The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c12.6

c12.6

It is, of course, possible to explain these diametrically opposed views as the two sides of the same coin. This does not mean, to put it in a down-to-earth way, that there will always have been more bad kings than good, let alone ideal ones, for the texts will not let us off so easily. Although they obviously know the difference and exploit it to show their ideal king to advantage, their condemning statements more often than not refer simply to kings in general. It is clearly not simply a question of good kings who further prosperity and evil ones who are destructive. For even that epitome of royal unrighteousness, the legendary King Vena, who out of greed and arrogance banned gift and sacrifice and thereby virtually nullified the dharma, seems still to have been indispensable to the commonweal. The holy men who rightly put him to death—or rather immolated him—are to their embarrassment confronted with waste and ruin, this being the unintended result of their depriving the world of its king, however unrighteous he may have been.¹¹ So the beneficial aspect is not completely absent from the reign of even the proverbially wicked Vena, and it is probably not fortuitous that he is honorably mentioned in the *Ṛgveda* as a liberal patron.¹²