16 A PILGRIMAGE FOR PEACE
-compassion and dharma — the law, of which Greek writers
.have left us a detailed account. His edicts and inscriptions
found at Shahbazgarh and near Mansehra mention Taxila
.as one of his subordinate territories. Asoka's Frontier
policy was to maintain peaceful relations with his neigh-
bours and not to enlarge his kingdom by conquest. The
first Kalinga edict desired that " the unsubdued borderers
should not be afraid of me, that they should trust me and
.should receive from me happiness and not sorrow ".
Asoka died in 231 B.C. and with him passed away
.Buddhism as the State Church. From the middle of the
2nd century B.C. till about 135 B.C. Bactrian kings ruled
over Bactria, Kabul, Gandhar and Taxila, Next came the
Scythians called Sakas (135 B.C.) and were followed by
"the Kushans who, driven from their own mountains by
•the Huns, overran the territory held by Yavana, Saka and
Pahlavi rulers. By about 29 A.D. they were ruling in
•Taxila. The empire of Kanishka, the third of the Kushan
.Kings extended over North-West India and Kashmir with
Purushpura (Peshawar) as his capital. The Kushan kings
•continued to rule over the north-west territory up to the
time of the Hun invasion in the 5th century A.D. It next
-formed part of Harsha's empire (7th century A. D.).
The Arabs came to India about 710 A.D. and Sabuk-
tagin, the third in the order of Slave Kings of Balkh and
Ghazni accompanied by Waziri and Afridi hordes occu-
pied Peshawar and the plains west of the Indus. Mahmud
-of Ghazni's invasions followed. But Mahmud never aim-
ed at permanent conquest of India. However, all the
trans-Indus portion of the present Frontier Province was
~held in fief by him. But his brother Mohammad Ghori
of Ghazni occupied Peshawar in 1180 A.D. Thereafter
-through the period covered by the Slave, Khilji and Tugh-
lak dynasties, till the well-established reign of Akbar in
the Mughal times, these parts experienced an unrelieved
spell of chaos, misrule and anarchy, which became chronic,
varied by an occasional foreign invasion. The most nota-
ble of these was of Timur, the Tartar, who left his capital
of Samarkand in Central Asia with a vast concourse