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

3^RD^ GLORIOUS EPOCH 3. Vikramaditya, the Annihilator of Saka-Kushan Menace 212. After the total destruction of the Greeks, India saw another foreign aggression, which has to be reckoned with in the Indian history rather conspicuously, and which was in some respects more ominous and extensive than those of the armies of Alexander or other Greek generals. I mean the incursions of the Sakas and Kushans. 213. Although the Sakas and the Kushans in some respects differed very widely and although they fought each other very furiously, from the Indian point of view, they had such a striking similarity that they appeared almost identical. Hence their hordes, which dashed against India, like tidal waves, one after another, were generally called Sakas by the common Indian people. At some places in the Indian literature, they are referred to as ‘Kushs’. For this very reason, in this book too, both of them are mentioned as Sakas. 214. The Sakas lived in Central Asia beyond Bactria (Balhik) in large wild gangs. The region beyond them was occupied by tribes, equally wild and ferocious. Even beyond this region right in China, there were still wilder, more ferocious, but braver nomadic tribes of the millions of Huns (Hsiung Nus), which were always at war with one another. These Sakas, Kushans and Huns entertained bitter enmity towards one another and were constantly at war. 215. About a hundred-and-fifty years before Christ, tribal feuds amongst these nomadic tribes flared up in such terrible manner as were never heard of before. One of these tribes, the Huns or Hsiung Nus of China, who were the most pertinacious desperados of all, fell with all their ferocity and might upon the neighbouring tribe of the Kushans, driving them off completely out of their homeland towards the west. So the Kushans in their turn, fell in repeated violent tidal waves upon their next neighbours, the Sakas, who were then happily ensconced to the north of Bactria (Balhik), and after exterminating the latter from their abode, they founded there their own kingdom, instead. The Sakas faithfully forwarded that kick to the adjoining