f the total population
of the globe.

As with most of the great rulers and conquerors that India has from time
to time thrown up, Asoka's life-work fell to pieces almost as soon as he
had passed away. Not only did the temporal empire which he built up
disintegrate rapidly in the hands of his feeble successors, but Buddhism
itself was dethroned within fifty years with the last of his dynasty,
slain by the usurper Pushyamitra Sunga, who, after consecrating himself
to the Hindu gods with the rites of _Rajasuya_, celebrated his advent to
Paramount Power by reviving the ancient ceremony of _Asvamedha_, the
Sacrifice of the Horse--one of the most characteristic of Brahmanical
rites.

It was not till after another great conquering inflow from Central Asia
in the first century of our era that Kanishka, the greatest of a new
dynasty which had set itself up at Purushpura, situated close to the
modern Peshawar, shed a transient gleam of glory over the decline of
Buddhism and even restored it to the position of a state religion. But
it was a Buddhism already far removed from the purity of Asoka's reign.
The most striking feature of this short-lived revival is the artistic
inspiration which it derived from Hellenistic sources, of which the
museums of Peshawar and Lahore contain so many remarkable illustrations.
The theory, at one time very widely entertained, that Alexander's brief
incursion into India left any permanent mark on Indian civilisation is
now entirely discarded by the best authorities. No Indian author makes
even the faintest allusion to him, nor is there any trace of Hellenic
influence in the evolution of Indian society, or in the elaborate
institutions with which India was endowed by the Mauryan dynasty that
followed immediately on the disruption of Alexander's empire. But the
Kushans, or Yueh Chis, during the various stages of their slow migration
down into Northern India, came into long and close contact with the
Indo-Bactrian and Indo-Parthian kingdoms that sprang up after Alexander.
The populations were never Hellenised, but their rulers were to some
extent the heirs, albeit hybrid heirs, to Greek civilisation. They spoke
Greek and worshipped at Greek shrines, and as they were in turn
subjugated by the forebears of the Kushan Empire, they imparted to the
conquerors something of their own Greek veneer. In the second century of
our era Kanishka carried his victorious arms down to the Gangetic plain,
where Buddhism