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86 BUDDHIST ARCHITECTURE. BOOK I. and lingered, in all probability, both there and in the Panjab before reaching their first permanent position on the Saraswati in the true " Arya Varta " between the Satlaj and the Jamna. It is also nearly certain that they remained the dominant race in these countries down to the time of Alexander's invasion, and during the supremacy of the Baktrian kingdom. About 150 years, however, before the Christian Era, if we may trust the Chinese accounts, 1 the Yue-chi, and other tribes of Tartar origin, were on the move in this direction. Somewhat later they struck down the Baktrian monarchy, and appear from thence- forward to have permanently occupied their country. It is not clear whether they immediately, or at what interval they penetrated into the Kabul valley ; but between that time and the Christian Era successive hordes of Yue-chi, Sakas, Turushkas, and Hunas, had poured into the valley and the western Panjab to such an extent as to obliterate, or, at least for the time, supersede the Aryan population, and supplant it by one of Turanian origin, and with this change of race came the change of religion. Gandhara is, however, a local name, which certainly, in early times, included the best part of this province, and in Kanishka's time seems to have included all he reigned over, and, if so, is the most appropriate term we could find. It has, moreover, this advantage, that it is essentially Buddhist. In the time of A^oka, it was Kashmir and Gandhara to which the Buddhist Council sent its missionaries, and from that time forward Gandhara is the term by which, in all Buddhist books, that kingdom is described, of which Taxila was at one time the capital, and which is, as nearly as can now be ascertained, conterminous with our architectural province. It is not clear whether Kanishka was or was not the first Buddhist king of this country ; but, so far as is at present known, he seems to have done for Buddhism in Gandhara what A^-oka did for that religion in Central India. He elevated it from its position as a struggling sect to that of being the religion of the State. We know, however, that A^oka's Council sent missionaries to this country ; 2 and, more than this, that he engraved a complete set of his edicts on a rock at Kapurdigiri, 30 miles north-east from Peshawar, but we do not know what success they or he attained. Certain it is, as Professor Wilson remarks, that " no coin of a Greek prince of Baktria has ever been met with in any tope." 3 The local coins that are found in them all belong to dynasties subsequent to the destruction of the Baktrian kingdom, and, according to the same authority 1 De Guigne's ' Histoire des Huns,' vol. ii. pp. 40 et seqq. 2 Tumour's ' Mahawansa,' p. 71. 3 'Ariana Antiqua,' p, 43,