The Last Kings

A line that went on for many generations after Rama — and whose last king Kalidasa leaves at the moment a pregnant queen sits on the throne

The Last Kings is chapter 12 of Raghuvamsha. Source: Raghuvamsha, cantos 18 and 19 (Kalidasa). It is told in 4 scenes — A List of Names; A Six-Year-Old King; Agnivarna; The End of the Line — followed by 10 quiz questions.

A List of Names

Atithi's son was Nishadha, as strong as Mount Nishadha. Nishadha's son was Nala, who had a share of fire in his glow — not that Nala whose story is known with Damayanti. Nala's son was Nabhas, then Pundarika, then Kshemadhanvan, then Devanika, whose name was heard even in heaven. Then Ahinagu, Pariyatra, Shila, Unnabha, Vajranabha, Shankhana, Vyushitashva. Then Vishvasaha, and Vishvasaha's son Hiranyanabha, a part of Vishnu. Hiranyanabha's son was Kausalya, Kausalya's was Brahmishtha, Brahmishtha's was Putra, and Putra's son was Pushya.

Kalidasa runs through this list quickly, yet gives each name a line. Of one he says that even in youth he kept away from bad habits. Of another that he blushed to hear himself praised. Of another that he stood as tall as Mount Pariyatra.

Pushya handed the kingdom to his son, learned yoga from Jaimini, and was freed from the fear of rebirth. After Pushya came Dhruvasandhi, who died by a lion's hand in the middle of a hunt.

A Six-Year-Old King

After Dhruvasandhi's death his ministers seated his young son Sudarshana on the throne — the only branch of the family left. He was only six years old. Kalidasa says the line was like a sky with a new moon, or a lake with one lotus.

When he rode on an elephant with a mahout through the royal road, the people of the city gave him the same respect they had given his father. A cloud the size of an elephant's calf, meeting the wind, still covers the quarters. As the gem "Mahanila" gets its name from its brightness, so, though a child, he was called Maharaja.

His command ran to the edges of the sea. Even ornaments were heavy for his tender body, and yet he bore the great yoke of the earth. He picked up the sciences he had studied in a past life as though remembering them.

When he grew up, ministers from his side of the family showed him pictures of princesses and had him marry them. In Kalidasa's phrase they became the queens of Sudarshana, rivals to Lakshmi and Earth.

Agnivarna

In old age Sudarshana gave the kingdom to his son Agnivarna and went off to Naimisha forest to do penance. There he bathed in holy waters, slept on kusha mats and lived in a hut in place of a palace.

Agnivarna got without effort a kingdom his father had built. For some years he ruled himself, then left everything to his ministers and spent his youth on women.

Kalidasa writes at great length here, but, keeping to propriety, the matter is this: he began to stay within his palace, and his people had to long to see him. Out of regard for his ministers, now and then he showed only a foot through the lattice of a window, and the servants bowed to it and went away.

His nights passed in dance, music, wine and divided love, and his days too were like nights. Kalidasa says he could not bear even a moment without sensual pleasures.

The queens often sulked, he coaxed them, and then it all began again. He found so many new ways to enjoy himself that each earlier festival paled beside the next.

The End of the Line

Foreign kings did not attack his realm, for his ancestors' glory still held. But a disease entered Agnivarna's body — rajayakshma, consumption — as the moon was seized by consumption under Daksha's curse.

The physicians advised restraint; he did not listen. The illness wasted his body, his face grew pale, his voice faint. The line became like a night sky holding only the faintest sliver of the moon, or a pond drying in summer, or a lamp with its wick almost burned down.

The ministers told the city that the king was performing a rite to obtain a son, so that the people would not know. The king had no son. At last the illness extinguished his life, as a sudden gust puts out a dying lamp.

The ministers, with the family priest, secretly lit a pyre in the palace garden itself, on the pretext that a ritual for his cure was being held. Then they called together the leading citizens. The king's pregnant lawful wife was chosen as ruler of the kingdom.

And the unborn child, heated by the tears at the king's death, was cooled by the water of the coronation. The queen sat on a golden throne and governed her husband's kingdom with the advice of the old hereditary ministers, and her orders were never disobeyed — like the earth keeping a handful of seed hidden in her, as an oyster hides a pearl.

Here Kalidasa stops.

Note: This chapter follows cantos 18 and 19. The kings' names in canto 18 are interesting but without story, so they are given here in one line. The description of Agnivarna's indulgence in canto 19 is very detailed; only its gist is kept. The Raghuvamsha ends here. Some scholars think the poem is unfinished; others think it was deliberately left so.

Source: Kalidasa's Raghuvamsha (from M. R. Kale's English translation, with Mallinatha's commentary), The Last Kings