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This monarch played a part in the later history of Buddhism comparable with that of Asoka in earlier ages . He waged war with the Parthians and Chinese, and his Empire which had its capital at Peshawar included Afghanistan, Bactria, Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan and Kashmir. The reasons of their fall are unknown but may be connected with the rise of the Sassanids in Persia.

Kachgar is an important centre of trade, which is almost entirely in Russian hands. Khotan silks, cotton, felt, woolen carpets, cloth, are the principal articles in the markets, and these are exported beyond the frontier between Tachkend and Koulja, to the north of Oriental Turkestan. Here, as the major told me, Sir Francis Trevellyan should have special cause for manifesting his ill humor.

Though they have little to do with the religion of the people, their presence explains the predominance of Indian rather than Chinese influence in these countries. Tradition says that Indian colonists settled in Khotan during the reign of Asoka, but no precise date can at present be fixed for the introduction of Buddhism into the Tarim basin and other regions commonly called Central Asia.

There all traders from India, Kashmir, and Afghanistan must halt for animals and supplies on their way to Yarkand and Khotan, and there also merchants from the mysterious city of Lhassa do a great business in brick tea and in Lhassa wares, chiefly ecclesiastical.

The feast over, the monks left Khotan for Koukonyar, and after resting there fifteen days, we find them further south in the Balistan country of the present day, a cold and mountainous district, where wheat was the only grain cultivated, and where Fa-Hian found in use the curious cylinders on which prayers are written, and which are turned by the faithful with the most extraordinary rapidity.

Then they proceeded northwards through the whole of Persia and northern Afghanistan, and along the Amu-darya to the Pamir, following routes which had to wait 600 years for new travellers from Europe. Past Yarkand, Khotan, and Lop-nor, and through the whole of the Gobi desert, they finally made their way to China.

Far to the north of this complex of lines of trade lay a third route between the far East and the West, extending from the inland provinces of China westward across the great desert of Obi, south of the Celestial mountains to Lake Lop; then passing through a series of ancient cities, Khotan, Yarkand, Kashgar, Samarcand, and Bokhara, till it finally reached the region of the Caspian Sea.

"... This girl has lived close enough to the source of history to know what PROPAGANDA is.... Still, I like her uncomplaining buoyancy of spirits in the trial we are going through.... We are headed SOUTH toward Kuria and Khotan, where arrangements have been made to receive us by some people who know our secret and will respect the rights of ASYLUM in a land where oblivion may mean liberty and love!..."

In the north too Nepal, Kashmir, Khotan and many other districts might at one time or another be legitimately described as conquered or tributary countries. It may indeed be justly objected that Indian literature knows nothing of Camboja and other lands where Indian buildings have been discovered and that the people of India were unconscious of having conquered them.

This does not mean that every text was translated from Indian languages; especially in the later period many works appeared which came not from India but from Sogdia or Turkestan, or had even been written in China by Sogdians or other natives of Turkestan, and were then translated into Chinese. In Turkestan, Khotan in particular became a centre of Buddhist culture.