Town Planning in Ancient India c11.49

c11.49

Closely allied with this is the following type of a suburb. About a league away from the city of Vijayanagar stood the small town of Nagalpur connected with the main city by a “street as wide as a place of tourney, with both sides lined throughout with rows of houses and shops where they sold every thing; and all along this road were many trees that the king had commanded to be planted, so as to afford shade to those that passed along. On this road he had commanded to be erected a very beautiful temple of stone and there were other pagodas that the captains and great lords had caused to be erected.”¹ This town of Nagalpur (literally a new city) served the double purpose of an extension of the main city of Vijayanagar as well as of guarding the latter, situated as it was at the mouth of the defile between the mountains encircling the city from a distance. A town of this nature was technically known as Vāhirikā.¹ The following instance is more probative. In the ruins of Taxila, “outside the northern wall of the Sirkap city, was a suburb, now known as Babarkhana or the Kaccha Kot from the fact that it is defined by earthen ramparts only. This suburb has a circuit of rather more than a mile and a quarter, and is enclosed on the west by a bend of the Tamra Nala, above which its fortifications rise to a height of about 40 feet. This suburb was inhabited by low class people of menial profession.”² This is another confirmatory instance of separate provision for the low class people outside the city that we have already noticed. These branch towns bear a close resemblance to the ‘colonae’ of the ancient Romans which were small quasi-fortresses established for accommodating surplus population or discharged soldiers.