By all accounts, he invariably succeeds in his goal. Whenever a human being (or even some Rakshasas) undertake(s) ‘tapas’ that is construed by Indra as a threat to his kingship, he sends the apsaras down to earth in order to distract such an individual. Rambha, Urvashi and Menaka are the most-well known among them: well-known not only for their beauty but also for their mastery of arts and for being the instruments of Indra’s wishes. ‘Apsaras’, apparently, are a different kind of species than humans are. Indra, according to our stories, holds court in one of the three worlds, ‘swarga’, with earth and ‘naraka’ being the other two worlds.Ĥ. In exactly the same sense, calling ‘apsaras’ as “prostitutes in the court of Indra” is to say that they are (a) courtly prostitutes and (b) the court under consideration is that of Indra. When we say that someone is a ‘vidwan’ in the court of a king, we call such a person a “courtly vidwan” (‘asthana vidwan’) someone who is a jester in a court is called the ‘courtly jester’ and so on. In the hope of becoming clearer about that implicit point, let me provide some additional reasons why I prefer to call ‘apsaras’ as “prostitutes in the court of Indra”.ģ. I do not know whether a more substantial point is being made on this issue. On this, linguistic part, there are no disagreements.Ģ. However, a ‘courtesan’ is also a prostitute, whatever else she is. As I said in an earlier post,’courtesan’ is an alternative.
I would also be grateful if anyone has a better suggestion for translating ‘Veshya’. This cannot be the case here because ‘apsara’ picks out only non-human entities, whereas ‘prostitute’ can also refer to human beings. I do not suggest that ‘apsara’ and ‘prostitute’ are synonyms: for two words to be synonymous in this context, we need that both words refer to one and the same set of objects. In this sense, if you further suggest that ‘Apsara’ should not be considered as a synonym for ‘prostitute’, I would also agree. In so far as the suggestion is that the English word ‘prostitute’ does not capture the connotations of the earlier uses of ‘Veshya’, as I said, I agree with all of you. By hipkapi MaBalagangadhara, Christianityġ.
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