The First King

When Yudhishthira asked the sages about the very origin of kingship - what a king is truly for, and how the office of the king first came to be - they told him the story of Vena and his son Prithu, the first true king, after whom the Earth herself is named.

There was once a king named Vena, who came of a good line but was wicked beyond measure. From the throne he ruled with cruelty and pride, and worst of all he was an enemy of religion and righteousness. He forbade his people to perform sacrifices or to worship the gods, declaring that he himself was the only god worthy of worship, and that all offerings should be made to him alone. He overturned the sacred rites, oppressed the holy and the good, and let injustice and impiety spread unchecked through the land. Under his misrule the whole order of the world began to break down, for when the sacrifices cease and the king is wicked, the bond between heaven and earth is broken, and ruin follows.

The great sages, seeing the world sinking into ruin under Vena's impiety, came to the king to reason with him. They begged him to give up his wickedness, to allow the sacrifices and the worship of the gods to be restored, to rule with justice and uphold the dharma, warning him that his course would destroy both himself and the world.

But Vena would not listen. In his arrogance he scorned the sages and their counsel, repeating that he alone was god and would be worshipped, and refusing utterly to restore the rites or to mend his ways. He defied the holy men to their faces and persisted in his tyranny.

Then the sages, seeing that the king could not be reformed and that his continued reign would mean the ruin of all, did a terrible and necessary thing. By the power of their accumulated penance, uttering sacred mantras and striking him with consecrated blades of kusha grass, they put the wicked king to death - destroying the tyrant to save the world from him, for a king who has utterly abandoned dharma and become the enemy of the gods and his own people forfeits, by his wickedness, his right to rule and to live.

But with Vena dead, a new danger arose. The king was gone, and he had left no heir, and now there was no ruler at all - and a land without a king, the sages knew, falls swiftly into anarchy, into the rule of the strong over the weak, into chaos and lawlessness, which is a misery as great as tyranny. The world needed a king, a righteous one, and quickly.

So the sages took the body of the dead Vena and, by their power, churned it to bring forth a successor. First they churned the thigh of the dead king, and out of it came a dark, short, ugly being - and into this being passed all the sins and wickedness of Vena, drawn out of his line and embodied in this dark figure, who became the ancestor of the forest tribes and was sent away to dwell in the wilderness. With the wickedness thus drawn off and removed, the line was purified of Vena's evil.

Then the sages churned the arms of the dead king - and out of them came a very different being: a radiant, noble, mighty figure, shining with virtue and majesty, an incarnation of the Lord Vishnu himself, born to be the true king the world needed. This was Prithu.

Prithu came forth radiant and royal, bearing the very marks of Vishnu, and the sages and the gods rejoiced, for here at last was a king worthy of the name - righteous, mighty, and divine, the opposite in every way of the wicked father from whose churned body he had been drawn. The gods themselves came to his consecration, bringing him celestial weapons and gifts and the emblems of sovereignty, and Prithu was anointed and crowned the king of the earth with full and sacred ceremony.

He is remembered as the first properly consecrated king, the first true Rajan - the one in whom the very office of kingship was established as a sacred trust. For the sages and the gods who raised him up laid upon him, from the first, the true charge of a king: not to rule for his own glory or pleasure, as Vena had, but to protect his subjects, to uphold dharma, and above all to nourish and care for the earth and all who live upon her. Kingship, in Prithu, was born not as a privilege to be enjoyed but as a duty to be discharged - the duty of the protector and the nourisher of his people.

But Prithu found his new kingdom in a desperate state. Under the long misrule of Vena, the earth had suffered grievously. The sacrifices had ceased, the order had broken down, and the people were starving, for the Earth herself, abused and neglected and offended by the wickedness of Vena's reign, had withdrawn her bounty. She had taken back into herself all the seeds and the grains and the herbs and the fruits, hiding away the sustenance of all creatures within her body, so that the land lay barren and nothing would grow, and famine gripped the people.

The starving people came to their new king Prithu and cried out to him for food, for they were dying of hunger. And Prithu, the protector of his subjects, was filled with both compassion for their suffering and anger at the Earth for withholding the food that should sustain them. He resolved that he would compel the Earth to yield up her bounty again, by force if she would not give it freely, for it was his sacred duty to feed his people, and he would not see them starve.

