Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/119

 CHAP. III. GANDHARA TOPES. (p. 322), "were selected from the prevailing currency, which was not of any remotely previous issue ; " " while the Graeco-Baktrian coins had long ceased to be current, though they had not, perhaps, become so scarce as to be enshrined as rarities " (p. 44). Under these circumstances, Professor Wilson arrives at the con- clusion that the topes " are undoubtedly all subsequent to the Christian Era" (p. 322). It is true that some of the kings whose coins are found in the topes, such as Hermaeus, Azes, and others, probably lived prior to that epoch, but none of their coins show a trace of Buddhism. With Kanishka, how- ever, all this is altered. He is represented as a Buddhist, beyond all doubt ; he held the convocation, called the third by the northern Buddhists the fourth according to the southern at which Nagarjuna was apparently the presiding genius. From about that time the Tibetans, Burmese, and Chinese date the first introduction of Buddhism into their countries ; not, however, the old simple Buddhism, known as the Hinayana, which prevailed before, but the corrupt Mahayana, which, as a new revelation, Ndgarjuna spread from Peshawar over the whole of central and eastern Asia. It was precisely analogous to the revolution that took place in the Christian Church, about the same time after the death of its founder. Six hundred years after Christ, Gregory the Great established the hierarchical Roman Catholic system, in supersession of the simpler primitive forms. In the fifth century after the Nirvana, Nagarjuna intro- duced the complicated ritualistic and idolatrous Mahayana, 1 though, as we learn from the Chinese Pilgrims, a minority still adhered in after times to the lesser vehicule or Hinayana system. Although, therefore, we are probably safe in asserting that none of the Gandhara stupas date much before the Christian Era, it is not because there is any inherent, d priori improbability that they should date before Kanishka, as there is that those of India Proper cannot extend beyond A^oka. There is no trace of wooden construction here : all is stone and all complete, and copied probably from originals that may have existed two centuries earlier. Their dates depend principally on the coins, which are almost invariably found deposited with the relics, in these topes. Coins have rarely been found in any Indian tope. 2 They are found in hundreds in these north-western ones, and always fix a date beyond which the tope cannot be carried back, and generally enable us to approximate to the true date of the monument in 1 Vassilief, ' Le Bouddhisme, ses Dogmes,' etc., Paris, 1865, p. 31, et passim. 2 A silver coin of one of the Andhra kings, belonging to the 2nd century A. D., was found in the Sopara stupa.