01Uttanka’s demand
Janamejaya was still a boy when his father died, and he was made king. The sage Uttanka had his own grudge against Takshaka, who had stolen the earrings he was carrying to his guru’s wife, and he came to the young king and told him how his father had died: Takshaka had bitten him, and turned back the healer Kashyapa who could have saved him. Janamejaya asked his ministers whether it was true, and they told him all of it. Then he resolved on a sarpa-satra, a sacrifice in which the serpents would be drawn into the fire.
02The snake sacrifice
The priests in black robes poured the oblations, calling the serpents by name, and they came writhing through the air, the small and the great, and fell into the fire by the thousand. Takshaka hid with Indra, and the mantras began to drag Indra down with him. Then the boy-sage Astika came to the sacrifice, son of the rishi Jaratkaru and of the sister of Vasuki, king of the nagas. He praised the king and the yajna so well that Janamejaya offered him any boon, and he asked that the sacrifice end. The king was bound by his word. To this day many recite Astika’s name as a protection against snakes.
03Listening to the Bharata
Vyasa came to the sacrifice with his pupils, and the king honoured him and asked how the quarrel between his forefathers had come about. Vyasa told Vaishampayana to recite the whole of it, and in the intervals of the rites he did, from the beginning to the ascent to svarga, with Janamejaya interrupting to ask how, and why, and what happened next. In the Ashramavasika Parva, hearing how Vyasa had raised the dead for Dhritarashtra, the king asked to see his own father, and Vyasa brought Parikshit before him, with his ministers, as he had been in life.