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 KANISHKA 123

Northern Canon or “Greater Vehicle of the Law.’ In his time, too, there lived at a site which is still traceable at Harwan, nestling under the higher mountains at the entrance of one of the attractive side-valleys of Kashmir, and overlooking the placid waters of the Dal Lake, a famous Bodhisattva, Nagarjuna, who from this peaceful retreat exer- cised a spiritual lordship over the land.

Buddhism was, in fact, at the zenith of its power in Kashmir. But a reaction against it was soon to follow, and from this time onward the orthodox Brahministic Hinduism, from which Buddhism was a revolt, reasserted itself, and Buddhism steadily waned. When the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hiuen Tsiang visited Kashmir, about a.p. 631, he said, “This kingdom jfnot much given to the faith, and the temples of the heretics are their, sole thought.”

Passing now over a period of six centuries, the only authentically recorded event in which is the reign, A.D. 515, of Mihirakula, the “White Hun,” a persecutor of the Buddhist faith, “a man of violent acts and resembling Death,” whose approach the people knew “by noticing the vultures, crows, and other birds which were flying ahead eager to


 * feed on those who were to be slain,” and who