Although, therefore, we are probably safe in asserting that none of the Gandhara topes date before the Christian Era, it is not because there is any inherent, _à priori_ improbability that they should date before Kanishka, as there is that those of India Proper cannot extend beyond Asoka. There is no trace of wooden construction here. All is stone and all complete, and copied probably from Bactrian originals that may have existed two centuries earlier. Their dates depend principally on the coins, which are almost invariably found deposited with the relics, in these topes. No coins so far as I know have been found in any Indian tope. They are found in hundreds in these north-western ones, and always fix a date beyond which the tope cannot be carried back, and generally enable us to approximate very nearly to the true date of the monument in question. If those of Kanishka are the earliest, which appears to be the case, the great one which he commenced, at Manikyala, is probably also the last to be finished in its present form, inasmuch as below 12 ft. of solid masonry, a coin of Yasoverma of Canouge was found, and his date cannot be carried back beyond A.D. 720. Between these dates, therefore, must be ranged the whole of this great group of Buddhist monuments. There probably were no great Buddhist establishments in Gandhara before Kanishka, and as few, if any, after Yasoverma, yet we learn that between these dates this province was as essentially Buddhist as any part of India. Fa Hian tells us, emphatically, that the law of Buddha is universally honoured, and enumerates 500 monasteries,[97] and Hiouen Thsang makes no complaint of heretics, while both dilate in ecstasies on the wealth of relics everywhere displayed. Part of the skull, teeth, garments, staffs, pots of Buddha--impressions of his feet, even his shadow--was to be seen in this favoured district, which was besides sanctified by many actions which had been commemorated by towers erected on the spot where these meritorious acts were performed. Many of these spots have been identified, and more will no doubt reward the industry of future investigators, but meanwhile enough is known to render this province one of the most interesting of all India for the study of the traditions or art of Mediæval Buddhism.