24 PICTURES AND PEN-PICTURES

everyday life, coins, ornaments, and toys, the massive
city walls and gateway—all these demonstrate what
a fine city was this Sikrap of Taxila.

The temple of J'andial, believed to be for Zoroas"
trian worship, and a double-headed eagle—an emblem
that appears to have been known in Asia, Europe,
and India—are evidences of fche foreign influences in
Taxila that was a centre of trade which linked Asia
and India.

Of the third site, Sirsukh, even less remains than of
Bhir Mound; only sufficient has been found to desig-
nate it as the capital of the last powerful dynasty to
reign in Taxila—a capital destined to destruction at the
hands of the White Huns in the fifth century. To
Sirsukh must have come the first of fche many Chinese
pilgrims who have left a record of their journeys into
Buddha-land. Two centuries after its annihilation, the
pilgrim-scholar, Yuan-chwang, found only a few dilapida-
ted monasteries and some stupas "where miracles still
took place.

The heyday of Sirsukh was probably^ too, the
heyday of fche magnificent monasteries, now in ruins, in
which the Haro Valley is so fascinatingly rich. Prom
the dry, bare heights of the Hathial Hills, the monks
in the monasteries of MoJira Moradu and Jazilian
perhaps watched with sublime detachment the worldly
activities of fche city in the valley below; with mystical
contentment they must have gone back to meditation in
the well-built cells, or to their precious manuscripts, or
to the completion of some stono representation of the
Buddha. Some of these images, now mutilated, still sit
and seem to meditate,