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Left in their original settings, Buddhas and flying apsaras, demons and monsters, are still numinous.

"These are fragments of the Apsaras, the lower halves," she says, picking one up, then placing it in a hole in one of the slabs.

The WMF's commission was for Sasha to recreate the Apsaras, with the aim of placing them on the roof of the restored gallery.

In the later Vedic times they are represented as being fond of, and dangerous to, women; the Apsaras, apparently originally water-nymphs, being closely associated with them.

In the heroic age the Gandharvas have become the heavenly minstrels plying their art at Indra’s court, with the Apsaras as their wives or mistresses.