Gandhara country, in which it subsequently took root, must have created a great demand for the Indian builder in all the great cities of Asia.
Following upon this widespread and age-long diffusion of Indian building traditions throughout the Buddhist world came a demand of a similar character from another quarter which regarded Buddhist religious doctrine as anathema, but had no less need for the services of the Indian craftsman. In a.d. 712, or ninety years after the Hegira, Islam established direct control with India through the Arab conquest of Sind, which remained a province of the khalifate until it became an independent Musalman State. It is known that Indian pandits and physicians were employed at the Baghdad court; and it must be inferred that the demand for Indian builders was not less great, for long afterwards the war-lords of Islam, who butchered Brahman and Buddhist monks wholesale, made a point of sparing the lives of the skilled Indian craftsman. Mahmūd of Ghaznī, amazed at the magnificence of the Indian temples he looted, carried off thousands of their craftsmen to build for him at Ghaznī, and set up there a slave market of Indian women and craftsmen to supply the harems and workshops of Muhammadan Asia. This method of recruiting for their public works service was continued by many other Musalman monarchs.
It is necessary to take all these historical facts into consideration in order to follow the evolution of the schools of architecture classed by Fergusson as "Indo-Saracenic." The latter were in all cases directly derived from the local schools of Hindu or Buddhist building which preceded them. The earliest archæologically styled Pathān, which was established by the court builders of the first Sultan of Delhi, and
