Kashyapa- Hindu FigureMortal"Father of All"

Diti's Boon

Kashyapa was a son of the sage Marichi, grandson of Brahma, and one of the Prajapatis charged with populating creation. He married thirteen daughters of Daksha. From Aditi came the Adityas, the solar gods. From Diti came the demons.

The Bhagavata Purana tells how Diti approached Kashyapa consumed with desire at the wrong hour, during the twilight when Shiva's attendants roamed the earth. Kashyapa warned her. She would not wait. He yielded, and from that untimely union she conceived Hiranyakashipu and Hiranyaksha, two asuras whose tyranny would shake the three worlds until Vishnu descended as Narasimha and Varaha to destroy them. Kashyapa fathered both sides of the war between gods and demons.

Kadru and Vinata

Two of Kashyapa's wives made a wager. Kadru, mother of the serpent race, and Vinata, mother of Garuda and Aruna, disagreed over the color of the divine horse Uchchaihshravas. Kadru said it had black hairs in its tail. Vinata said it was pure white. The loser would become the other's slave.

Kadru ordered her serpent sons to cling to the horse's tail and darken it. Vinata lost. She served Kadru as a slave until her son Garuda freed her by stealing the amrita from the gods and offering it to the serpents as ransom. The Adi Parva traces the eternal enmity between eagles and serpents to this single wager in Kashyapa's household.

The Gift of the Earth

After Parashurama had swept the earth clean of kshatriya warriors twenty-one times over, he gave the entire land to Kashyapa as a gift. Kashyapa distributed it among the brahmins. The Vishnu Purana records that Parashurama then withdrew to the Mahendra Mountains, and the earth passed from the sage who had conquered it to the sage who would repopulate it.