Town Planning in Ancient India c11.22

c11.22

imagination in the author, inasmuch as, even in historical periods, we come across many such instances of deliberate civic improvement. In his history of the famous Vijayanagar, Mr. Sewell, the author, notes that one of its kings, Devaray II, raised a Jaina Temple in the city, after laying out a new street called Pān Supāri Bāzār. "It passed along the north side of the Kallama and Rangaswami temples, leaving intact the Imperial office enclosure with its lofty walls and watch towers and the elephant stables on the left, skirted the Jaina temple and another temple and passed along under the rocky hills that bound this plain (of the city) on the north till it debouched on the main road. This street would be the direct approach from the old city of Anegundi to the king's palace."¹ It should be noticed here that though this street was laid out to serve the purpose of the shortest and most direct communication between the old city and the royal palace, yet unlike those of some modern Improvement Trusts, a monotonous rectitude of the streets was not enforced at the sacrifice of historical temples, of walls as well as of other important places or rocky hills. Its course was made as straight as possible, compatible with its natural and artistic alignment.