There were some who argued that he sought an impregnable fortress, safe from the vengeance of his brother. Yet in the end he spurned its protection – and, if it was merely a citadel, why was Yakkagala surrounded by immense pleasure gardens whose construction must have demanded as much labour as the walls and moat themselves? Above all, why the frescoes?

As the narrator posed this question, the entire western face of the rock materialised out of the darkness – not as it was now, but as it must have been two thousand years ago. A band starting a hundred metres from the ground, and running the full width of the rock, had been smoothed and covered with plaster, upon which were portrayed scores of beautiful women – life-size, from the waist upwards. Some were in profile, others full-face, and all followed the same basic pattern.

Ochre-skinned, voluptuously bosomed, they were clad either in jewels alone, or in the most transparent of upper garments. Some wore towering and elaborate head-dresses – others, apparently, crowns. Many carried bowls of flowers, or held single blossoms nipped delicately between thumb and forefinger. Though about half were darker-skinned than their companions, and appeared to be hand-maidens, they were no less elaborately coifed and bejeweled.

“Once, there were more than two hundred figures. But the rains and winds of centuries have destroyed all except twenty, which were protected by an over-hanging ledge of rock…”

The image zoomed forward; one by one the last survivors of Kalidasa's dream came floating out of the darkness, to the hackneyed yet singularly appropriate music of Anitra's Dance. Defaced though they were by weather, decay and even vandals, they had lost none of their beauty down the ages. The colours were still fresh, unfaded by the light of more than half a million westering suns. Goddesses or women, they had kept alive the legend of the Rock.