Chausath Yogini Temple

The Chausath Yogini Temple at Hirapur, near Bhubaneswar in Orissa, is a circular, roofless tantric shrine devoted to the sixty-four yoginis, the goddess-like attendants of Durga. Local priests relate that Durga took the form of sixty-four demi-goddesses to overcome a demon and afterwards asked to be commemorated in a temple.

It was built around 864 by Queen Hiradevi of the Bhauma dynasty and is regarded as the oldest of India's few surviving Chausath Yogini temples. Its low sandstone ring has niches for sixty-four yogini images surrounding a central figure of Kali standing on a human head; fifty-six of the dark stone statues survive.

In the sixteenth century the temple is said to have been sacked and its images broken by Kalapahad, the Muslim convert general remembered as the destroyer of the Jagannath and Konark temples.