Madhura, now spelled Mathura, was a small city on the western edge of the Middle Land. The Buddha visited this place once but was unimpressed by it, saying that he found it dusty, full of stray dogs and its people reluctant to give food when he went for alms round (A.III,256). Sometime after the Buddha's passing the monk Mahà Kaccàna had a discussion with the king of Madhura on the subject of caste (M.II,83). By the 1st century BCE Madhura had become a major centre of Buddhism and it remained as such up to the 8th century CE when Buddhism in India began to decline. Over the last 150 years archaeologists digging in and around the city have found the ruins of numerous Buddhist temples and monasteries and have unearthed examples of some of the earliest Buddhist art. Madhura is about 100 kilometers south of Delhi and is the furthest west the Buddha went which can still be identified.