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

foreign foes, who had been so far kept off through the awe of the Maurya empire, to venture a fresh aggression on India hardly within thirty years or so of Ashoka’s death. The Aggression of Bactrian Greeks 163. Samrat Chandragupta had defeated Seleucos Nicator and driven away the Greeks far beyond the Hindukush mountains round about 315 B.C. (of. paragraphs 130 to 140). Seleucos had established his independent Greek kingdom in Bactria adjoining the western side of the Hindukush mountains, which was then the extreme frontier of India. As it was independent, it had lost every contact with the original distant European Greek state. If, at all, there existed any contact between the two, it was that of dire enmity. These Bactrian Greeks, therefore, were called Asian Greeks. Because of the break in the continuity during the intervening hundred years or so, these Bactrian Greeks had fallen off miserably in every respect from the high standards of the original Greeks of Alexander’s time. They had now nothing of the spirit and vigour of their Alexandrian ancestors. Alexandrian ambition of conquering India, however, still goaded them on. As soon as they saw the degeneration of the military strength of the Maurya empire, these Bactrian Greeks were fired with the malicious ambition of Indian conquest, as has already been told above, and Demetreos, their king at that time, crossed the Hindukush and attacked India. As the Indian army offered no resistance worth the name, Demetreos reduced Kamboj, Gandhar and crossed the Indus, and conquering the whole of Panchnad, that Yavanadhip (the Greek King) proceeded with his army to conquer Magadha itself. The whole of the Greek army was inspired with the warlike spirit and they began to declare that they were going to realize the dream of Indian conquest of Alexander. Why this Sudden Degeneration of Indian Bravery? 164. How very strange it is that hardly before a hundred years or so, the provinces like Panchnad (Punjab) and others from the Hindukush to the Indus in which the brave Indian Kshatriyas, their republics, and soldiers and the common populace had all defeated and repulsed, with exceptional valour the aggressive Greeks under Alexander and Seleucos and drove them back, should now be overrun so very easily by the much too weaker and degenerated Bactrian Greeks! Owing to the constant dread of the brave fighting warriors of India, Alexander and Seleucos could not sleep soundly in their military camps, while fighting in these provinces. But these second-