One other argument seems to bear directly on this point. From what has been said above (_ante_, p. 76), it appears that the erection of the topes in Gandhara was spread pretty evenly over the whole time that elapsed from the Christian Era till Buddhism ceased to be the religion of the country, in the 7th or 8th century; and that the most flourishing period was about the year A.D. 400, when Fa Hian visited the country. It seems reasonable to suppose that the erection of the monasteries would follow the same course, and that we might expect their greatest development to be simultaneous. To compress the monasteries and their sculptures within the limits of the first century after Christ would seem to violate all the probabilities of the case. In addition to all this local evidence, when we come to compare these sculptures with those of the western world, especially with those of sarcophagi or the ivories of the lower empire, it seems impossible not to be struck with the many points of resemblance they present. There are many of the Gandhara bas-reliefs which, if transferred to the Lateran Museum, and labelled as “Early Christian,” would pass muster with ninety-nine people out of one hundred who visit that collection. There may be one or two that might be described as belonging to as early an age as that of Hadrian, but generally they would seem of later date. Among the ivories, those about the time of Constantine present about the same jumble of the classical orders, the same reminiscence of classical art in the figure-sculpture, mixed up with the incongruities borrowed from extraneous sources which it is difficult to account for; but both in their perfections and their faults they seem so distinctly to belong to the same class of art that it is difficult to believe they do not belong to the same age. The great difficulty here is to know what equation we ought to allow for distance in space which may have the same effect as time in producing apparent differences; but this hardly seems to have been of much importance here.