Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c8.78

c8.78

Seventy miles north of Maheshwar, beside the Sipra river, stands the classic site of Ujjain, one of the seven sacred cities of India, rival even to Banaras in Hindu esteem.⁸⁰ In the semi-history of the period, Ujjain was the capital of the kingdom of Avanti, known later as Mālwā, but the excavations in progress at the time of writing under the skilled direction of Mr. N. R. Banerjee have not yet clearly identified any corresponding 7th-century occupation. At present it would appear that, as a developed city, Ujjain began substantially with the impact of an iron-using culture of Gangetic type about 500 B.C., when an area a mile long and three-quarters of a mile wide was enclosed by a great clay rampart with a basal width of 200 feet and a surviving height of forty-two feet. The rampart was reinforced against the flow of the river by transverse barriers of Fig. 31 Chalcedony microliths of the Chalcolithic phase: 1-5, from Nāvdā Ṭoli; 6-9, from Jorwe; 10-11, from Pravarā Saṅgam; 12-13, from Nāśik. ⅖ interlocked timbers vaguely recalling the timber-work of the riverine site of Pāṭaliputra (below, p. 176), and was subsequently revetted in part with baked brick. Outside it, where necessary, was a ditch eighty feet wide and twenty-two feet deep. On the trunk-route from the Ganges to the Arabian Sea, the fortress town of Ujjain was clearly a power to be reckoned with during the last five centuries B.C. In later epochs, changing circumstance and, in particular perhaps, the development of sea-traffic, robbed it of some of its arterial importance, but the ancient site remains a formidable ruin.