Devaki- Hindu FigureMortal"Mother of Krishna"

The Prophecy and Imprisonment

Devaki was a princess of Mathura. On the day of her marriage to Vasudeva, a celestial voice announced that her eighth son would destroy her cousin Kamsa, the tyrannical king of Mathura. Terrified, Kamsa seized Devaki on the spot and would have killed her had Vasudeva not intervened, promising to surrender every child born to them. Kamsa imprisoned the couple in his palace dungeon, and as each child was born, he murdered them: six sons in succession. The Bhagavata Purana identifies these six as reincarnations of the sons of the asura Kalanemi, bound by a prior cosmic curse to die at a tyrant's hands.

The Birth of Krishna

Before the seventh child was born, Vishnu intervened directly, ordering the goddess Yogamaya to transfer the embryo from Devaki's womb to that of Rohini, Vasudeva's other wife living in Gokul. This child became Balarama, Krishna's elder brother. For the eighth pregnancy, Vishnu himself entered Devaki's womb. When Krishna was born on the eighth night of the dark half of Bhadrapada, celebrated annually as Janmashtami, he revealed his four-armed Vishnu form to his parents before assuming the appearance of an ordinary infant. Vasudeva, guided by divine instruction, carried the newborn across the storming Yamuna to Gokul and exchanged him with the newborn daughter of Nanda and Yashoda. When Kamsa attempted to kill this infant, she transformed into the goddess Yogamaya and declared that his destroyer was already beyond his reach.

Liberation and Reunion

Years later, the young Krishna returned to Mathura with Balarama. He entered Kamsa's wrestling arena, defeated the king's champions, and dragged Kamsa from his throne to his death. His first act after the killing was to free Devaki and Vasudeva from their long imprisonment. The Bhagavata Purana describes their reunion: Krishna and Balarama touched their parents' feet, and Devaki, overwhelmed, embraced the sons she had been denied.