Kadru

Kadru was the younger sister of Vinata, and when they both lived with Kashyapa as his wives and attended to all his comforts he blessed them by granting each of them a boon. Kadru asked for a thousand naga or serpent sons who should be valiant. Prompted by her sister's demand for sons, Vinata asked for only two sons who should be more powerful and bright than Kadru's children. Kashyapa granted them their wishes. After his wives became pregnant, he advised them to look after the children, and then left for his penance in the forest.[3]

After a long time Kadru gave birth to a thousand eggs and Vinata to two eggs. The eggs were carefully incubated in containers with hot water[4] or in jars which were kept warm.[3] After a lapse of five hundred years, the eggs laid by Kadru hatched and her sons came to life;[4] of these thousand naga sons, the most prominent ones were Shesha, Vasuki and Takshaka.[5] All the serpents born in this world are the descendants of these thousand sons. Vinata became jealous as her eggs had not hatched. In a moment of haste, she broke open one of the eggs, revealing a half-formed son. This son was enraged by his physical form and cursed his mother for her hasty act, saying she would be a slave to Kadru for five hundred years till the son from her second egg was born.[3] He became a charioteer and herald for the sun god and the creator of the red sky at dawn, and was therefore named Aruṇa.[4] Eventually, after five hundred years, Vinata's second son Garuda was born in the form of a huge bird with immense power. As soon as he was born he flew away with grace, seeking food.[6]

According to the Brahma Purana, Kashyapa, who is also known as Prajapati Kashyapa, was approached by the Valakhilyas. Offering him half of their ascetic powers, they requested that he beget them a son who could take revenge on Indra who had insulted them. Kashyapa then had one son from each of his two wives, Kadru the mother of snakes and Suparna. Before going on an errand, Kashyapa instructed his wives not to leave the house as they would create mischief and do evil acts and eventually come to grief. In spite of these instructions, Kadru and Suparna went out to the banks of the Ganga where enlightened sages were performing sattra rites and started disturbing the rites. Infuriated, the sages cursed them to become rivers. Kashyapa returned home to find his wives, but was told of the incident by the sages. When Kashyapa asked how he might retrieve his wives, the sages advised him to do penance to Shiva at Gautami Ganga. Kashyapa prayed by reciting a hymn that praised Shiva in the role of a triad, his role in the three worlds, and his three gunas (qualities of virtue, merit, excellence). Pleased with Kashyapa's hymn, Shiva restored to him his wives, and blessed the wives so that they would beget children again by the grace of Ganga. Kashyapa invited the sages to participate in the fourth-to-sixth month hair-parting ceremony of his pregnant wives. After the sages were fed, when Kashyapa respectfully stood before them with his wife to thank them, Kadru looked at the sages and gave them a sly look with one of her eyes. The sages were annoyed and cursed Kadru to lose that eye. Thus, Kadru became one-eyed.[7]

Once, Kadru called Vinata and asked her to tell her the colour of Uchchaihshravas, the divine white horse that had emerged from the ocean when it was churned by the devas and asuras to generate nectar. Without any guile, Vinata said that it was pure white. Kadru contradicted her and said that its tail was black. An argument ensued, and Kadru challenged Vinata to a bet, saying that whoever lost the bet would have to become the other's servant. Intending to cheat Vinata, Kadru called her thousand sons to coil around Uchchaihshravas's tail neatly so that it appeared black in colour. While some of her sons obeyed her instructions, others refused to oblige her. Those who disobeyed her instructions were cursed by Kadru, and she prophesied that they would be charred alive in the sarpa satra yagna (snake sacrifice) that would be performed by King Janamejaya of Hastinapura. Kashyapa was upset by this curse, but Brahma who happened to be there told him such a curse was essential as serpents had become very dangerous to society. Brahma then gave Kashyapa the antidote for snake poisoning. Kadru won the bet as the nagas had wound around Uchchaihshravas's tail, giving it a black shade. Vinata thus became the slave of Kadru.[3] She would eventually be freed by Garuda, when he brought Kadru and the nagas a pot of amṛtam, in an episode called the Amṛtakalaśāpaharaṇam.[8]

A statue of Garuda from the Chennakesava temple in Belur, Karnataka, India

On another occasion, Kadru suggested to Vinata that Vinata should take Kadru, and that Garuda should take her naga sons, to the beautiful island of Ramaniyaka in the middle of the ocean[3] within the abode of snakes.[9] Vinata and Garuda did as directed. After reaching the destination Kadru asked Garuda to take her sons to the abode of the sun to pay their respectful obeisance. Garuda carried the naga sons of Kadru on his back and approached the sun. As he flew closer, the nagas could not withstand the heat and started falling off him to the ground in a faint, on the island of Virana. Hearing the cries of her children, Kadru was deeply distressed and blamed Garuda for what had happened to her children. Vinata, distressed by her son's plight and, following a suggestion by Kadru, asked Garuda to bring water of the Ganga from the netherworld. Garuda obeyed and brought the water to the southern bank of the Gautami river and sprinkled it on the snakes, which then revived. The place where this incident occurred is called Nagalaya, the abode of the snakes.[9] In another version of the story related in the Adi Parva of the Valmiki Ramayana, it is said that when the nagas fainted and fell to the ground due to intense heat of the sun, Kadru offered prayers to Indra to come to her children's rescue. Indra promptly created rain showers to fall on the nagas and they were restored from their charred state. They then lived in the island of Ramaniyaka.[3]