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Skandha 4, adhyayas 15-23 · Saptah day 2
Born from a dead tyrant's arm, the first consecrated king chases the earth as a cow until she agrees to give her milk.
The fourth book has just shown what a bad king can do. Vena had forbidden sacrifice, demanded worship for himself, and been struck dead by the sages he despised. With no king, thieves overran the land, and the sages churned the dead king's body to draw out a successor. From his thigh came a short, dark man who carried away Vena's sin. Then they churned his arms, and a man and a woman came out together.
The sages saw that the man was a portion of Vishnu: the mark of the discus was on his hand, the lotus on his feet. He was Prithu, and the woman was Archi, who became his queen. At his consecration the gods brought gifts. Indra gave him a crown, Yama a sceptre, Lakshmi wealth, and Vishnu his own discus.
Then the bards stood up to praise him, and Prithu stopped them. He had done nothing yet, he said. Praise for qualities a man has not shown is mockery, whether he notices it or not. Let them praise the Lord instead. It is a small scene, and it matters: the first consecrated king begins by refusing flattery.
His first crisis was hunger. The earth was yielding nothing, and his people came to him wasted and begging. Prithu thought it over, then took up his bow and aimed at the earth herself. She took the form of a cow and fled. He chased her through every direction, and wherever she ran, above or below, she found him behind her with an arrow on the string.
At last she turned and spoke. You are the protector of beings, she said; why kill me? And how can a righteous king kill a female? Prithu's answer was hard. One who takes a share of the offerings and gives nothing back deserves punishment, he said, and if she would not yield, he would sustain his people by his own power.
Her reply tells why the crops had gone. Brahma had made the plants and grains, she said, but she had watched them being consumed by people who kept no vows and offered nothing, and the kings did nothing to stop it. So she had taken the seeds back into herself. They were not lost. She would give them up as milk, if he gave her a calf she loved, a vessel, and someone to milk her; and he must level the land so that the rain would stay where it fell.
So Prithu made Svayambhuva Manu the calf and milked the earth into his own cupped hands, and the grains and herbs came back. Then others came to milk her in their own way, each with a calf and a vessel. The sages, with Brihaspati as calf, drew the Vedas into speech, mind and hearing. The gods, with Indra, drew soma into a golden pot. The demons, with Prahlada as calf, drew liquor into iron. The Gandharvas and Apsaras drew music and beauty into a lotus. Each received what suited their nature.
Prithu was pleased with the earth and cared for her as a daughter, which is why she is called Prithvi. With the tips of his bow he broke down the mountains and levelled the ground, and for the first time there were villages and towns, pastures and cowsheds. Before him, the text says, people had no settled places at all.
He went on to perform ninety-nine horse sacrifices. At the hundredth, Indra, afraid of being surpassed, stole the horse, and Brahma persuaded Prithu to let the hundredth go. Then Vishnu himself came, with an embarrassed Indra beside him, and offered Prithu a boon. Prithu answered that he would not want even liberation if it held no hearing of the Lord's glories from the mouths of his devotees. What he asked for was ten thousand ears.
He ruled long, heard the Kumaras teach, and in old age went to the forest with Archi, where he left his body in yoga. Prithu matters in the shape of the fourth book because he answers Vena. The same royal line, the same power over the earth, is turned the other way: the land is fed and ordered, and at the centre of it stands a king who wants, more than anything, to listen.
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