Vinata’s Family Tree

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Family

• Daksha(parent),Prasuti(parent),Aditi(sibling),Diti(sibling),Kadru(sibling),Rati(sibling),Sati(sibling)— Marriage

  Daksha and Prasuti begot numerous daughters whose marriages shaped the cosmos — Aditi bore the Adityas, Diti the Daityas, Kadru the Nagas, Vinata the eagles, and Rati became goddess of desire, while Sati's union with Shiva would end in self-immolation at her father's ill-fated yajna.

• Kashyapa(spouse),Aruna(child),Garuda(child)— Marriage

  Kashyapa and Vinata are parents of Garuda, the divine eagle, and Aruna, charioteer of the sun. Vinata's first egg hatched prematurely, producing the incomplete Aruna; the second egg yielded the fully formed and blazing Garuda.

Enemy of

• Kadru

  Vinata and Kadru, co-wives of Kashyapa, wagered on the color of the horse Uchchaihshravas. Kadru cheated by ordering her serpent sons to darken the horse's tail, winning the bet and enslaving Vinata.

Associated with

• Aruna

  Vinata cracked open one of her two divine eggs after five hundred years of incubation, unable to wait any longer. The half-formed Aruna emerged and cursed her to serve as Kadru's slave for five hundred years, foretelling that her second son would free her.

• Garuda

  Garuda undertook his quest for the Amrita specifically to free his mother Vinata from slavery to Kadru. His devotion to Vinata drove the most spectacular feat in Hindu mythology — the storming of heaven itself.