It is not clear whether Kanishka was or was not the first Buddhist king of this country; but, so far as is at present known, he seems to have done for Buddhism in Gandhara exactly what Asoka did for that religion in central India. He elevated it from its position as a struggling sect to that of being the religion of the State. We know, however, that Asoka himself sent missionaries to this country;[93] and, more than this, that he engraved a complete set of his edicts on a rock at Kapurdigiri, 30 miles north-east from Peshawur, but we do not know what success they or he attained. Certain it is, as Professor Wilson remarks, that “no coin of a Greek prince of Bactria has ever been met with in any tope.”[94] The local coins that are found in them all belong to dynasties subsequent to the destruction of the Bactrian kingdom, and, according to the same authority (p. 322), “were selected from the prevailing currency, which was not of any remotely previous issue;” “while the Greek Bactrian coins had long ceased to be current, though they had not, perhaps, become so scarce as to be enshrined as rarities” (p. 44). Under these circumstances, Professor Wilson arrives at the conclusion that the topes “are undoubtedly all subsequent to the Christian Era” (p. 322). It is true that some of the kings whose coins are found in the topes, such as Hermæus, Azes, Kadphises, and others, may have lived prior to that epoch, but none of their coins show a trace of Buddhism. On those of the last-named king, it is also true that we find the trisul emblem of the Buddhists on the reverse, but it is coupled with the bull and trident of Siva in so remarkable a manner that it can hardly be doubted that the monarch was a follower of the Hindu religion, though acknowledging the presence of Buddhism in his realm.[95] With Kanishka, however, all this is altered. He was a Buddhist, beyond all doubt; he held the convocation called the third by the northern Buddhists--the fourth according to the southern--at which Nagárjuna was apparently the presiding genius. From that time the Thibetans, Burmese, and Chinese date the introduction of Buddhism into their countries: not, however, the old simple Buddhism, known as the Hinayana, which prevailed before, but the corrupt Mahayana, which was fabled to have been preserved by the Nagas from the time of Buddha’s death, and from whom Nagárjuna received it, and spread it from Peshawur over the whole of northern and eastern Asia. It was precisely the same revolution that took place in the Christian Church, about the same time after the death of its founder. Six hundred years after Christ, Gregory the Great established the hierarchical Roman Catholic system, in supersession of the simpler primitive forms. Six hundred years after the Nirvana, Nagárjuna introduced the complicated and idolatrous Mahayna,[96] though, as we learn from the Chinese Pilgrims, a small minority still adhered in after times to the lesser vehicule, or Hinayana system.