Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/117

 CHAP. III. GANDHARA TOPES. or in its neighbourhood, together with those discovered in Swat and on the north-west frontier within the last twenty-five years, and it is certain that numbers still exist undescribed, making altogether quite a hundred stupas in this province. Notwithstanding this wealth of examples, we miss one, which was probably the finest of all. When Fah Hian passed through the province in A.D. 400, he describes the dagaba which King Kanishka had erected at Peshawar as " more than 470 ft. in height, and decorated with every sort of precious substance, so that all who passed by, and saw the exquisite beauty and graceful proportions of the tower and the temple attached to it, exclaimed in delight that it was incomparable for beauty " ; and he adds, " Tradition says this was the highest tower in Jambudwipa." l When Hiuen Tsiang passed that way more than 200 years afterwards, he reports the tower as having been 400 ft. high, but it was then ruined " the part that remained, a li and a half in circumference (1000 feet) and 1 50 ft. high " ; and he adds, in twenty-five stages of the tower there were a "ho" 10 pecks of relics of Buddha. 2 No trace of this monument now exists. These north-western stupas are so important for our history, and all have so much that is common among them, and are distinguished by so many characteristics from those of India Proper, that it would be extremely convenient if we could find some term which would describe them without involving either a theory or a geographical error. The term Afghanistan topes, by which they have been designated, is too modern, and has the defect of not including Peshawar and the western Panjab. " Ariana," as defined by Professor Wilson, describes very nearly the correct limits of the province ; for, though it includes Baktria and the valley of the Upper Oxus, where no topes have yet been found, we know from the Chinese Pilgrims that in the 5th and 7th centuries these countries, as far as Khotan, were intensely Buddhist, and monuments exist there, and have recently been found in Khotan both by Dr. Sven Hedin and by Dr. M. A. Stein. 3 The name, however, has of late almost disappeared in favour of Gandhara the early Indian name of the eastern portion of the district under notice. When the Sanskrit-speaking races first broke up from their original settlements in the valley of the Oxus, they passed through the valley of the Kabul river on their way to India, 1 Beal's ' Fah-Hian,' p. 35 ; ' Buddhist Records,' vol. i., introd. p. xxxii. 2 ' Vie et Voyages de Hiouen Thsang,' torn. i. p. 8-) ; Beal, ' Life of Hiuen Tsiang,' p. 63. 3 Stein's ' Archjeological Exploration in Chinese Turkistan ' (1901); 'Sand- buried Ruins of Khotan' (1903); and 'Ancient Khotan,' 2 vols. (4to), 1907.