hed a high state of development by the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. Surviving decorations in the fortified manorhouse of Teshik Kala display the palmette, rosette, lotus, and ace-of-spade motifs that the Seljuqs (Seljuq) later carried westward to Anatolia and beyond in the 11th and 12th centuries.The most Hellenized of these states in western Turkistan and Afghanistan was Bactria. Its fine coinage, for example, was distinctly Hellenistic in style, and Bactrian silversmiths were often influenced as much by Roman as Greek Hellenistic metalwork. Alexander the Great annexed Kābul to Bactria and founded Alexandria-Kapisu, a city astride the Indian caravan route, to serve as the province's capital. The multiracialism of Kapisu's population is reflected in the origins of the objects found there. Imports included articles from India, China, and the Greco-Roman world, especially from Syria. Artistic conventions characteristic of all these countries blended with the local Central Asian ones, with the Indian conventions predominating, to create Bactria's own distinctive style in sculpture, whether in alabaster, stone, ivory, or wood. Its mural paintings are wholly Buddhist in content, but they often contain features that link them to Fundukistan in India and the Sāsānian Persian world.The decorative arts were highly developed in Bactria. Many of their sun-dried-brick houses were large enough to include several reception rooms, which contained many luxurious decorative objects.Potters (pottery) remained attached to animal forms derived from nomadic art. The large production of votive statuettes, especially representations of Anahita and Syavush, may be partly attributed to the belief that Zoroaster was born in Balkh. This tradition was also evident at Merv until the Arab invasion of Central Asia. The Bactrians mastered the technique of working metals at an early date. A 4th-century-BC lion-griffin (British Museum) in cast bronze is descended from a Scytho-Altaic prototype, and so, too, is a pair of slightly earlier gold armlets (armlet) (British Museum), embellished with inlay, from the Oxus Treasure. A series of silver dishes (State Hermitage Museum) from the end of the 1st millennium BC are, on the other hand, decorated with scenes from the tragedies of the Greek dramatist Euripides and Greco-Roman mythology rendered in a Hellenized style. Other silver dishes employ Indian motifs such as elephants. By the 8th century these diverse ornamental motifs had fused, as on a silver-gilt bowl (State Hermitage Museum) dated from the 5th to 8th century AD, into a Kushān style that may well have provided the basis for Persia's later Rey figural pottery style.KushānThe Kushāns replaced the Greeks in Bactria about 130 BC. They are thought to have been of Yüeh-chih stock with a strong admixture of Hephthalites, Śaka, and Tocharian. One branch of this group migrated to the Tarim Basin and founded a short-lived empire, while the other, under the name of Kushān, gained control of Central Asia. Capturing a section of the great trade route leading from India and China to the west, the Kushāns derived much of their revenue from the transit dues they exacted from the caravans crossing their territory, which often were carrying supplies of Chinese gold, silver, and nickel from the Tarim oasis towns to the Seleucid Persians. About 106 BC the first caravan to carry silk from China direct to Persia passed through territory that had belonged to the Seleucids but was now divided between the Kushāns and Parthians.Kushān art reached its fullest development in the 2nd century AD, when the great king Kaniṣka (Kaniska) is believed to have reigned. A magnificent, almost life-size, now headless sculpture of Kaniṣka (Archaeological Museum, Mathurā) shows him wearing an elegant version of nomadic dress. His kingdom extended from Central Asia to include Gandhāra and Mathurā, where the Seleucids had so firmly established Hellenistic art that Western influence continued to maintain its hold even in the reign of the first members of India's Gupta dynasty. When Mahāyāna Budd