Studies in Indian Art c8.s1.t1: Town Planning and Architecture
Studies in Indian Art c8.s1.t1
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Town Planning and Architecture
c8.s1.t1.1
Harappa and Mohenjodaro are brick-built capital cities with rampart walls and gateways. The explored remains at both places demonstrate the acropolis to be a parallelogram of 400—500 yds. north-south by 200—300 yds. east-west. The remarkable thing is the defence wall, 45 ft. wide at Harappa tapering upwards and built of mud bricks with a revetment of baked bricks 4 ft. wide on the outside. The rampart wall had gateways of which the one on the west was explored revealing a re-entrant side and a system of guard-rooms. The wall was punctuated at frequent intervals by bastions or towers projecting in some cases higher than the wall. In the description of the planning of historical towns the defence wall appears as a regular feature raised on wide foundations (वप्रस्योपरि प्राकारम्) and both mud-brick ramparts (पांसु प्राकार) and baked brick walls (इष्टका प्राकार) are mentioned. The later texts also make mention of a surrounding moat (परिखा) but the excavations at Harappa and Mohenjodaro have not yet reported the presence of such an important feature, which seems to have been absent owing to the proximity of the rivers.
c8.s1.t1.2
The town inside the citadel was divided by broad streets into a grid system of which the regularity is amazing and found nowhere else in the ancient world, for example at Ur where the streets are winding like village lanes. The streets in the Indus Valley cut at right angles running east-west and north-south dividing the city into blocks. A very noteworthy feature is that this regularity of plan conceived at the outset was maintained with great fidelity even later, which shows that a civic authority enforced strictly its building laws and that the people on their part seem to have offered willing obedience to both town-planning and municipal sanitation. There were no encroachments on public roads by the builders of houses and subsequent structures were raised on earlier foundations well observing the original alignment. This entracts admiration at least for the early settlers who were more prosperous, better organised and more mindful of the laws than those who came later.
c8.s1.t1.3
The main street at Mohenjodaro cleared over half a mile is 33 ft. wide permitting several rows of wheeled carriages to pass up and by down. It is intersected by some similar broad streets, dividing the city into blocks, and by roads nine to twelve feet in width, and these again by lanes and alleys four feet upwards. None of the streets was paved with bricks. The height of brick-built walls as preserved along the streets is about eighteen feet whereas in the lanes it is upto twenty-five feet since the houses there are better preserved. The houses in the blocks were compactly built with common walls but sometimes two houses were separated by small intervening spaces about a foot wide. The entrance to the houses was generally placed in the lanes to ensure security and privacy. Many houses were two-storied, to accommodate an over-crowded population, the upper storey being reached mostly by a staircase in the courtyard, but sometimes also straight from the street. The walls are plain without any recessing, jambs or decoration. Windows are rare, only a few alabaster and pottery grills being found. Lime-stone although plentiful in the Sukkur quarries is used rarely. An average house measured 27' to 30' and a large one double this size. The ceiling was supported most likely on wooden rafters for which square and round holes were provided in the walls at proper height. The roof consisted of a rush mat below and a layer of rammed clay above. Rain water passed through pottery drains opening on the streets. Doors to the houses ordinarily measure 3'4" in width with about double the height which were closed with shutters; but larger doors upto 7'10" width also exist. The columns were built of bricks and were either square or rectangular in section; only in one case it was tapering. But no round column was found. In one doorway a corbelled arch has been used to close the space, otherwise wooden lintels seem to have been used like those used in villages until recently.
c8.s1.t1.4
The rooms had unpaved floors of beaten earth except in the bath-rooms and latrines which were made impervious by the use of very finely joined masonry made of rubbed bricks. In some of the rooms there were big pottery storage-jars (Kumbhā) the like of which in Sind are used even today (called Godī). The houses had kitchens with chūlhās made of bricks. But much more frequently round ovens with an aperture below either made of brick or clay were used like the tandūr of the present day used all over Sind and Punjab and similar to those in Mesopotamia in ancient days. The bathrooms were generally placed on the street-side on the ground floor but in rich men's houses on the upper floor with arrangement for spill-water to flow in a channel built through the width of the wall and connected with the drain outside.