Page:A History of Civilisation in Ancient India based on Sanscrit Literature Vol 1.djvu/64

16 Greek civilisation and knowledge, and had varied fortunes in different parts of India for centuries after. They are said to have penetrated as far as Orissa. The Turanians of the Yu-Chi tribe next invaded India, and gave a powerful dynasty to Kashmîra ; and Kanishka the Yu-Chi king of Kashmîra had an extensive empire in the first century A.D., which stretched from Kabul and Kashgar and Yarkand to Guzrat and Agra. He was a Buddhist, and held a great council of the Northern Buddhists in Kashmîra. The Cambojians and other tribes of Kabul then poured into India, and were in their turn followed by the locust-hordes of the Huns, who spread over Western India in the fifth century A.D. India had no rest from foreign invasions for several centuries after the time of Asoka the Great ; but the invaders, as they finally settled down in India, adopted the Buddhist religion, and formed a part of the people.

Buddhism gradually declined during the centuries after the Christian Era, much in the same way as the Hinduism of the Rig Veda had gradually declined in the Epic Period when the Hindus had settled down in the Gangetic valley. Buddhist monks formed a vast and unmanageable body of priesthood, owning vast acres of land attached to each monastery, and depending on the resources of the people; and Buddhist ceremonials and forms bordered more and more on Buddha-worship and idolatry. Many of these forms and ceremonials, which were dear to the common people, were adopted by the Hinduism of the day, and thus a new form of Hinduism asserted itself by the sixth century after Christ. An effete form of Buddhism lingered on for some centuries in some parts of India after this, until it was stamped out by the Mahomedan conquerors of India.

We find an uninterrupted series of Buddhist rock-cut caves, chaityas or churches, and viharas or monasteries, all over India, dating from the time of Asoka to the fifth century A.D.; but there are scarcely