THE HINDU temples of central and southern India can be startlingly erotic. The temples of Khajuraho are the most explicit, being encrusted with statues of naked females — big-breasted and narrow waisted — doing naughty things with rampant men (see them on Google images). How can a religion be so pornographic?

The standard explanation is that Hinduism harnessed sex in the service of mysticism, but we scientists are materialists and we distrust spiritual accounts. How would anthropologists explain pornographic temples?

The first clue was provided by Robert Carneiro in his paper A Theory of the Origin of the State. There, Carneiro noted that the first states were created by despots, who exploited the introduction of agriculture some 10,000 years ago. Human tribes, Carneiro observes, have fought each other for millennia, but when human beings were still hunter-gatherers a battle led only to the dispersal of the defeated, who melted away.

After agriculture was invented, some 10,000 years ago, a defeated tribe could not afford to disperse: it had become dependent on the food of its farms. So, if defeated in battle, agricultural tribes would collude with their victors, producing food in exchange for quarter: “Ye shall give the fifth part unto Pharaoh, and four parts shall be your own, for seed of the field, and for your food” (Genesis 47). The first states, therefore, were cruel places, which exploited men — and women.

In her book Despotism and Differential Reproduction: A Darwinian View of History, Laura Betzig noted how similarly the early emperors — whether in Africa, Asia or America — behaved, suggesting that traditional empires can best be understood not historically but biologically, having been moulded by coalitions of dominant males to propagate their genes. All the emperors had harems, for example, and the Indian Udayama’s 16,000 women were used similarly to the thousands owned by the Inca Sun King or the Chinese Emperor.

Consequently, DNA testing has confirmed that upper- caste females in India are genetically indistinguishable from lower-caste females, because pretty hoi polloi girls have always been imported into the palaces. But the upper-caste males of India — who are the descendants of the Aryan conquerors of 5,000 years ago — have never allowed male proles to marry their daughters, and they remain genetically distinct. They have, therefore, retained the spoils of conquest for themselves and their sons.

One aspect of imperial despotism is the restriction of trade. It was Charles Darwin who noted that trade is a human instinct. In Voyage of the Beagle Darwin described the natives of Tierra del Fuego as primitive, yet: “They had a fair idea of barter. I gave one man a large nail (a most valuable present) without making any signs for a return; but he immediately picked out two fish, and handed them up on the point of his spear.”

Traditional empires, being despotic, restricted trade to the palaces and temples, forbidding hoi polloi from trading or travelling. Only priests and princes and certain privileged merchants (who were closely regulated) traded and travelled. And one lucrative trade that the priests and princes often monopolised was the oldest and most despotic of all, prostitution.

Temple prostitution was, therefore, a feature of Hinduism and other imperial cultures — and a profitable one too. There were, for example, some 400 women on the payroll at the Rajarajesvara temple in Tanjore in the 11th century. They were procured by priests who roamed the land in search of pretty young girls.

Doubtless the girls were seduced by a theology of mysticism, just as the widows who, as suttees, threw themselves on their dead husbands’ funeral pyres believed they were attaining spiritual purity, but the sexual economics of female exploitation provide a candid explanation of what was happening.

As do the statues on the temples. Frankly, they are arousing, even in these jaded times, being more explicit than the photos in today’s telephone booths. In short, a millennium ago the temples of India were brothels — they may have been more than that, but they were brothels too — and they advertised their wares as brothels always have. The erotic temple statues of India remind us, therefore, that kings and priests — like politicians today — have always been despots.

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