Ashtavakra

Legendary accounts in the Itihasa–Purāṇic corpus present Ashtavakra as born to Kahoda and Sujātā and as grandson of the sage Āruṇi; narratives say the foetus learned Vedic recitation in utero and corrected his father's intonation, whereupon the father cursed him to be born with eight bodily deformities. Later narrative episodes place him at King Janaka's sacrificial assembly and recount that a dip in the River Samanga cured his deformities in some versions. Sources treat these as mythic/legendary accounts; his historicity and precise chronology are not specified in the provided materials.

Sources consistently describe him in legend as born with eight deformities (the literal sense of the name 'eight‑crooked') but the supplied excerpts do not enumerate which limbs or features were affected. In some accounts a later bath in the River Samanga is said to have cured those deformities; other retellings emphasize the contrast between his 'crooked' body and 'straight' wisdom rather than providing fixed physical detail.

Ashtavakra is portrayed as possessing extraordinary verbal, scriptural, and philosophical competence from an early age — allegedly learning correct Vedic recitation in utero and correcting his father's intonation, and demonstrating mastery of extempore verse and debate (for example, a contest with the debater Vandin). He is credited as the authority behind the Ashtavakra Gita, a text teaching non‑dual (Advaitic) doctrines that assert Brahman as the sole Supreme Reality and the primacy of the Self (Ātman). In narrative episodes his words and debates have decisive ritual and social consequences: his challenge in Janaka's court led to revelation that a long ritual of submerging Brahmans had completed and thus freed those men (including his father), and he is named in Ramayana/Purāṇic narratives as cursing certain beings whose later release or fate is recounted. He functions as a ritually authorized teacher and adjudicator rather than an independently hostile supernatural force.