Ashṭāvakra and Vandi
The Mahābhārata’s Vana Parva tells, in Chapters 132 to 134, how the boy Ashṭāvakra was born with his body bent in eight places and how he defeated Vandi in the court of King Janaka. Lomaśa tells it to Yudhishṭhira.
Ashṭāvakra’s father Kahoḍa had lost a debate to Vandi and had been sent into the ocean. The boy went to Janaka’s court, won the debate, and freed his father and the other scholars. His father then made his body straight.
Kahoḍa’s mistake and Ashṭāvakra’s eight bends
The ṛshi Kahoḍa was a student of Uddālaka, a great scholar of the Vedas. Kahoḍa studied with Uddālaka in devotion and in time married his teacher’s daughter.
While his wife was carrying a child, Kahoḍa recited the Vedas in his āśrama every day. The child in the womb already had great learning from a past life. It heard its father’s recitation, and once it called out from the womb to correct a mistake in Kahoḍa’s pronunciation or metre.
Kahoḍa was embarrassed and angry at being corrected by an unborn child. He spoke a śāpa (a curse): the boy would be born with eight bends in his body. Ashṭa means eight and vakra means bend. So the child was born bent at the two feet, the two knees, the two hips, the chest and the neck. He was named Ashṭāvakra. (Mahābhārata, Vana Parva, Chapter 132)
Vandi and the rule of Janaka’s court
In the court of King Janaka of Videha there was a scholar named Vandi. He was the son of Varuṇa himself and served as the court paṇḍita. Vandi gave an open challenge: he would debate any scholar who came to the court, and whoever lost would be sent into the ocean.
Many great scholars took up the challenge, lost, and were sent into the waters. This rule spread fear among the learned men of Bhārata. (Mahābhārata, Vana Parva, Chapter 132)
Kahoḍa needed wealth to support his young family. He went to Janaka’s court to seek the king’s support and accepted Vandi’s challenge. Though he was truly learned, Vandi defeated him, and he was sent into the ocean. He vanished into the waters.
Ashṭāvakra learns the truth
Ashṭāvakra grew up in the āśrama of his grandfather Uddālaka and believed that Uddālaka was his father. The truth about Kahoḍa was kept from him.
When he was twelve years old, something happened that showed him the truth. He learned who his real father was, and that Vandi had drowned him in Janaka’s court. Ashṭāvakra decided at once to go to Janaka’s court and avenge his father by defeating Vandi. He set out with his young uncle Śvetaketu, Uddālaka’s son. (Mahābhārata, Vana Parva, Chapter 133)
Entering Janaka’s assembly
At the gate of Janaka’s palace the doorkeepers told the boy, whose body was twisted and bent, that only grown men could enter the royal assembly. Ashṭāvakra silenced them with sharp arguments about what true youth and age are: age is measured in knowledge and wisdom, not in years or in the shape of the body. The doorkeepers were won over and let him in. (Mahābhārata, Vana Parva, Chapter 133)
Janaka was at once struck by the bent boy’s sharpness and manner. When people laughed at Ashṭāvakra’s looks, he laughed back. He said he was surprised that so learned a gathering judged a person by the outer skin and not by the quality within. Janaka took this as the sign of a true jñānī (one who knows) and received him with great respect.
The debate with Vandi
Ashṭāvakra took Vandi on in a formal debate. It was a contest of paired statements. Each speaker finished the other’s verse or met it with a verse of his own from the Vedic tradition, and each verse carried deep meaning.
Vandi was a strong opponent. But Ashṭāvakra had been trained in the deepest parts of the tradition from childhood, indeed from before birth, and he was more than his equal. In the exchange Ashṭāvakra at last made statements that Vandi could not match. Vandi was defeated. (Mahābhārata, Vana Parva, Chapter 134)
Vandi’s revelation and the release of the scholars
Having lost, Vandi told who he was. He was the son of Varuṇa, the master of the oceans. His time of service at Janaka’s court had a purpose. Varuṇa had asked him to gather scholars for a great divine yajña held in the realm of the ocean. The scholars who had been “drowned” were not dead. They had been taken alive to the kingdom under the water to take part in Varuṇa’s rites. Now that Varuṇa’s yajña was finished, all the scholars would be set free. (Mahābhārata, Vana Parva, Chapter 134)
The scholars came up out of the ocean, and Kahoḍa was among them. The meeting of father and son was deeply moving. Janaka honoured all the scholars who had returned.
Kahoḍa undoes the śāpa
Kahoḍa was thankful to his son beyond words. He told him to bathe in the sacred river nearby. Ashṭāvakra did so, and when he came out of the water his eight bends were gone. His body was straight and perfect. The śāpa that the father had spoken in a moment of embarrassed anger was undone by the father’s loving wish, and the water, as the means of cleansing, finished the work. (Mahābhārata, Vana Parva, Chapter 134)
Ashṭāvakra became one of the greatest ṛshis. He was the teacher of King Janaka himself, and the Ashṭāvakra Gītā, a great work of Advaita Vedānta, is named after him.
Sources
- Mahābhārata, Vana Parva, Chapter 132
- Mahābhārata, Vana Parva, Chapter 133
- Mahābhārata, Vana Parva, Chapter 134