of Vishnu, a three-faced icon uniting human, lion, and boar heads, marks the temple as a significant statement of Vaishnava theology under a dynasty otherwise closely tied to Shaivism. It forms part of the UNESCO-listed Khajuraho Group of Monuments.