122 THE HISTORY OF KASHMIR
remains of that initial movement. The religion which was its mainspring has now not a single votary among the inhabitants of the valley. The city Asoka founded has long since disappeared. But the great record remains; and on a site beautiful even for Kashmir, where the river sweeps gracefully round to kiss the spur on which the city was built, and from whose sloping terraces the inhabitants could look out over the smiling fields, the purple hills, and snowy mountain summits of their lovely country, there still exist the remnants of the ancient glory as the last, but everlasting sign that at one time great men ruled the land.
The next great landmark in Kashmir history is the reign of the king “Kanishka, the Indo- Scythian ruler of upper India. He reigned about 40 4.D., when the Romans were conquering Britain and Buddhism was just beginning to spread to China. He was of Turki descent, and was part of that wave of Scythian immigration which for two or three hundred years came pouring down from Central Asia. And he was renowned through- out ‘the Buddhist world as the pious Buddhist king, who held in Kashmir the famous Third Great Council of the Church which drew up the’
