History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c10.s3.20

c10.s3.20

secuted the Buddhists¹ and uprooted the sacred Bodhi Tree.² Probably it is with regard to the Gauḍa king’s treachery that the Madhuban and Banskhera inscriptions say that he (Rājya) “in consequence of his adherence to his promise (satyānurodhena) gave up his life in the mansion of his foe.”³ And this inveigling of the rescuer of Kanauj into the death-trap is further explained by the commentator on the Harṣacarita, who informs us that “Śaśāṅka threw Rājya off his guard by his offer to marry his daughter to him as a token of submission and friendship.”⁴ Whatever the means that were employed to perpetrate the foul deed, it is certain that after Rājya’s death the outlook for both the allied houses of the Vardhanas and the Maukharis became gloomy in the extreme. Thanesvar was deprived of its young ruler; and Kanauj, having lost its sovereign as well as the timely support of the former kingdom, passed under the occupation of the king of Gauḍa, who, in order to divert the attention of Bhaṇḍi or his adversary’s army, released Rājyaśrī, the widowed queen of Kanauj, from detention in that city.