Sagara was descended from King Asit. When king Asit lost his kingdom to his enemies, he went to forest to live in misery with his wives and spent his last days. At that time, when his first wife who belonged to Yadu dynasty has become pregnant, other co-wives became envious of her pregnancy and administered poison to her. There Sage Aurva himself performed the boyhood ceremonies like naming, letter-writing, upanayana etc. ceremonies and taught Vedic scriptures to him. Sage Aurva also gave him a missile called Aagneya-Astram, which is an uncontainable weapon even to Gods.
Sagara had two wives, elder one is Keshini, the daughter of Vidarbha king and the younger one is the daughter of Arishtanemi. Sage Aurva, who nurtured Sagara, has accorded a boon to those two ladies putting this condition, "one lady may have sixty-thousand sons with great might and the other may have one son who rules over entire earth, choice is yours." Elder wife Keshini chosen one son, and delivered the first son of Sagara named Panchajana also known as Asamanjasa who is a great mighty prince who became the successive king after Sagara. The other wife chose to deliver sixty-thousand sons, but she delivered a gourd-like thing in which there are sixty-thousand foetuses, each of the size of a sesame seed. Their father Sagara placed each sesamoid foetus in each jar filled with ghee, the clarified butter, and arranged a governess to each to look after them, and those seeds started to grow up according to time and course of growing. After a ten month durance in ghee-jars, all of the princes have come forth comfortably. Thus, emperor Sagara begot sixty thousand sons.
King Sagara defeated all the enemies of his father and reconquered his kingdom. Holding on to his own pledge to root out incompatibles, also keeping the promise given by his mentor to the same folks in view, sagara let them off ordering a different identity for them. He ordered half-shaved heads to shakas, clean-shaven heads to Yavanas, Paradas and KAmbojas to hang their head hair loose, Pahlavas shall grow beards. He debarred them all from the study of Vedic text and scriptures.
In fact, all the Shakas, Yavanas, Kambojas, Paradas, Mahishas, Dardyas, Cholas, and keralas are Kshatriyas only, but emperor Sagara precluded them from Kshatriya dharma for their unprincipled actions, according to the verdict of sage Vashistha.
On conquering kings of Khasa, Para, Chola, Madra, Kishkindha, Kuntala, Vanga, Konkana provinces, he undertook the vow for Ashwa-medha ritual, horse-sacrifice ritual, and released the horse, challenging any king who dares to capture that horse. While that horse is being moved around provinces it reached the south-easterly zone, and at seashore Indra abducted that horse and hid it underneath the earth. Sagara then ordered his sons escorting that horse to dig up that place to locate the ritual horse. Then those princes unremittingly dug the place to oceanic depths until they reached Shrihari reposing there in the getup of Sage Kapila.
Awakened by their digging Sage Kapila opened his eyes, and those eyes have opened fire and burnt all the sons of emperor Sagara, excluding four, namely Barhaketu, Suketu, Dharmaratha and the valiant Panchajana. Samudra, the ocean-god, receiving reverence from emperor Sagara venerated that king in his turn, and that king thus acquired the title of Sagara, an ocean, as he dug earth to oceanic depths. King Sagara also performed hundred Ashwa-medha, horse-rituals.
King Sagara had a son named Asmanjasa (Panchajana) who was not made king because of his bad conduct. King Sagara was descended by his grandson King Anshuman.
