Indra in his Court. From a Fifteenth-Century fain manuscript
Accordingly they bound the fairest of Apsarases, and cast her into a furnace furious as the fires of the sun, so that within a moment her body was changed to a white heap of ashes. But over the ashes was magical water sprinkled; and out of the furnace Bakawali arose, nude as one newly born, but more perfect in rosy beauty even than before. And Indra commanded her to dance before him, as she was wont to do in other days.
So she danced all those dances known in the courts of heaven, curving herself as flowers curve under a perfumed breeze, as water serpentines under the light; and she circled before them rapidly as a leaf-whirling wind, lightly as a bee, with myriad variations of delirious grace, with ever-shifting enchantment of motion, until the hearts of all who looked upon her were beneath those shining feet, and all cried aloud: "O flower-body! O rose-body! O marvel of the Garden of Grace! Blossom of daintiness! O flower-body!"
Thus was she each night obliged to appear before Indra at Amaranagar, and each night to suffer the fiercest purification of fire, forasmuch as she would not forsake her folly; and each night also did she return to her mortal lover, and take her wonted place beside him without awaking him, having first bathed her in the great fountain of rosewater within the court.
But once it happened that Taju'l-Mulk awoke in the night, and reaching out his arms found she was not there. Only the perfume of her head upon the pillow, and odorous garments flung in charming formlessness upon every divan....
When she returned, seemingly fairer than before, the youth uttered no reproach, but on the night following he slit up the tip of his finger with a sharp knife, and filled the wound with salt that he might not sleep. Then, when the aerial chariot descended all noiselessly, like some long cloud moon-silvered, he arose and followed Bakawali unperceived. Clinging underneath the chariot, he was borne above winds even to Amaranagar, and into the jeweled courts and into the presence of Indra. But Indra knew not, for his senses were dizzy with sights of beauty and the fumes of soma-wine.
Then did Taju'l-Mulk, standing in the shadow of a pillar, behold beauty such as he had never before seen—save in Bakawali—and hear music sweeter than mortal musician may ever learn. Splendors bewildered his eyes; and the crossing of the fretted and jeweled archwork above him seemed an inter-crossing and interblending of innumerable rainbows. But when it was given to him, all unexpectedly, to view the awful purification of Bakawali, his heart felt like ice within him, and he shrieked. Nor could he have refrained from casting himself also into that burst of white fire, had not the magical words been pronounced and the wizard-water sprinkled before he was able to move a limb. Then did he behold Bakawali rising from her snowy cinders—shining like an image of the goddess Lakshmi in the fairest of her thousand forms—more radiant than before, like some comet returning from the embraces of the sun with brighter curves of form and longer glories of luminous hair....
And Bakawali danced and departed, Taju'l-Mulk likewise returning even as he had come....
But when he told her, in the dawn of the morning, that he had accompanied her in her voyage and had surprised her secret, Bakawali wept and trembled for fear. "Alas! alas! what hast thou done?" she sobbed; "thou hast become thine own greatest enemy. Never canst thou know all that I have suffered for thy sake—the maledictions of my kindred, the insults of all belonging to my race. Yet rather than turn away my face from thy love, I suffered nightly the agonies of burning; I have died a myriad deaths rather than lose thee. Thou hast seen it with thine own eyes!... But none of mankind may visit unbidden the dwelling of the gods and return with impunity. Now, alas! the evil hath been done; nor can I devise any plan by which to avert thy danger, save that of bringing thee again secretly to Amaranagar and charming Indra in such wise that he may pardon all."...