More than four thousand years ago, Ugrasena of the Yadu race bore sway in his capital of Mathurá. His son Kansa rebelled and dethroning his father ruled with a persecuting hand, while at the same time Jará­sandha, Síśupála and other princes of the Daityas exercised unbounded tyranny. The afflicted earth assuming the form of a cow, hastened with Brahmá to Vishṇu and implored their destruction. The prayer was granted and the divine commission was entrusted to Kṛishṇa. They say that the astrologers foretold to Kansa that a child would shortly be born and that his reign would be at an end. He thereupon ordered the slaugh­ter of all infants and thus each year the blood of many innocent children was shed until his sister Devakí married Vasudeva of the Yadu race. Now Kansa heard a report that Devakí's eighth son would be the cause of his death. He therefore confined them both in prison and put to death every son that was born to them. In the beginning of the Kali Yuga, on the eighth lunar day of the dark half of the month of Bhádrapada (Aug.-Sep.), in the city of Mathurá near the metropolis of Agra, the child was born while the guards were negligent. The fetters fell off and the doors were opened and the child spoke thus. “On the other side of the Jamuna, a girl has even now been born in the house of the cowherd Nanda, and the family are asleep. Take and leave me there and bring the girl hither.” As Vasudeva set out to fulfil this injunction, the river became fordable and the command was obeyed. Kṛishṇa in his ninth year killed Kansa, released Ugrasena from prison and seated him on the throne. He also engaged the other tyrants and overthrew them.

He lived one hundred and twenty-five years and had 16,108 wives, each of whom gave birth to ten sons and one daughter, and each wife thought that she alone shared her husband's bed.