भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)

theory. Warlike spirit and armed-strength, he said, were the very life-breath not only of the political but also of the civil life of a community. Let that warlike spirit mitigate itself a bit and all religions, all sciences, all arts why the whole life of a nation is doomed! सर्वे धर्मा प्रक्षयेयुर्विवृद्धाः। क्षात्रे त्यक्ते राजधर्मे पुराणे॥ “In the event of the Kshatriyas forsaking their old kingly duty, all the religions are (bound) to perish.” A huge building without a (proper) foundation, as also, an empire without an (adequate) military strength, are bound to topple down even with a stormy wave of wind. Arya Chanakya, who preached all this, first of all began to reorganize a huge powerful army, which was well-commanded and inspired with the ambition to win in order to defend the newly-born empire. This he did with such an amazing speed, that during three or four years, not only his subjects came to have faith in his great powers but also the enemies of India began to fear it. 123. What did this huge army of Chandragupta so well planned and so well organised, amount to? 124. Hardly four years earlier, when Chandragupta-Chanakya vowed secretly to establish an independent Indian empire under a unitary command, their armed might was literally nil! That very Chandragupta who started with this ‘nil’, had now a well-equipped loyal army of 6,00,000 foot soldiers, 30,000 cavalry; 2,000 war-elephants and 4,000 chariots! 125. With this powerful army, Chanakya wiped out the chaos created by the separatist small states, republics and monarchies in north India, which wanted to lead an independent life of their own, and established peace and unitary organization. In the end, all the territory on this side of the Indus up to the Punjab, the Kingdom of the Pauravas and Sindh proper, were annexed to the Mauryan empire. 126. Had any political thinker and administrator or an Indian emperor felt proud to have established for the first time, such a unitary Bharatiya empire, it would have been but natural. India’s Frontier Hindukush not Indus 127. But Chandragupta and Chanakya were not satisfied with extending the boundaries of their empire up to the banks of the Indus only, they had vowed to establish the Bharatiya empire over the whole of India, and to annihilate the unruly Mlenchchas! At that time the (north-western) frontier of India did not rest with the eastern bank of the Indus. But it reached much farther beyond the Indus, so as to include among its fold the regions like the