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SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
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visions of auspicious planets would grow complaisant in case you grew complaisant" etc.
Bandhusundari's assurance to Malayasundarī that Vasurāta was such a man whose foretelling could never go waste or untrue in so far as he had predicted her union with the prince who was likely to be a paramount sovereign and hence the loss of Samaraketu was a temporary screening of the vision of the prince, is again reminiscent of the firm belief in the sayings of the soothsayers that could forestall the Destiny of human being. Kusumasekhara intent upon bestowing Malayasundarī on Vajrāyudha as a wager for making peace and avoiding the massacre of the subjects at the hands of his hostile foe, finds it a miraculous freak of fate which he calls as wicked-souled one in so far as it had made his daughter disapprove of his proposal and create thereby an obstacle in his mission to save his subjects. In case he disapproved of his daughter's resolve not to subscribe to his contract of a marital barter, she could take to the path of self-immolation. The perplexity between the two alternatives is a doing of the unforeseen. According to Kautilya - (Acts) of human agency are all good policy and bad policy.
Acts of divine agency are good fortune and misfortune. For, it is acts of human and divine agency that make the world go. That caused by an unseen agency is the divine (act). In that the attainment of the desired fruit is good fortune; of undesired (fruit), misfortune."
The female guard Muktāvali's expressions made before Patralekhā about Gandharavadattā's previous identity also contain a belief in the freak of Destiny who had separated her (i.e. Gandharavadattā) from her parents in her early infancy when an enemy of her sire, a subsidiary vassal, had attacked the kingdom and razed it to the ground.
The effect of certain tendencies of human mind and their reaction to what the mind observes is fairly reflected by the efficacy of omens which
1. त्वयानुकूलं वर्तमानयानुकूलं दैवम् त्वयि प्रसादवत्यां प्रसन्ना देवता, त्वयि कृतानुग्रहायामनुग्राहिका ग्रहदृष्टयः। TM
Sm. ed. p. 284. 2. TM Sm. ed. p. 295. also Vol. III p. 178. 3. día 44 Gece daha fahi etc. See. 762. above. 4. दैवमानुषं दैवमानुषं हि कर्म लोकं यापयति। अदृष्टकारितं दैवम्। तस्मिन्नादृष्टेन फलेन योगोऽय: अनिष्टेनानय: KAS
VI. 2. 6.9 part I p. 165, part II p. 368. 5. देवि, किमहमावेदयामि मन्दभाग्या। दैवमत्र प्रष्टव्यम्। येनासौ संभ्रमकारिणा निरस्तकरुणेन देहमात्रेणैव भिन्ना तवापि
प्रश्नविषयतां नीता। प्रापिता चेयमुपजातपरिचयलोकशोकोद्रेकहेतुमेकपद एवातिकष्टमीदृशमवस्थाविशेषम्। TM Sm ed. p. 342
