Bhagavatham Stories

In the great city of Mathura, in the kingdom of Surasena, there lived a couple whose love transcended the ordinary bonds of affection. Devaki and Vasudeva were not merely husband and wife; they were spiritual souls destined to become the earthly parents of the Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself. Their union was ordained by divine arrangement, yet it was also the fruit of their own accumulated spiritual merit from countless lifetimes of devotion and righteous living. Devaki, daughter of King Devaka, was renowned throughout the kingdoms for her beauty, virtue, and spiritual wisdom. Vasudeva, son of the Yadava clan, was celebrated as a righteous and noble prince. Their wedding was a grand celebration, attended by kings and celestial beings, for all who perceived with spiritual vision understood that something momentous was about to unfold in the material world.

Yet in the very moment of joy and celebration, a shadow fell across the kingdom. The tyrant king Kamsa, Devaki's own brother, suddenly seized power in Mathura through force and treachery, imprisoning his father and establishing himself as an absolute ruler. Kamsa was not born to cruelty but had been consumed by it through his association with demons and through the darkness of unchecked ego and ambition. As he gazed upon his newly wedded sister Devaki, a voice from the celestial realm spoke a prophecy that would haunt him for the rest of his life: a child born from Devaki's womb would be the instrument of his destruction. In that moment, fear gripped Kamsa's heart, and he cast both Devaki and Vasudeva into a prison deep beneath his palace, declaring that any child born to them would be immediately slain.

This imprisonment became the crucible in which divine love was refined and tested. Vasudeva and Devaki could have despaired, could have raged against the injustice, could have turned bitter in their suffering. Instead, they transformed their prison into an ashram, a place of spiritual practice and devotion. They understood, through their spiritual wisdom, that the imprisonment was not merely punishment but an arrangement by divine providence. They spent their days and nights in prayer, in chanting the names of God, in meditation, and in service to each other. Their love deepened immeasurably in those years of separation from the world, becoming purified of all material contamination. Vasudeva was a soul of extraordinary devotion, and Devaki possessed within her heart the intensity of maternal love transformed into devotional yearning. Together, they created an atmosphere of such concentrated spiritual force that the prison became a sanctuary.

As the years passed, six children were born to Devaki and Vasudeva in that dark prison. Each time a child was born, Kamsa would rush to the prison chamber, and in his paranoia and cruelty, would seize the newborn and dash it against the stone walls. Each death was a dagger to the hearts of the parents, yet somehow they endured. Each time, Kamsa believed he had eliminated the threat prophesied in the voice from heaven. But in his ignorance, he did not realize that these six children were expansions and associates of the Supreme Lord, appearing and disappearing according to divine arrangement. The sufferings that Vasudeva and Devaki underwent through these episodes were not meaningless; they were purifying their souls, cleansing away the last vestiges of material conditioning, preparing them to become worthy vessels for the descent of the Absolute Truth into the material world.

Through all their trials, the bond between Devaki and Vasudeva never fractured but only deepened. In the darkness of the prison, they supported each other not through complaint but through faith. Devaki would comfort Vasudeva after each loss, reminding him that they were in the hands of the divine intelligence, and that whatever was happening was for the ultimate good. Vasudeva, in turn, would encourage Devaki not to lose faith, assuring her that there was wisdom in the apparent cruelty of circumstances. They understood that attachment to the results of action was the source of all suffering, and they consciously practiced non-attachment even as their hearts were breaking. This spiritual discipline transformed their grief into a form of meditation, their loss into an offering to the divine.

What made this period extraordinary was that Devaki and Vasudeva, despite everything, never lost their essential nature of devotion and righteousness. They could have plotted to escape, could have conspired with enemies of Kamsa, could have used deception to save their children. But they remained committed to dharma, to truth and righteousness, even in impossible circumstances. They could have cursed Kamsa or harbored hatred for their captor. Instead, they prayed for his welfare, understanding that he too was a suffering soul trapped in delusion. This commitment to dharma even in the midst of devastating circumstances is what made them worthy to be the earthly parents of the incarnation of dharma itself, of Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the embodiment of cosmic righteousness and divine love.

The seventh child, Balabhadra, was born to Devaki, and through divine arrangement, was transferred to the womb of Rohini, another wife of Vasudeva, in a distant location, thus escaping Kamsa's clutches and preserving the life of one of Krishna's elder brothers who would assist in his pastimes. With Balabhadra saved, the way was being prepared for the eighth child—for Krishna himself. The prophecy was moving toward its fulfillment. Devaki and Vasudeva, though they did not yet consciously know what would transpire, felt a shift in the atmosphere of their prison. The air seemed charged with anticipation. The darkness seemed less oppressive. And in their hearts, though they dared not speak it openly, a hope was kindling—a hope that went beyond personal deliverance and spoke to something cosmic, something eternal, something that would transform not just their lives but the very fabric of existence itself.