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Sakyamuni’ s greatest disciples. Here was a Buddhist monastery known as the Southern Mount, while it was the principal stage on the route from the Deccan to Sravasti, then the capital of the great kingdom of Kosala. Here also in his younger days Asoka, later emperor, and the greatest patron of Buddhism, was stationed as viceroy of the western provinces of the Maurya Empire. This was the custom also in several subsequent dynasties, on both sides of the Vindhyas, for the heir-apparent to act as viceroy in the western provinces.
Ujjeni was the Greenwich of India, the first meridian of longi- tude of its geographers. By its location it was a trade center for all produce imported at Barygaza, whence distribution was made to the Ganges kingdoms. At the time of the Periplus it was no longer a capital, the royal seat being at “Minnagara.” The Maurya empire had broken up, and in the anarchy following the irruptions in the northwest, its western provinces of Surashtra and Malwa had been raided by Saka freebooters, who finally established themselves in power as the “Western Satraps, ” or Kshatrapa dynasty. For a generation or so before the formal proclamation of the dynasty the invaders’ stronghold was their capital. After their claims were recognized they probably ruled from Ujjeni, which Ptolemy describes as the capital of Tiastenos or Chashtana, the Kshatrapa ruler of his time. It re- mained, apparently, in Saka hands until about the 5th century A. D., when it reverted to Brahman power under the Gupta Empire; this expulsion of the “misbelieving foreigners” giving rise to the tradition of Vikramaditya of Ujjain, the King Arthur of India, at whose court the “nine gems,” the brightest geniuses of India, were supposed to have flourished.
(See Imperial Gazetteer, VIII, 279-280; XXIV, 112-114; Las- sen, I, 116.')
48. Spikenard : Nardostachys jatamansi, order Valerianacea: . A perennial herb of the alpine Himalaya, which extends eastward from Garhwal and ascends to 17,000 feet in Sikkim. “The drug consists of a portion of the rhizome, about as thick as the little finger, sur- mounted by a bundle of reddish-brown fibers, the remains of the radical leaves. It is aromatic and bitter, and yields on distillation an essential oil. In India it is largely used as an aromatic adjunct in the preparation of medicinal oils, and is popularly believed to increase the growth and blackness of the hair.” (Watt, op. cit., 792.)
According to Pliny (XII, 26), “Leaf nard varies in price accord- ing to the size; for that which is known by the name of hadrosphae- rum, consisting of the larger leaves, sells at 40 denarii per pound. When the leaves are smaller, it is called mesosphaerum, and is sold
