The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c8.16

c8.16

At the present time not only is this unfortunate Gandhâra, which had always so much to suffer from its situation on the high road of the conquerors of Asia, no longer Buddhist; it has become more than half Afghan in race, Iranian in language, and withal Musalman. It is a curious fact that, according to Strabo, at the time of the rude and passing conquest of Alexander, the « Gandaritis » did not form a part of India, which at that time commenced only at the Indus. Seleukos, after his fruitless attempt in invasion in 305 before our era, is said to have ceded it by treaty, together with the hand of his daughter, in exchange for 500 elephants, to the first historical emperor of India, that Candragupta whom the Greek historians call Sandrakottos. Fifty years later this district still formed part of the domains of the latter’s grandson, the famous Açoka; and he caused to be engraved on a huge rock, half-way up a hill near the present village of Shâhbâz-Garhî (pl. XII, 1), the pious edicts in which he recommended to his people the practice of all the virtues, beginning with kindness to animals. From the fifth of these edicts it quite clearly appears that for him Gandhâra was a frontier country, still to be evangelized. We know, on the other hand, the zeal of this « Constantine of Buddhism » for the propagation of the Good Law. Then again, according to the Singhalese chronicle, the *Mahâvaṃsa*, it was precisely during his reign that the apostle Madhyântika converted Gandhâra as well as Kashmir. Thus the religion of Buddha would have taken more than two hundred years to spread from Magadha as far as the frontiers of northern India. We see no reason for contesting the authenticity of a tradition in itself so probable.