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Rāja-vidyā: The King of Knowledge
are composed of fire. Of all beings on the sun, the principal personality is a god by the name of Vivasvān. He is known as the sun-god ( sūrya-nārāyaṇa ). On all planets there are principal personalities, just as in the United States the chief person is the President. From the history called the  Mahābhārata  we understand that formerly there was only one king on this planet by the name of Mahārāja Bharata. He ruled some 5,000 years ago, and the planet was named after him. Subsequently the earth has become divided into so many different countries. In this way there is usually one and sometimes many controllers of the various planets in the universe.
From this first verse of the Fourth Chapter we learn that millions of years ago Śrī Kṛṣṇa imparted the knowledge of  karma-yoga  to the sun god Vivasvān. Śrī Kṛṣṇa, who imparts the teachings of  Bhagavad-gītā  to Arjuna, here indicates that these teachings are not at all new but were enunciated many ages ago on a different planet. Vivasvān, in his turn, repeated these teachings to his son, Manu. In turn, Manu imparted the knowledge to his disciple Ikṣvāku. Mahārāja Ikṣvāku was a great king and forefather of Lord Rāmacandra. The point being made here is that if one wants to learn  Bhagavad-gītā  and profit by it, there is a process for understanding it, and that process is described here. It is not that Kṛṣṇa is speaking  Bhagavad-gītā  to Arjuna for the first time. It is estimated by Vedic authorities that the Lord imparted these divine instructions to Vivasvān some 400 million years ago. From the