Studies in Indian Art c8.s1.t1.2

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.