THE TRAMP OF CENTURIES 13

control, his love of country, and his wonderful powers of
-endurance " f have been remarked upon by many writers
from Davies downwards. But how many people in the
West are fully conversant with the leading part which
this province has played in the Indian struggle for
independence, or with the great movement of non-
violence that grew up in it in the twenties and
proved that the doughty Pathan, the matchless guer-
rilla fighter, " the best umpire in mountain warfare",
famed in history for his martial valour, physical stamina,
unrivalled marksmanship and skill in the use of arms, is
also capable of holding the place of honour in the order
of the " terrible meek " and excelling in the bravery of
the non-violent variety which disdains the use of any
other weapon except that of the spirit and against which
earthly weapons cannot prevail ?

Rich in the associations of India's long history, the
North-West Frontier Province is strewn with imperish-
able Asokan monuments which bear witness to the glory
which was Buddhism and which once flourished there in
its full splendour. Peshawar was the capital . of
Kanishka's Buddhist Empire which extended from the
Vindhyas to Central Asia. To Taxila, the " biggest
University in the East" in its time, pilgrims and students
from the Far East and the West came in quest of piety
and learning. Later when the famous Nalanda Uni-
versity was founded in Bihar in the 4th century A. D.,
most of the students there were from this part of the Bud-
dhist domain which became the meeting place of three
great cultures — the Indian, the Chinese and the Graeco-
Roman. It was across these Frontier tracts that India
sent her message of art and religion to the Far East.

The earliest glimpse that we have of the region
known today as the N. W. F. Province is in connection
with the great Aryan immigration into India across the
snow-clad Hindu Kush which, starting from the river
Oxus towards the valley of Herat,, fanned out through

- Collin Davies: The Problem of the North-West Frontier, p. 48.