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