Page:Chinese Religion through Hindu Eyes.djvu/199

Rh freshness of their blood and strength of their physique to the subject races. The "Barbarians" of Central Asia were thus vandals in no sense. Modern Hindus, modern Chinese, as well as modern Europeans, owe much of their ancient culture and present vitality to intercourse with these hardy races.

By the middle of the second century B.C., a branch of the Tartar race, the Yuechi, was already on the move towards the hinterland of Northern and North-western India. There were no strong rulers either among Hindus or among the peoples of the neighbouring Hellenistic Kingdoms. The only powerful monarchy of the time was that of the Hans of China. The Yuechis, therefore, had smooth-sailing through the Indo-Bactrian and Indo-Parthian territories and also the regions now called the North-western Frontier Province of India.

By the first century A. D., i.e., about the time of the founding of the Roman Empire, we hear of a first-class Hindu-Tartar (Kushan) Power under Kanishka (A.D. 78-123?) with his capital at Purushapura (modern Peshawar). Kanishka was the patron of the celebrated Congress (A.D. 100?) of Hindu philosophers and metaphysicians under Vasumitra and Aswaghosha, to which tradition ascribes the first formulation of Mahâyânism. Just as the Nirvânism of Sâkyasimha had been brought into being and nurtured under more or less non-Aryan conditions of life in Eastern India, so Mahâyânism formally came into existence in Gândhâra in an atmosphere of newly Hinduised foreigners under the patronage of a monarch whose territory was situated within the westernmost confines of India and beyond. It must be