History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c14.s4.t1.143

c14.s4.t1.143

The Śakan rule aimed at denationalising the Hindus and at the basic destruction of their national system. The social revolution which the Śakas strove for with a calculated policy, was a scheme to depress the high and the aristocrat, the custodian of national culture and the trustee of national liberty—the Brahmin and the Kshatriya. The Śakas were more afraid of the Hindu social system than the arms of the Hindu rulers whom they had already conquered. They aimed at sapping character from the common people by systematic terrorisation and proselytisation. The Garga Saṃhitā says that they carried away one-fourth of the total population from the Siprā to their own capital, i.e. Bactria. Their massacres are noted both by the Garga Saṃhitā and in their summing up by the Purāṇas.¹ They must have carried away as well great wealth from the country to Bactria. Their infamous greed was notorious. They systematically imposed a non-Brahmanical religious system on the Hindus. Hindu life, in short, was suspended. No book written between 78 A.D. to 180 A.D. is to be traced in the orthodox literature of Northern India. It became, therefore, imperatively necessary for the Hindus to undertake to deliver their country from such a political and social scourge.