The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c12.23

c12.23

It is no matter for surprise, then, that the legendary accounts of the origin of kingship are wrought with equivocation and near-failure. Thus Bhīṣma, while answering Yudhiṣṭhira's perplexed question on the nature of kingship, relates that notwithstanding the intervention of Viṣṇu, who created the first king as his "mental son," kingship in fact all but failed.⁵⁵ Indeed, the first three kings wanted no part of it and opted out by renouncing the world. Only with the fourth, does kingship get a fair chance, but then passion and greed also start their corrupting work, culminating in the notorious King Vena. It is only with the seventh in line, Pṛthu, produced by the holy men out of the immolated body of his father, that the ideal king enters on the scene. There, as far as our text is concerned, the line ends, for going beyond this point could only spoil the ideal.⁵⁶ Leaving aside for the moment the ideal case of Pṛthu, Bhīṣma's account clearly expresses the king's dilemma. Either he safeguards his righteousness by retiring from the world, as the first three kings did, or he submits himself to the yoke of worldly unrighteousness and falls prey to greed and passion, as happened to the next three kings. The first alternative obviously makes nonsense of kingship, the second obliterates the claim to authority. When we finally reach the ideal King Pṛthu, there still is a fatal flaw. He can only give protection, justice, and plenty by confessing his utterly feeble grasp of dharma and having himself led in all matters by the brahmins. Since he must promise the brahmins exemption from all punishment, the arbitrariness of the king is replaced by the absolutism of the brahmin. This flaw is already present in Pṛthu's origin. Although he was properly produced from the immolated body of his father, this immolation was no less a breach in the functioning of dharma. For by this act, as already mentioned, the brahmin seers reduced the world to the adharmic chaos of kinglessness—a point that the legend explicity stresses. So even the Pṛthu story's idealization of the king-brahmin formula does not solve the problem.