Chitraketu (1)

An emperor who was childless for a long time. With Angiras’ blessing, he and his wife Kritadyuti had a child. But it soon died and the grieving parents took the dead body to Angiras. Narada too was there. Angiras revived the child and asked it to stay with its parents. But the child said that it had many sets of parents from previous births. Both Angiras and Narada were flummoxed. Finally they gave up, imparted spiritual knowledge to Chitraketu and disappeared. Chitraketu meditated for 8 days and became a gandharvi and his wife a gandharvi. They flew up into the sky and reached Kailash, where they saw Parvati sitting on Shiva’s lap. Chitraketu smiled, and Parvati, noticing it, cursed that he would be born as an asura. Thus Vritrasura was born as per Bhagavata Shashtaskanda.