some. Water will be salubrious and foodstuffs delicious in the country where King
Yudhis
̇
t
̇hira lives (MBh. 4. 27. 13–20).Similarly in Ra ̄ma’s reign all was benign, there were seasonal rains and good
crops; there was no fire, flood, or disease; men lived for a thousand years and
had a thousand children; the trees bore abundant flowers and fruits, and the
cows gave abundant milk.^42
Conversely an unjust king causes nature to withhold its bounty. According
to the Turanian leader Afra ̄siya ̄b in the Sha ̄h-na ̄ma, ‘because of the tyranny of
the Iranian king all good disappears into hiding; the wild ass does not bring
forth at its due season, the eye of the young falcon is blinded, wild creatures
stem the flow of milk to their breasts, water in the springs turns to pitch or
dries up in the wells everywhere, the musk lacks perfume in its pod’. In a
later episode Shah Bahra ̄m by repenting of his harsh policies produces an
immediate and spectacular increase in the yield of a cow that had been empty
of milk.^43
The disguised Odysseus tells Penelope that her fame is heaven-high,
like that of some flawless king, who, god-fearing,
ruling a numerous and doughty people,
upholds justice, and the dark earth brings forth
wheat and barley, and the trees are heavy with fruit,
the sheep and goats give birth without fail, and the sea provides fish
from his good leadership, and the peoples flourish under him.
(Od. 19. 109–14)
Hesiod paints a similar picture in his description of the rewards of the just
city (Op. 225–37). He does not refer specifically to kings, but in the context of
his poem it is ‘kings’ who control the administration of justice.
According to Ammianus Marcellinus (28. 5. 14) it is an ancestral custom of
the Burgundians to depose their king if the nation fares ill in war or if the
earth gives poor crops. The ninth-century skald Einarr Skálaglamm praises
Earl Hákon for restoring shrines that his predecessors had destroyed: ‘now
the gods receive their sacrifices again... the earth bears its fruits as before’.
Snorri Sturluson tells of two kings who were sacrificed on account of con-
tinual bad harvests, and he comments that the Swedes hold their kings
responsible in this matter. Elsewhere he writes that under a good ruler there
are plentiful harvests both from the sea and the land.^44
(^42) MBh. 12. 29. 46–54, cf. 70. 6–24, 92. 6, 139. 9 f.; Rm. 6. 116. 82ff.; Jan Gonda, Ancient
Indian Kingship from the Religious Point of View (Leiden 1966), 7 f.
(^43) Levy (1967), 96, 312.
(^44) Einarr, Vellekla 15; Ynglinga saga 15, 43, cf. Orkneyinga saga 9; de Vries (1956), i. 203,
393–6; id. (1961), 236–8; Turville-Petre (1964), 191–3.
- King and Hero 423