Kadru

In Purāṇic and epic genealogies Kadru is presented as a daughter (or descendant) of Dakṣa and a wife of the sage Kaśyapa. From her union with Kaśyapa she produced a thousand eggs which hatched into a thousand nāga sons; prominent named sons include Śeṣa, Vaśuki, and Takṣaka. As ancestress of the nāgas she functions within a family-based cosmology that explains the origin of serpent-beings and their integration into the world.

Narrative sources emphasize Kadru's genealogical role more than a fixed physical portrait. Modern summaries gloss her name as 'tawny' (Sanskrit kadrū). In the Mahābhārata tradition she is explicitly described as having been made one-eyed by a sages' curse after giving a sly look; she is also said in the Sabha Parva to have dwelt in Brahmaloka in some accounts. Other descriptions focus on her status as Kaśyapa's wife and mother of the nāgas rather than on consistent anthropomorphic detail.

Kadru's primary narrative 'powers' are reproductive and social: she bore a thousand eggs from which nāga sons sprang, establishing the stock of earthly serpents. She is portrayed as cunning and scheming in the wager with her co-wife Vinata (instructing her sons to coil around the divine horse Uchchaihśravas' tail to make it appear black). In the epic narratives she is also subject to transformative ritual speech—sages' curses change her condition (for example, being turned into a river or losing an eye), and Kaśyapa's penance and hymn to Śiva restores her—showing that ritual utterance and ascetic petition can alter her fate. Certain passages in the tradition attribute to her roles affecting gestation (a specific passage reports a capacity described as 'Skanda graha' to enter a womb), but that particular claim appears in limited textual notice within the supplied materials.