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The Story of Ashtavakra
Rishi Lomesh took the Pandavas to see the ashram of Rishi Swetaketu. Swetaketu was a great rishi, well versed in the science of mantras. The ashram was built at the spot where he was gifted with the knowledge of the Vedas, in an instant, by a goddess. Rishi Lomesh told the Pandavas that there were two very great rishis – Swetaketu, in whose ashram they stood, and Ashtavakra. They were related in that Ashtavakra was Swetaketu’s nephew. Together, both of them had gone to the court of the king of Videha Janaka. There, Ashtavakra had defeated the great Bandi in a debate.
Yudhisthira then asked the rishi to tell them the story of Ashtavakra in detail. He also asked how his body was crooked in eight parts that he was known as Ashtavakra. Lomesh told them that there was a rishi called Uddalaka. He had a very deserving disciple called Kahod, who looked after his guru very well. After a few years the rishi was very happy with him and imparted to him all the knowledge and mysteries of the scriptures and also gave his daughter, Sujata, in marriage to him.
A few months after the marriage, Sujata was pregnant, and knew that she would be blessed with a great son. One day, Kahod was chanting the Vedas late in the night with his disciples. The young child, still in his mother’s womb, shouted to his father that he was chanting the slokas incorrectly. Being thus rebuked by his unborn son in front of his disciples, made Kahod very angry. He cursed his son with the words, “You speak such crooked words even while you are still I the womb, your body will be crooked I eight places.” When he was born, his limbs were crooked in eight places, thus he was known as Ashtavakra, meaning crooked eight times.
Sujata, in the last days of pregnancy, was worried of how she would be able to feed the newly born child. She asked her husband to go to the court of King Janaka and ask for some gold in alms. Now the king had a great Brahmin in his court called Bandi who could defeat anyone in a debate on the Vedas. The king had made a rule that any Brahmin who sought alms would first have to defeat Bandi in a challenge of words. If the challenger lost the duel, he would be drowned in the river.
Kahod challenged Bandi to a duel in which he was no match for him. Thus he was tied and thrown into the river. When the news of her husband’s death reached Sujata, she was very upset and went to her father, Rishi Uddalaka, for solace. Her father told her never to tell Ashtavakra the truth of how his father had died.
After he was born, the young Ashtavakra treated his maternal grandfather as his father, and his mother’s brother Swetaketu, who was his age, as his brother.