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

fighting troops of millions of Kushan, men and women violently entered Southern Asia shedding blood, plundering and burning towns and cities and spreading destruction everywhere. Throughout the whole Asiatic region, right from the Chinese frontier beyond the Hindukush to that of Greece in the west, they literally played havoc. Some of their troops in hot pursuit of their old enemies, the Sakas, overran the Bactrian Kingdom, and, crossing the Hindukush, entered the Indian north-western provinces of Gandhar, and extirpating the smaller Saka principalities that still were there at the time, they pushed themselves ahead into Punjab. They founded there a kingdom of their own. The name of their first king in India was Wima Kadphises. 235. The might of the northern Youdheyas, Malavas and other republics and that of the Salivahanas in the South having been put to its last extremity of endurance in successfully resisting and ultimately putting down the Saka aggresion for more or less a hundred years, they could not immediately and successfully stem the overwhelming onslaught of the Kushans, who were crueller and more bloodthirsty than even the Sakas, till they came to occupy Punjab. However, even in those miserable days, the Indian resistance to Kushan aggression gradually became so hot and determined, that the Kushan hordes could not make any headway in the Indian territories this side of Punjab. Emperor Kanishka 236. After the death of Wima Kadphises, Kanishka ascended the Kushan throne in 78 A.D. (in the opinion of some historians in 120 A.D.). His achievements were unrivalled; his ambition was boundless. It is needless to give any detailed account in these pages. Some events, however, have to be recounted here so far as they fall within the scope of this book. Kanishka subdued all the nomadic, plundering and marauding bands of the Saka-Kushans on both sides of the Himalayas (Hindukush?), as also all the smaller or bigger centres of political power, and forged them all into an extensive empire. He proclaimed himself as the Emperor of the Kushans and founded his capital at Purushpur (Peshawar of today). Thereupon, he marched on the Sakas, who had established their power from Malava to Sindh and who, being defeated by the Andhras, had acknowledged their paramountcy. But the same Indian states that had been incessantly fighting the Sakas for over a century and had been by now thoroughly exhausted in their attempt to put down these aggressors, had to face this new calamity of the Kushan onslaughts and, as such, they found it