Town Planning in Ancient India c10.s2.34

c10.s2.34

The general feature that is conspicuous in all the foregoing plans of allocating sites is that generally in the central part of the town all the public buildings of importance, such as the royal palace, the court, the town hall, the temple, the council house, and the like, are located, giving a stately effect to the city and centralising its corporate life. But the plan suggested in the Matsya Purāṇa, contrary to all foregoing plans, aims at decentralisation. "There should be planted four rectilinear streets. These are the two cross-streets meeting at the centre of the fort. At the end of one street should be erected the holy shrine and the royal palace should stand at the terminus of another. The court should be placed at the extremity of the third and the fourth terminates at the arched gateway of the town."¹ But for the absurdity of a gate standing at the centre of the fort, all the four structures could have been supposed to be situated at the central part at the crossing of the two streets; for, such a configuration would have as well answered the des-