Puranic Encyclopaedia: A Comprehensive Dictionary with Special Reference to the Epic and Puranic Literature c4.989

c4.989

3) How Khagodara was got back. One day the two boys went to bathe in the river and during a controversial talk Śvetaketu said that Aṣṭāvakra had no father. This teased him much and Aṣṭāvakra went to his mother and gathered all the facts about his father. He went, then, straight to the royal assembly of King Janaka. He was not allowed inside. The gate keeper said that he was only a boy and only learned men could go inside the sacrificial hall. Aṣṭāvakra contended that neither size nor age was any indication of one’s knowledge or worth and got himself admitted into the hall. There he entered into a polemical contest with the same court scholar, Vāndina, who had killed his father. Vāndina was defeated and was thrown into the same river in which his father had drowned himself. The moment Vāndina fell into the river Khagodara rose up from there and the father and son along with Śvetaketu returned to the āśrama. Khagodara then took his son for a bath and when it was over Aṣṭāvakra became a bright boy without crooks. (Chapter 133, Vana Parva, M.B.)