The Kesins are described as friends of Vayu, Rudra, the Gandharvas and the Apsaras.

Apsaras are beautiful, supernatural female beings.

Apsaras are said to be able to change their shape at will, and rule over the fortunes of gaming and gambling.

Apsaras are sometimes compared to the muses of ancient Greece, with each of the 26 Apsaras at Indra's court representing a distinct aspect of the performing arts.

Apsaras are associated with water ; thus, they may be compared to the nymphs, dryads and naiads of ancient Greece.

There are two types of Apsaras ; Laukika ( worldly ), of whom thirty-four are specified, and Daivika ( divine ), of which there are ten.

The epic contains several lists of the principal Apsaras, which lists are not always identical.

Images of Apsaras are found in several temples of ancient Java dating from the era of the Sailendra dynasty to that of the Majapahit empire.

Apsaras represent an important motif in the stone bas-reliefs of the Angkorian temples in Cambodia ( 8th – 13th century AD ), however all female images are not considered to be apsaras.

File: Apsara Gandharva Dancer Pedestal Tra Kieu. jpg | Apsaras are depicted on the base of the Tra Kieu Pedestal, a work of 10th c. Cham art.

In Hinduism, the gandharvas ( Sanskrit: गन ् धर ् व, gandharva, Kannada: ಗ ಂ ಧರ ್ ವ, Tamil: கந ் தர ் வர ், Telugu: గ ం ధర ్ వ ) are male nature spirits, husbands of the Apsaras.

Some of the figures depicted are Siva, Vishnu, and Brahma, the members of the trimurti or threefold godhead of Hinduism, Apsaras or celestial dancers, Ravana and Garuda.

There are also many other lesser celestial beings in Hinduism such as the Gandharvas ( celestial musicians ), or their wives, the Apsaras ( celestial dancers ).

The BARC and the Indian government has consistently maintained that the reactors are used for this purpose only: Apsara ( 1956 ; named by the then Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru when he likened the blue Cerenkov radiation to the beauty of the Apsaras ( Indra's court dancers ), CIRUS ( 1960 ; the " Canada-India Reactor " with assistance from Canada ), the now-defunct ZERLINA ( 1961 ; Zero Energy Reactor for Lattice Investigations and Neutron Assay ), Purnima I ( 1972 ), Purnima II ( 1984 ), Dhruva ( 1985 ), Purnima III ( 1990 ), and Kamini.

Nearly 1, 850 of these female figures, popularly known as Apsaras, adorn the surface of Angkor Wat and some of them are in an extremely alarming state of decay.

The project chose to focus on the Apsaras since they are the most exposed and therefore endangered of the precious carvings at Angkor Wat.

* Chinese Apsaras depicted in Dunhuang Caves

The Mahabharata documents the exploits of individual Apsaras, such as Tilottama, who rescued the world from the rampaging asura brothers Sunda and Upasunda, and Urvashi, who attempted to seduce the hero Arjuna.

The Bhagavata Purana also states that the Apsaras were born from Kashyap and Muni.

Later Hindu scriptures allow for the existence of numerous Apsaras, who act as the handmaidens of Indra or as dancers at his celestial court.

In many of the stories related in the Mahabharata, Apsaras appear in important supporting roles.

Apsaras were also an important motif in the art of Champa, medieval Angkor's neighbor to the east along the coast of what is now central Vietnam.

File: Fronton Guimet 240907 3. jpg | Apsaras dance taken from the 12th century Bayon temple at Angkor in Cambodia.

Here, Gandharvas and Apsaras entertain Kubera.

File: Banteay Kdei 4. jpg | Frescoes of Dancing Apsaras in the niches

But more important, and the thing which the casual traveler and the blind sojourner often do not see, is that these places and activities are often the settings in which Persians exercise their extraordinary aesthetic sensibilities.

The men crying love poems in an orchard on any summer's night are as often as not the lutihaw, mustachioed toughs who spend most of their lives in and out of the local prisons, brothels, and teahouses.

Our collective policies, group and national, are similarly based on voodoo, but here we often lack even the empirically successful rituals and are still engaged in determing them.

Southern Liberals ( there are a good many ) -- especially if they're rich -- often exhibit blithe insouciance.

But when these expectations are once too often ground into the dust, innocence can falter, since its strength is according to the strength of him who possesses it.

He explains that there are sometimes honorable courtiers, but that too often a man who succeeds at court does not hesitate to sacrifice his Sovereign and nation to his own avarice and ambition.

By the same test predispositions destructive of human personality exercise their most sinister impact, with the result that men of good will are often trapped and nullified.

The continuities, contrasts, and similarities discernible when past and present are surveyed together are inexhaustible and the one is often understood through the other.

Tolerance and compromise, social justice and civil liberty, are today too often in short supply for one to be overly critical of Trevelyan's emphasis on their central place in the English tradition.

That he read some of the books assigned to him with a studied carefulness is evident from his notes, which are often so full that they provide an unquestionable basis for the identification of reviews that were printed without his signature.

The purely cognitive or informational problems are often acute.

The religious quest is often intense and deep, and there are students on every campus who are seriously wrestling with the most profound questions of meaning and value.

Those who do have occasion to deal with the invasions in a more general way, like T.W. Shore and Arthur Wade-Evans, are on the side of a gradual and often peaceful Germanic penetration into Britain.

In addition, there are many areas of the human situation besides the impact of science and technology which are examined, for science-fiction dystopias often extrapolate political, social, economic tendencies only indirectly related to science and technology.

If only this could be done more often -- with such heartening results -- many of the earth's `` big problems '' would shrink to the insignificances they really are.

Production assistance often takes the form of locating tools or materials which are urgently needed.

More often, these offices are restricted to the gathering of empirical data.

The answers they give can often pave the way to performance increases and, quite often, are necessary for completing entry blanks for different events.

Although the site may not contain the features themselves, there are often opportunities to include them as additional interest to the site.