Ashtavakra was born with eight bends in his body, cursed even in the womb, and yet he alone could see straight to the truth Janaka's whole court had missed
Tradition insists his physical deformity and his spiritual clarity came from the exact same cause, refusing to treat the body's condition as any kind of verdict on the person inside it.
According to the frame story traditionally told alongside the text (drawn from Mahabharata-era legend and repeated in commentaries introducing the Ashtavakra Gita), the sage was cursed while still in his mother Sujata's womb: his father Kahoda was reciting the Vedas aloud, made errors, and the unborn child corrected him eight times, provoking Kahoda to curse his own child to be born crooked in eight places — hence the name Ashtavakra, "eight bends." The same precocious insight that got him cursed is presented as inseparable from the sharpness that later let him see what the sighted, straight-bodied court of King Janaka had missed. The story functions almost as a built-in argument against judging spiritual insight by physical appearance, long before the philosophical dialogue itself makes the same point in different terms. It's worth noting this origin story circulates in commentary and frame tradition around the text rather than within the philosophical dialogue proper.
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- What the Ashtavakra Gita says about illness and the body failing
The story is specific about cause: the unborn child corrected his father Kahoda's recitation of the Vedas eight times, and was cursed to be born crooked in eight places for it. The same precocious insight that bent the body is what later saw what the whole court had missed.