History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c10.s3.32

c10.s3.32

“He was embraced by the goddess of the Royal prosperity, who took him in her arms and, seizing him by all the royal marks on all his limbs, forced him, *however, reluctant*, to mount the throne,—and this though he had taken a *vow of austerity* and did not swerve from his vow, hard like grasping the edge of a sword.”¹ To me, however, it appears only, a poetic way of describing that the wheel of Destiny was revolving in favour of Harṣa, and although he had not the prior claim to succeed his father—on account of his being younger—circumstances so conspired that he suddenly found himself elevated to the throne. Sanskrit literature is replete with such “poetic mannerisms,” and we may in this connection also recall an almost parallel expression used in the Juna-gaḍh Rock inscription for Skandagupta : “Lakṣmīḥ svayaṁ yaṁ varayāṁ cakāra,” meaning “whom the goddess of Fortune, of her own accord, selected as her husband.”²