Devaki and Vasudeva

Krishna's birth parents, who endured great suffering in Kamsa's prison yet never let go of truth and faith.

Devaki and Vasudeva are the birth parents of Shri Krishna. Devaki was the daughter of Devaka, brother of King Ugrasena, and Kamsa loved her as a sister. After her wedding, as Kamsa himself was driving the couple's chariot, a voice from the sky declared that Devaki's eighth child would kill him. At once Kamsa raised his sword to kill Devaki. Vasudeva calmed him with wise words and promised to hand over every child born to them.

Vasudeva kept his word. Later Kamsa threw them both into prison and killed six of their children. Yogamaya transferred the seventh child to the womb of Rohini, and he was born as Balarama. Then, at midnight on the eighth day of the dark fortnight of Bhadrapada, the Lord appeared before them in his four-armed form, holding the conch, discus, mace and lotus. The parents offered prayers, and the Lord revealed that in earlier lives they had been Prishni and Sutapa, and Aditi and Kashyapa, to whom he had granted the boon of coming as their son. Then, at their request, he became an ordinary-looking baby.

At that moment the chains fell away, the guards fell asleep and the doors opened by themselves. Vasudeva placed the infant in a basket, crossed the swollen Yamuna and reached Gokula, where he laid him beside Yashoda and brought back her newborn daughter. When Kamsa tried to kill that girl, she slipped from his hands, appeared in the sky as the Goddess, and told him that the one who would slay him had already been born elsewhere.

Years later, after Kamsa was slain, Krishna and Balarama freed their parents from captivity and bowed at their feet. The lives of Devaki and Vasudeva teach patience, truthfulness, and unshaken faith in the Lord even in the darkness of suffering.

Relation

Birth parents

Source

Shrimad Bhagavatam, Canto 10, ch. 1–4