Tilottamaतिलोत्तमा

Tilottama (तिलोत्तमा) is the apsara who was designed. The Mahabharata tells that the asura brothers Sunda and Upasunda, inseparable and invincible, had won from Brahma the boon that nothing could kill them except each other — and, secure in their pact, had seized the three worlds. The gods' remedy was a work of craftsmanship: at Brahma's command the divine artificer Vishvakarma gathered whatever was most beautiful in the three worlds and composed a woman from these essences, sesame-grain by sesame-grain — tila, the sesame seed, giving her name, the one excellent in every particle.

The story

Sent to the demon brothers where they revelled in their conquered worlds, Tilottama had only to appear. Each brother seized a hand; each claimed her; and the pair who could be slain by no one but each other fought over her until both lay dead. The boon was unbroken and the worlds were free — undone not by force but by a perfection of form purpose-built for the task. The epic adds that at her first presentation in heaven the gods themselves could not look away: Shiva, tradition says, developed faces in each direction as she circled him in reverence, and Indra's body broke out in the thousand eyes with which he is depicted. Even the guardians of the cosmos, the tale implies, were tested by what Vishvakarma had made.

Legacy

Tilottama recurs in the Puranas among the foremost dancers of Indra's court, and later legend involves her in curses and rebirths of her own. Her story has remained a favourite of poets and painters — a myth about beauty as a made thing, assembled from the world's scattered excellences, and about the self-destruction of power that cannot share.