A History of Sanskrit Literature c14.s1.5

c14.s1.5

It may be admitted that the foreign attacks on India in the period of the first four centuries B. C. were probably not such as to excite deep national feeling. Alexander's invasion was followed by the early loss of the most Indian of the territories won to Candragupta, apparently without any such struggle as would induce a sense of national danger and national triumph. The Greek, Parthian, Çaka, and Kuṣaṇa successes were possible in large measure because such a sentiment did not exist, and the process of assimilation went on so steadily that, when the Gupta revival came, it can hardly have been felt as a national revival, however much it seems so to us *ex post facto*. Thereafter, until the eleventh century, the wars of India were merely struggles between rival dynasties, wars of crows and kites, in which no deep signification could lie.³ The Mahomedan invaders found India without any real national feeling; their successes were rendered possible largely because the chiefs disliked one another far more than they did the Mleccha. It is characteristic that even in the ballads evoked by the struggle the sense of nationality is only in process of development.