The Fasting Buddha

Princely figures of the Buddha-to-be, with moustaches, turbans, jewels and sandals, modelled on the Kushan nobles of Gandhara.

In 1985 excavators at Sanghol, between Ludhiana and Chandigarh, found 117 carved pillars and railing pieces of a Kushan-era Buddhist stupa, buried as if hidden: women beneath flowering trees, lovers, drinkers and dancers.

A hilltop monastery near Taxila whose stupas are ringed with rows of seated Buddhas modelled in stucco, many still in place.

A small stupa from Sikri, near Mardan, set up again in the Lahore Museum, its drum carved with thirteen panels of the life of the Buddha.

A gilded reliquary found in 1908–09 in the ruins of Kanishka's great stupa at Shah-ji-ki-Dheri outside Peshawar. On its lid the Buddha sits between the gods Brahma and Indra; on its side stands a Kushan king, probably Kanishka himself.

One of Ashoka's inscribed pillars, carved with his edicts in Brahmi. Firuz Shah Tughlaq had it carried from Topra to Delhi in 1356 on a cart said to have had forty-two wheels; its script was finally read by James Prinsep in 1837.