"Vāsudeva" is a vṛddhi, a derivative of the short form "Vasudeva", a linguistic pragmatic in Sanskrit signifying "of, belonging to, descended from".

[9][10] Vasudeva married Devaki, and also had other wives such as Pauravi Rohini, Madira, Vaishakhi, Bhadra, Sunama, Sahadeva, Shantideva, Shrideva, Devarakshita, Vrikadevi, Upadevi and Badarva.

[14] In some versions of the Bhagavata Purana, Vasudeva also married Sutanu, the princess of Kasi, and they had a son named Paundraka.

(See Mausala Parva).Many migrated southwards and known as vira balija or vir banajiga and created a powerful warrior merchant class of south India and ruled nayaka dynasties.

As textual evidence, the Mahanarayana Upanishad records the verse: नारायाणाय विद्महे वासुदेवाय धीमहि तन्नो विष्णुः प्रचोदयात् nārāyāṇāya vidmahē vāsudēvāya dhīmahi tannō viṣṇuḥ pracōdayāt We endeavor to know Narayana, we meditate on Vāsudeva and Vishnu bestows wisdom on us.

[19][21] 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.

An Indo-Greek ambassador from Taxila named Heliodorus, of this era, visited 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.

Sage Kashyapa is said to have incarnated as Vasudeva, the father of Krishna, due to a curse of the deities Varuna or Brahma.

Varuna cursed the sage and his wife, Aditi, to be born on earth as Vasudeva and Devaki, the parents of Vishnu in his avatar of Krishna.