Urvashiउर्वशी

Urvashi (उर्वशी) is the paragon of the apsaras, the celestial nymphs of Indra's court, and the one with the longest literary pedigree: her story is already present in the Rigveda, whose tenth book preserves a stark dialogue-hymn between the departing nymph and her abandoned mortal lover, King Pururavas. In the later tellings, elaborated in the Shatapatha Brahmana and the Puranas, she lived with Pururavas under conditions whose breach — contrived by the gandharvas, who wanted her back in heaven — ended the union; the king's desolate wandering and eventual reunion or loss varies with the source. Their son Ayus continued the lunar line of kings. Kalidasa built upon the legend his drama Vikramorvashiya, giving the loves of nymph and king their classical theatrical form.

Other tales

Tradition derives her birth from the thigh — uru — of the sage Narayana, who created her from his own beauty to shame the nymphs sent to disturb his penance. In the Mahabharata she approaches Arjuna in Indra's heaven; when he refuses her, honouring her as an ancestress of his line, she curses him to lose his manhood — a curse softened to a single year, which Arjuna spends as the dance-teacher Brihannala in the disguise-year of the Pandavas' exile. Vedic legend also names her the occasion of the birth of the sages Agastya and Vasishtha, born of Mitra and Varuna at the sight of her. Across these tales Urvashi remains the tradition's figure for beauty at its most sovereign — desired by kings and gods, belonging finally to neither earth nor any one heaven's master.