189
at 60 . But that which is considered the most valuable of all, is known as microsphaerum, and consists of the very smallest of the leaves; it sells at 75 denarii per pound. All these varieties of nard have an agreeable odor, but it is most powerful when fresh. If the nard is old when gathered that which is of a black color is considered the best.”
Pliny observes that leaf nard, or spikenard, held the first place in Rome among the ointments of his day. Compare Mark XIV, 3-5, which tells of the “alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very pre- cious,” valued at more than 300 denarii.
See under § 24: also, for further references, Lassen, I, 288-9.
48. Caspapyra. — This is the Greek form of the Sanscrit Kasyapapura, “city of the Kasyapa.” The same word survives in the modern Kashmir, which is from the Sanscrit Kasyapamata (pro- nounced pamara), and meaning “home of the Kasyapa” (one of the ‘previous Buddhas.’) According to the division of the Greek geog- raphers, Gandhara was the country below Cabul, while Kasyapamata was the adjoining district in India proper. (See Lassen, I, 142; II, 631.)
It was from a town named Caspapyra, that Scylax of Caryanda began his voyage of discovery at the command of the Persian king Darius. The story is given by Herodotus (IV, 44). He refers to the place as being “in the Pactyan land,” and Hecataeus calls it “a city of the Gandaraeans.” It could not have been far above the modern Attock (33° 53‘ N. , 72° 15’ E. ). Vincent Smith ( Early History, 32) doubts the connection of the name with Kashmir; but while outside the present limits of that district, it is not impossible that its earlier extension was wider. The fact that the Periplus dis- tinguishes it from Gandhara points in that direction.
48. Paropanisus was the name given the mountain-range now called Hindu Kush. It was made the boundary between the empire of Seleucus, Alexander’s successor, and that of Chandragupta Maurya, by a treaty ratified in 303 B. C. ; by which the newly-estab- lished Indian empire received the provinces of the Paropanisadae, Aria, Arachosia and Gedrosia. “The first Indian emperor, more than two thousand years ago, thus entered into possession of ‘that scientific frontier’ sighed for in vain by his English successors, and never held in its entirety even by the Mogul monarchs of the 16th and 17th centuries.” (Vincent Smith, Early History, 113; also 132-4; Strabo, XV, i, 10 and ii, 9; Plutarch, Alexander, lxii; Justin, XV, 4; Pliny, VI, 20; Arrian, Anabasis, V, 5; Indica, II. See also Holdich, Gates of India. )
