Of the various invasions which have occurred some have left traces in the architecture of India. None of these are more interesting than certain semi-Greek forms which are met with in the Northern Provinces, and which without doubt are referable to the influence of the invasion under Alexander the Great. A far more conspicuous and widespread series of changes followed in the wake of the Mohammedan invasions. We shall have an opportunity later on of recurring to this subject,[8] but it is one to which attention should be called at this early stage, lest it should be thought that a large and splendid part of Indian architecture had been overlooked. [Illustration: FIG. 44.--BRACKET CAPITAL.] [Illustration: FIG. 45.--COLUMN FROM AJUNTA.] [Illustration: FIG. 46.--COLUMN FROM ELLORA.] [Illustration: FIG. 47.--COLUMN FROM AJUNTA.] _Chinese and Japanese Architecture._ Although the Chinese have existed as a nation, continuously for between two and three thousand years, if not longer, and at a very early period had arrived at a high state of artistic and scientific cultivation, yet none of their buildings with which we are acquainted has any claim on our attention because of its antiquity. Several reasons may be assigned for this, the principal being that the Chinese seem to be as a race singularly unsusceptible to all emotions. Although they reverence their dead ancestors, yet this reverence never led them, as did that of the Egyptians, Etruscans, and other nations, to a lavish expenditure of labour or materials, to render their tombs almost as enduring as the everlasting hills. Though waves of religious zeal must have flowed over the country when Confucius inculcated his simple and practical morality and gained an influential following, and again when Buddhism was introduced and speedily became the religion of the greater portion of the people, their religious emotion never led them, as it did the Greeks and the Mediæval builders, to erect grand and lasting monuments of sacred art. When most of the Western nations were still barbarians, the Chinese had attained a settled system of government, and were acquainted with numerous scientific truths which we have prided ourselves on rediscovering within the last two centuries; but no thought ever seems to have occurred to them, as it did to the Romans, of commemorating any event connected with their life as a nation, or of handing down to posterity a record of their great achievements. Peaceful and prosperous, they have pursued the even tenor of their way at a high level of civilisation certainly, but at a most monotonous one.