6_Glorious_Epochs_of_Indian_History

5TH GLORIOUS EPOCH
183
the battlefield, they invariably married the enemy princesses.
This seems to have been the tradition prevalent right from
Chandragupta Maurya to the Gupta Emperors ! Shalivahan
kings too married Saka princesses*'. Not only our victorious
kings but all Hindus, right from the Samants (feudatory
princes) to common citizens married unhesitatingly Yavan,
Saka or Hun women. The nation was valiant enough to
absorb not only the progeny of those enemy-women but the
whole enemy communities in their own and leave no trace of
their origin behind !
HARMFUL EFFECTS OF THE BAN ON PURIFICATION
AND REHABILITATION
462. Under the illusion of preserving [the purity of
their own caste and religion, the Hindu Society of the Islamic
era began to enforce, as their religious duty, the bans on
exchange of food, on inter-caste marriage, and other bans,
even when they were harmful to the society. In a similar
way, and for the same reason of protecting the purity of
their caste and religion, the ban on repurification of the con­
verted Hindus and that on Sea-faring began to be enforced
most scrupulously and rigidly as religious injunctions.
Neither any single Hindu, who was converted under coercion,
nor even his progeny could ever come back to Hinduism ;
their sin (?) had no redemption, no salvation. Eor generations
together the Hindus believed this to be their inviolable
religious injunction ; with very rare exceptions, every Hindu,
from sweeper to Brahmin, from Chhatrapati (the sovereign) to
Patrapati (the holder of a parchment) ; from Shankaracharya
(the Religious Head) to Shankhacharya (the prince of block­
heads), whether learned or illiterate, held this opinion about
the ban on repurification of the converts unanimously and
unswervingly from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.
463. On account of these very bans, thousands of our
Hindu ladies kindled the fires of johar, century after century,
in order to avoid violation at the hands of the Muslims'^. To
save themselves from this humiliation of violation by the