The Assyrian discoveries are also most important in supplying data which enable us to understand what follows, especially in the architectural history of Greece. No one now probably doubts that the Dorian Greeks borrowed the idea of their Doric order from the pillars of Beni-Hasan (Woodcuts Nos. 15 and 16) or Nubia—or rather perhaps from the rubble or brick piers of Memphis or Naucratis,[65] from which these rock-cut examples were themselves imitated. But the origin of the Ionic element was always a mystery. We knew indeed that the Greeks practised it principally in Asia Minor—hence its name; but we never knew how essentially Asiatic it was till the architecture of Nineveh was revealed to us, and till, by studying it through the medium of the buildings at Persepolis, we were made to feel how completely the Ionic order was a Grecian refinement on the wooden and somewhat Barbaric orders of the Euphrates valley. It is equally, or perhaps almost more, important to know that in Chaldea we are able to trace the origin of those Buddhist styles of art which afterwards pervaded the whole of Eastern Asia, and it may be also the germs of the architecture of Southern India.[66] These affinities, however, have not yet been worked out, hardly even hinted at; but they certainly will one day become most important in tracing the origin of the religious development of the further East. In these researches neither the literature nor the language of the country avail us much. If the affinities are ever traced, it will be through the architecture, and that alone; but there is every prospect of its proving sufficient for the purpose when properly explored.