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

powerful army, with a view to avenging the ignoble defeat the Huns had earlier suffered here. Second Hunnish Invasion of India 275. During the very first encounters, the Huns overthrew the imperial frontier guards and drove them back at one or two places. No sooner did he hear of this fresh Hunnish aggression than Skundgupta, in spite of his old age, left his capital and marched as far as the Panchnad (the modern Punjab). While he was thus preoccupied in his military camp, organising the overthrown imperial frontier forces for a counter-attack upon the enemy, he learnt that his step brother, Purgupta, was busy treacherously planning to usurp his throne. Nevertheless, the patriot Skundgupta, disregarding his personal interests, kept on fighting the alien invaders, instead of speedily returning to the capital to settle his domestic trouble, as some others in his place might have most probably done. Had he done so, and left the imperial army fighting without his guidance, the Indian soldiers would have, in all probability, lost courage and the invaders would have swept over the whole of Punjab and at least the half of north India. As he was convinced of this impending calamity, he rather preferred fighting against the barbaric Huns to returning home! 276. And even as he was fighting in the defence of his motherland, this aged warrior-king died about A.D. 471 in his military camp, like a true King that he was! An Emperor must die Standing 277. An interesting anecdote is told about a well-known Roman Emperor who ruled in those ‘palmy days of Rome,’ that while he was lying on his deathbed in his royal palace, he once suddenly got up, sword in hand, and said to the frightened attendants, who suspected it to be a delirious fit, that a king must not die in his bed. “A Roman Emperor”, he said, “must die standing”. 278. In the same manner did this great Indian Emperor, Skundgupta, die in a small military camp fighting relentlessly, in spite of his failing years, the very enemy on whom he had inflicted severe defeats in his earlier career. Renouncing all royal comforts and pleasures, he spent almost fifteen to twenty years of his life, suffering all the discomforts and hardship of a camp-life for the sole purpose of defending his empire and preserving the independence of his motherland. And when he did die, he did so fighting the arch-enemy of his nation, far away in a bivouac in the farthest province