A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology and Religion, Geography, History, and Literature c5.125

c5.125

In the Purāṇas various gaṇās or classes of them are mentioned with distinctive names. The Vāyu Purāṇa enumerates fourteen, the Hari-vansa seven classes. They are again distinguished as being *daivika*, ‘divine,’ or *laukika*, ‘worldly.’ The former are said to be ten in number and the latter thirty-four, and these are the heavenly charmers who fascinated heroes, as Urvaśī, and allured austere sages from their devotions and penances, as Menakā and Rambhā. The Kāsī-khaṇḍa says “there are thirty-five millions of them, but only one thousand and sixty are the principal.” The Apsarases, then, are fairylike beings, beautiful and voluptuous. They are the wives or the mistresses of the Gandharvas, and are not prudish in the dispensation of their favours. Their amours on earth have been numerous, and they are the rewards in Indra’s paradise held out to heroes who fall in battle. They have the power of changing their forms; they are fond of dice, and give luck to whom they favour. In the Atharva-veda they are not so amiable; they are supposed to produce madness (love’s madness?), and so there are charms and incantations for use against them. There is a long and exhaustive article on the Apsarases in Goldstücker’s *Dictionary*, from which much of the above has been adapted. As regards their origin he makes the following speculative observations:—“Originally these divinities seem to have been personifications of the vapours which are attracted by the sun and form into mist or clouds; their character may be thus interpreted in the few hymns of the Rig-veda where mention is made of them. At a subsequent period . . . (their attributes expanding with those of their associates the Gandharvas), they became divinities which represent phenomena or objects both of a physical and ethical kind closely associated with that life” (the elementary life of heaven).