Part 2: Look Up Tonight, and You Might Be Staring at the Father of the Devas and the Asuras

Introduction: The Ancient Code Behind the Devas and Asuras

Part 1: Devas and Asuras: The Cosmic Science Hidden Inside an Ancient War

Every night, far above the noise and glare of our cities, seven stars trace a pattern that humanity has watched for thousands of years. Today, we know this formation as the Big Dipper, part of the constellation Ursa Major. In ancient Indian cosmological texts, this seven-star formation is known as the Saptarishis, and one of those stars is said to have fathered the Devas, the Asuras, and many of the natural forces that sustain life on Mother Earth.

That star is known as Rishi Kashyapa.

Now here is where the nomenclature becomes interesting. We have loosely translated the word “Rishi” as “Sage,” and that translation has encouraged us to imagine the Rishis as human ascetics living in forests, devoting their lives to meditation.

But the word itself might have a different etymological root. The original name is pronounced Saptarsi in Sanskrit, but somewhere along the way it changed to Saptarishi in translation.

The Sanskrit root “rsi” means to flow or to change, and that sense of motion is exactly why the seven stars of the Big Dipper were named Saptarsi in our Vedic texts. For ease of reading, though, we will continue to use the English word Saptarishi(s) in this post and beyond.

Ancient Indian astronomers understood that the Saptarishis are not permanent, something modern astronomy has only been able to confirm quite recently. They are not a fixed set of seven stars locked in place for all time.

The universe, according to Vedic timekeeping, does not stand still. It moves through immense epochs known as Manvantaras. As the cosmic clock ticks from one grand era to the next, the alignment of the Saptarishis shifts, and the current set of seven stars is replaced by a new set of seven.

In our current cosmic epoch, the Vaivasvata Manvantara, Kashyapa holds an official seat as one of these seven ruling stars. The other stars of the Saptarishis are:

Bhrigu, Agastya, Jamadagni, Gautama, Vishvamitra and Bharadvaja

Our Puranas have mapped the entire family tree from Brahma the Creator to the Devas and Asuras. And when you translate it into cosmic language, it is genuinely stupefying, because this is profound cosmic knowledge that scientists are only discovering now.

I have presented the chart below. I am not a cosmologist myself, and some of the words I have used in the English translation are fluid, because this is a science that was written in Sanskrit two thousand years ago. Sometimes the right words are hard to find when translating into English, especially since half of these cosmic processes have not yet been discovered by modern astronomy itself.

Note: The astronomical and genealogical framework here draws from traditional Puranic and Vedic sources. Where I connect these figures to modern scientific concepts, that reflects my own personal and creative interpretation, not an established teaching.

Take a minute to go through the cosmic chart and feel free to share your feedback and interpretations. In my next post, I will continue with how Rishi Kashyapa, with his two different wives, gave birth to the Devas and Asuras.