Vasudeva


According to Hindu scripture, Vasudeva, also called Ānakadundubhii, is the father of the Hindu deities Krishna, Balarama and Subhadra. He was king of the Vrishnis and a Yadava prince. He was the son of the Yadava king Shurasena. His sister Kunti was married to Pandu. Kunti plays a big role later in the war Mahabharata.
The patronymic is a popular name of Krishna, the son of Vasudeva with Devaki, "Vāsudeva" in the lengthened form being a vṛddhi-derivative of the short form "Vasudeva", a type of formation very common in Sanskrit signifying "of, belonging to, descended from".
According to the Harivansa Purana, Vasudeva and Nanda were brothers. He was said to be 'Gwala' or the person rearing cattle.

Descendants

The sons of Vasudeva were related to Bhagavatism that was largely formed by the 1st-millennium BCE where Vāsudeva was worshiped as supreme ultimate reality. This is evidenced by texts and archaeological evidence. As textual evidence, the Mahanarayana Upanishad records the verse:
This verse asserts that Narayana, Vāsudeva and Vishnu are synonymous. The author and the century in which the above Mahanarayana Upanishad was composed is unknown. The relative chronology of the text, based on its poetic verse and textual style, has been proposed by Parmeshwaranand to the same period of composition as Katha, Isha, Mundaka and Shvetashvatara Upanishads, but before Maitri, Prashna and Mandukya Upanishad. Feuerstein places the relative composition chronology of Mahanarayana to be about that of Mundaka and Prashna Upanishads. These relative chronology estimates date the text to second half of 1st millennium BCE. Srinivasan suggests a later date for the composition of the Mahanarayana Upanishad, one after about 300 BCE and probably in the centuries around the start of the common era.
Other evidence is from archeological inscriptions, where Bhagavan is documented epigraphically to be from around 100 BCE, such as in the inscriptions of the Heliodorus pillar. An Indo-Greek ambassador from Taxila named Heliodorus, of this era, worked at the court of a Shunga king, and addresses himself as a Bhagavata on this pillar, an epithet scholars consider as evidence of Vāsudeva worship was well established in 1st millennium BCE. A popular short prayer for worshipping Vasudeva is Dwadashaakshar.