Janamejaya Asks About Yayati and the Puru Lineage
King Janamejaya, hearing his lineage recited, interrupts with a pointed question. He wants to know how his ancestor Yayati, tenth from Prajapati, managed to marry the daughter of the powerful sage Shukra—a match that seemed impossible.
The recitation of the royal lineage had reached a critical name: Yayati. Janamejaya, the king listening to the epic, stopped the flow. He turned to the sage Vaishampayana with a question that was both personal and historical.
"O supreme among Brahmanas," Janamejaya asked. "Our ancestor Yayati was tenth in the line from Prajapati. How did he obtain Shukra’s daughter, who was difficult to obtain?"
Shukra was Ushanas Kavya, the preceptor of the demons, a sage of immense power and notoriously difficult to please. For a mortal king to win his daughter was no ordinary feat. Janamejaya wished to hear it in detail. He also requested the separate accounts of the chiefs of the Puru lineage—his own direct forebears.
Vaishampayana agreed to answer. "O Janamejaya," he said. "Yayati was a rajarshi (royal sage) who was as radiant as the king of the gods himself. I will tell you how, in ancient times, Shukra and Vrishaparva gave him their daughters and how the union between Devayani and Nahusha’s son Yayati took place."
But to explain how Yayati won Devayani, the sage had to start much earlier. He had to explain how Devayani came to be in a position to choose a husband at all. That story began with a celestial war, a stolen secret, and a student who lived inside his teacher's stomach.