Kadru and Vinata were sisters. Their father was Daksha, the Lord of creatures, who married them, along with eleven other daughters, to the wise Kashyapa, the son of Marichi. Pleased with his wives, Kashyapa invited Kadru Vinata to choose such offspring as they wished. And Kadru wished for herself a thousand sons, and Vinata - two, but such that they would surpass the sons of Kadru in courage and bravery.
Time passed, and Kadru brought ten hundred eggs, and Vinata brought two eggs. And five hundred years later, a thousand mighty snakes hatched from Kadru’s eggs, but none of Vinata’s had yet been born. Then, impatiently, Vinata broke one egg and saw her son there, only half developed. She named him Aruna. The angry son cursed the impatient mother for his ugliness, to which she was the cause, and predicted that she would be a slave for five hundred years. “And after five hundred years,” he said, “another son will deliver you from slavery, if you wait until your time and do not break the second egg ahead of time.”
Just at that time, the asuras and gods were churning the ocean. And then one day the sisters Kadru and Vinata saw the wonderful horse Uchchaikhshravas emerging from the sea waters. A dispute arose between them about what color the horse’s tail was. Vinata said it was white, but Kadru said it was black. And Kadru suggested that Vinata take a bet and go the next morning to check the color of the tail. The one who loses must become the slave of the one who wins. So they agreed and parted until the morning. Then Kadru, who had planned deception, sent a thousand of her sons, black snakes, so that they would hang on the tail of Uchchaikhshravas, the white horse, and thereby hide his natural color.
The next day, both sisters, angry with each other, flew across the ocean to the horse Uchchaikhshravas and, approaching, saw black hair in his tail. In fact, they were snakes, the children of Kadru. But Vinata did not know about this. So the insidious Kadru deceived her sister into slavery.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru