द इण्डियन स्ट्रगल / भारतीय स्वाधीनता संग्राम (नेताजी सुभाष चन्द्र बोस - ऐतिहासिक विश्लेषण)

14 THE INDIAN STRUGGLE history, when there was a uniform and all-round progress in every department of life.¹ After some time decay set in and there was an interval of chaos—religious, cultural and political. Largely because of its exaggerated asceticism, Buddhism lost its hold on the Indian people and there was a revival of Brahmanical Hin- duism. On the philosophical side, the Vedanta philosophy which was first propounded in the Upanishads, was restored to its pride of place. Socially, there was a revival of the caste-system and a new breath of realism took the place of the morbid asceticism of the latter-day Buddhists. Political anarchy was ended through the rise of the Gupta Empire which flourished in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. The greatest of the Gupta emperors was Samudragupta who ascended the throne in A.D. 330. During the Gupta period, the country was not only unified politically but art, literature and science flourished and once again reached the high-water mark of excellence.² This renaissance took place under the influence of Brahmanical Hinduism and this period is there- fore regarded by orthodox Hindus as a more glorious age than the preceding Buddhistic period. As under the Maurya emperors, India once again had active contact, both cultural and commercial, with Asia and also with some countries in Europe, like Rome. After the fifth century the political power of the Gupta emperors came to an end but the cultural renaissance continued unabated till once again it reached its peak in A.D. 640, when under King Harsha the country was once again unified politically. This did not last very long and after some time, once again signs of decline appeared. Then there appeared a new element in Indian history—the Mohammedan invaders. Their raids into the heart of India began as early as the tenth century A.D., but it took them some time to conquer the country.³ Mohammed Bin Tughlak succeeded for the first ¹ An impartial observer like the Greek Megasthenes bears testimony to the above facts. ² Impartial testimony is borne this time by the Chinese pilgrim and traveller Fa-hien. ³ Sindh was conquered in the eighth century but this remained as an isolated phenomenon.