Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/120

92 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY laments the drain of imperial gold for the silks and ivory and gems of the East. The finding of many obviously Greek relics, such as a Silenus, and Heracles with the Nem?ean lion, at Mathura, would seem to indicate that the older trade-routes had come in by sea, and ended at that city, in the interior of the country, on the river Jumna. But the roads that ended in Gandhara, and brought the influences of classical Europe to bear on Buddhism there, were certainly those which connected it with the old Byzantium and with Rome. Greek art may have spoken at Mathura, but certainly nothing better than the Graeco-Roman ever made itself felt in the north-west. All this represents facts which will be acknowledged. The argument that the artistic capacities of the Gandharan region in the time of the Roman Empire were the result of a certain ethnic strain, due to Alexander and the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom which succeeded him, is not of a character to be taken very seriously. Garrisons of occupation are not usually accompanied by the representative genius of their home-countries in such force and numbers as to act with this spiritual intensity on strange populations, partly through personal contacts and partly through mixing of blood ! We may compare the assumed achievement with what has been accomplished by modern peoples, under similar circumstances and with vastly superior advantages, if we wish to bring the proposition to its own reductio ad absurdum. But in fact it need not be approached so gravely.