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STORIES · THE MAHĀBHĀRATA · Vana

Ashtavakra: cursed in the womb

Classical

The sage with the most famous Advaita text was cursed by his own father before he was born.

Ashtavakra's name means "eight bends," and the story of how he got it begins before he was even born.

The sage Uddalaka has a disciple called Kahoda. Kahoda is self-disciplined, devoted to serving his teacher, and has studied for a very long time. As a reward, Uddalaka gives him his own daughter Sujata in marriage, and mastery of the scriptures too. Sujata becomes pregnant, and the text describes her as radiant as fire.

One night Kahoda is reciting the Veda. The unborn child, from inside his mother, speaks up. He says his father's recitation is not correct. He claims that, through his father's favour, he has already learned the scriptures and the Vedas in the womb. Kahoda is humiliated in front of his own students, and he loses his temper. In a rage, he curses the child: "you shall be crooked in eight parts of the body."

The child is born crooked, and so the boy comes to be called Ashtavakra, crooked in eight places.

Meanwhile, the family is in trouble. As the tenth month of pregnancy nears, Sujata wants money for the birth and asks her husband for riches. He has none. So Kahoda goes to King Janaka's court to find wealth. There he is defeated in debate by a scholar named Vandin, skilled at argument, and is thrown into the water. According to the text, he drowns.

When Uddalaka hears this, he tells Sujata to keep it secret from Ashtavakra, and she does. So the boy grows up thinking Uddalaka is his father and Shvetaketu, Uddalaka's son, is his brother. Both of them are among the most learned men of their time.

When Ashtavakra is twelve, something small breaks the secret. He is sitting on Uddalaka's lap when Shvetaketu sees him, pulls him away and says it is not his father's lap. Ashtavakra is deeply hurt. He goes to his mother and asks where his father is, and Sujata tells him everything.

That night, Ashtavakra proposes to Shvetaketu that they go to the sacrifice of King Janaka, where debates will be held. They go. At the entrance they are turned away, and Ashtavakra addresses the king himself. (That scene is told separately.)

Later in the same section of the Mahabharata, the sage Lomasa tells Yudhishthira that Ashtavakra bathes in the river Samanga and his crooked limbs become straight. In the text, Kahoda, in the presence of Ashtavakra's mother, tells his son to enter the river, and the river is then renamed Samanga and is said to cleanse sin.

One thing to notice in this account is that the curse does not come from a villain. Kahoda is learned and devoted, and the child is a brilliant boy who corrects his own father. The wrong is a very human one, pride on both sides of a family argument, and the whole of the later story, the debate and the rescue and the healing, is about setting it right.

Who: Ashtavakra, Kahoda, Sujata, Uddalaka, Shvetaketu

Bound to

Ashtavakra defeats Bandin at Janaka's court causes

Shvetaketu and the origin of marriage fidelity trivia-about

Places: Mithila, River Samanga

Where this comes from

See it on the tree · All stories

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