Origin in the Puranas and the Two Lines of Descent

Puranic accounts place Chitragupta's creation after Brahma, having judged the deeds of created beings for many ages, realized he needed a witness independent of himself to keep the record honest, and brought Chitragupta out of his own body for the task. Different regional and textual traditions give him two wives, most commonly named Irawati and Shobhavati or Nandini, and their sons are the ancestors different Kayastha sub groups trace themselves to: names recorded across the tradition include Srivastava, Saxena, Mathur, Bhatnagar, Nigam, Kulshreshtha and Ambashtha among others, each associated with a particular region of northern India. This is caste origin mythology in the fullest sense, a genealogy that explains and legitimizes a real social and professional community, the traditional scribes, record keepers and administrators of Mughal and later Indian bureaucracy, by rooting their occupation in a divine ancestor who performs exactly that function for the gods. Some tellings add a third strand to the genealogy, describing further sons born specifically to serve as scribes attached to regional courts across northern and eastern India, which some Kayastha sub groups outside the core twelve invoke to explain their own more localized origin within the wider community.