The Gandharvas are grouped in tribes, and number over six thousand individuals. They are all of the male sex. They haunt the air, the forests, and the mountains, and, like the Rakshasas, have power to work illusions in the grey twilight before nightfall. References are made in the Epics to their combats with human beings. To warriors who overcome them they impart instruction in religious matters; those whom they conquer they carry away, like the Teutonic elves and dwarfs. The Gandharvas are renowned musicians and bards and singers. When they play on their divine instruments the fairy-like Apsaras, who are all females, dance merrily. In the various Aryan heavens these elves and fairies delight and allure with music and song and dance the gods, and the souls of those who have attained to a state of bliss. The Apsara dancing girls are “voluptuous and beautiful”, and inspire love in Paradise as well as upon earth. Their lovers include gods, Gandharvas, and mortals. Arjuna, the human son of Indra, who was transported in a Celestial chariot to Swarga over Suravithi, “the Milky Way”, was enchanted by the music and songs and dances of the Celestial elves and fairies. He followed bands of Gandharvas who were “skilled in music sacred and profane”, and he saw the bewitching Apsaras, including the notorious Menaka, “with eyes like lotus blooms, employed in enticing hearts”; they had “fair round hips and slim waists”, and “began to perform various evolutions, shaking their deep bosoms and casting their glances around, and exhibiting other attractive attitudes capable of stealing the hearts and resolutions and minds of the spectators”.[124] [124] _Vana Parva_ section of _Mahabharata_.