Ashtavakra studied, became a sage and a celebrated character of the Hindu Itihasa epics and Puranas.

[2] Little is known about the life or century in which Ashtavakra actually lived, except for the accounts found in the major Indian Chronicle (the Ramayana and the Mahabharata) and the Puranas.

The legends state that sage Aruni, mentioned in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, ran an ashram ([school]) teaching the Vedas.

She got pregnant, and during her pregnancy, the developing baby heard the chanting of the Vedas and learnt the correct recitation.

[3] According to one version of the legends surrounding Ashtavakra, his father was once reciting the Vedas, but erred in correct intonation.

[1] His father, Kahoda, once went to ask for riches, to Janaka, the ancient king of Videha, for his family was poor.

Kahoda was very impressed with his son, Ashtavakra, and while going back home, asked him to take a dip in the river Samanga.

According to American scholar Jessica Wilson, the Sanskrit poetics in Ashtavakra Gita is not driven by critical syllogism, but is rich in philosophical premises, spiritual effectiveness and its resonant narrative because of "textual indeterminacy between the audience's disposition and the foregrounded theme of non-individuation in the text.

This tension... results in consistency building by the audience, which enables the transcendence of these two viewpoints (reader and text)".

On losing the game of dice with the Kauravas, the five Pāṇḍava princes and Draupadi are exiled for twelve years.

On their pilgrimage, they meet the sage Lomaśa, and he narrates to the Pāṇḍava princes the legend of Ashtavakra, over three chapters of Vana Parva of the Mahābhārata.

This unique debate is full of enigmas and latent meanings which lie under the simple counts of the numbers one to thirteen.