Menaka

The apsara Menaka leaves her newborn daughter on a riverbank and vanishes. The sage Sthulakesha finds the radiant infant, a child who looks like an immortal's, and is moved by compassion to raise her as his own.

To answer the king's doubt, Shakuntala begins the story of her conception: how the god Indra, terrified by a sage's growing power, commanded the celestial dancer Menaka to seduce him, setting in motion a divine conspiracy.

Indra, alarmed by the sage Vishvamitra's growing power through austerities, sends the celestial dancer Menaka to seduce him. She enters his hermitage, and a divine wind strips her bare, presenting her beauty to the sage. Overcome, Vishvamitra abandons his penance to be with her.