Bhagavatham Stories

Continuing his narrative, Maitreya described to Vidura the history of King Anga and the emergence of his son Vena, one of the most impious rulers ever to reign over the earth. The appearance of Vena in the history of kingdoms serves as a cautionary tale about how even royal lineages blessed with great spiritual knowledge can produce descendants who completely reject their inherited wisdom and pursue paths of destruction and evil. Though Vena was born into a family of great devotees and had access to all the spiritual guidance that Vedic knowledge could provide, he chose instead to embrace atheistic philosophies and to rule according to his own desires without regard for dharma or the welfare of his subjects. His brief but disastrous reign created a crisis in the cosmic order that ultimately required divine intervention to resolve.

King Anga, Vena's father, was himself a righteous ruler who had received extensive Vedic education and who attempted to pass on these valuable teachings to his son. However, Vena was born with an inherently rebellious nature and a mind that was attracted to material power and sensory gratification rather than spiritual truth. As he grew older, Vena increasingly rejected his father's counsel and the teachings of the sages. He surrounded himself with advisors who encouraged his material pursuits and who flattered his ego by telling him that he needed not follow any higher authority—that he himself was supreme and that his desires were the highest law. Under their influence, Vena began to view the Vedic prescriptions as limitations upon his freedom rather than as guides toward genuine happiness and spiritual realization.

When Vena finally inherited the throne after his father's death, he immediately set about dismantling the spiritual culture that had been carefully established and maintained for countless generations. He declared that sacrifices and rituals were unnecessary and that the pursuit of material pleasure and power was the only legitimate goal of life. He forbade the performance of Vedic rituals and discouraged people from studying the sacred scriptures. Instead, he promoted materialism, sensory indulgence, and the accumulation of wealth and power. He used the state machinery to enforce his atheistic ideology, punishing those who attempted to continue their spiritual practices. Many priests and spiritual teachers were driven from their positions, and the temples that had been constructed for the worship of the Supreme Lord were either destroyed or converted to serve the king's material purposes.

Under Vena's rule, the kingdom rapidly deteriorated. Because the king had rejected dharmic principles and had established a government based on whim and tyranny, the cosmic forces began to withdraw their support. The weather became erratic—sometimes bringing drought and famine, other times bringing destructive storms and floods. Crops failed, and the land became less fertile. The animals became diseased, and the people suffered from various afflictions. Moreover, crime increased dramatically as people, no longer receiving guidance in righteous conduct, increasingly violated moral principles. Vena's policies of heavy taxation and violent oppression created such suffering among the populace that people became desperate and began to turn to crime as a means of survival. The entire kingdom descended into chaos and suffering, and the cosmic administrators watched in dismay at how quickly one king's impious leadership could destroy the well-being of an entire civilization.

The sages and the demigods, observing the catastrophic effects of Vena's misrule, understood that they had to act to prevent further destruction. They approached Vena with appeals and warnings, explaining that his policies were harming not only his subjects but would ultimately bring about his own downfall and destruction. However, Vena, intoxicated with power and convinced of his own supremacy, refused to listen. The sages, seeing that peaceful persuasion was ineffective and that Vena's continued rule would lead to universal disaster, decided that they had no choice but to take decisive action. This chapter demonstrates the principle that genuine leadership must be based on dharma and spiritual principles, and that when leaders abandon these principles in pursuit of material power and selfish gratification, the consequences are invariably destructive for themselves and their subjects.