Prithu took up his great bow and went out to compel the Earth to give up her hidden bounty. The Earth, seeing the mighty king coming against her in his wrath, was afraid, and she fled from him - taking, it is said, the form of a cow, and running away across the worlds to escape him. But Prithu pursued her relentlessly, his bow drawn, chasing the fleeing Earth wherever she ran, determined that she should not escape until she had yielded the food his people needed.

At last the Earth, unable to flee any further and in fear for her life, turned and pleaded with the king for mercy. "O King," she cried, "do not kill me. What good will my death do you or your people? Killing me will not feed them. But hear me: I withheld my bounty because it was being misused and abused under the wicked reign, and the seeds and the food were being wasted and lost. If you will protect me, and care for me, and provide what is needed, I will gladly yield up all my bounty again for the nourishment of your people. Do not slay me - tame me, and tend me, and I will feed the world."

Prithu, hearing the Earth's plea, lowered his bow, for he was a righteous king and had never wished to destroy her, only to make her yield her bounty for his starving people. He agreed to her terms: he would protect and care for the Earth, and she in turn would give up her hidden riches.

Then Prithu accomplished the deed for which he is most remembered. The Earth told him that to draw forth her bounty he must "milk" her as one milks a cow, providing a fitting calf and a vessel. So Prithu, and after him all the kinds of beings, each in turn, milked the Earth - drawing forth from her, like milk from a cow, all that she had hidden: the grains and the seeds and the herbs and the fruits, the food of every creature, and the gems and the metals and all the wealth of the land. Each kind of being drew from her the sustenance fitted to it. And so the bounty of the Earth was restored, flowing forth again for the nourishment of all the worlds.

More than this, Prithu set the world in order. He leveled the rough and broken land, made the ground fit for tilling, established agriculture and the growing of crops, founded cities and villages and the settled life of his people, and organized the kingdom so that food and wealth could be produced and shared. He turned a barren and chaotic land into a nourishing and ordered realm.

Because it was Prithu who tamed the Earth, who compelled her to yield her bounty and then protected and cared for her and made her fruitful again, who established her in order and made her the nourisher of all beings, the Earth was named after him. From the name Prithu, she is called Prithvi - the Earth as the daughter and the domain of Prithu, the king who made her give her milk to all the world. And so the very name of the Earth, Prithvi, carries in it the memory of the first true king who nourished her and was nourished by her, in the bond between the king and the land that he established.

Prithu ruled long and gloriously, the model of the righteous king, and under his reign the Earth was fruitful and his people prospered and wanted for nothing, for he had made the land yield her bounty and had ordered it for the good of all. He was honored as the first of kings and the pattern of what a king should be, and his name and the Earth's are bound together forever.

The sages drew the great lesson of the tale for the Pandavas, for it is, above all, a teaching about the nature and duty of kingship.

"See how the office of the king was born, son of Pandu, and what it was born for. The wicked Vena thought a king was one to be worshipped and served, who could oppress and exploit his people for his own glory and pleasure - and his reign brought the Earth herself to withhold her bounty, and the world to ruin, and himself to destruction. But the true king, Prithu, was raised up for the opposite purpose: to protect his subjects and to nourish them, to make the Earth fruitful for the good of all, to give and not to take. The very name of the Earth, Prithvi, was made from his, because he nourished her and she nourished his people through him.

"This is what a king is for, and the office of the king carries this duty written into its very origin: not to be served, but to serve; not to exploit the land and the people, but to protect and nourish them; to make the realm fruitful for the welfare of all who live in it. A king who forgets this and rules for himself, like Vena, forfeits his right to rule and brings ruin; a king who remembers it, like Prithu, makes the very Earth blossom and is honored for as long as the world endures."

And the Pandavas, who were born to rule and would one day hold a kingdom again, took deeply to heart this teaching about what a king is truly for: that the throne is not a possession to be enjoyed but a duty to nourish and protect, the very bond between the ruler and the earth and the people he serves.