Town Planning in Ancient India c12.2

c12.2

Notwithstanding the uniformity of style that marked the broad features in the plans of an Indo-Aryan house, village, and town, the works on Indo-Aryan architecture, called Vāstu Vidyā (literally the science of habitation), make separate treatment of the lay-out of a village. Indeed the details about the latter subject are fuller than those about town-planning; and the civic architect is advised to utilise and adapt the self-same principles in the case of a town; of course, on a larger scale and with necessary modifications. Because, a village is a town in miniature, a variety of town (nagarabheda); the etymology of the word Trichinopallī, the name of a town in Southern India, clearly indicates it, ‘pallī’ being another equivalent of ‘grāma,’ the Sanskrit term for village.¹ The difference between a village and a town is that while the latter is artificial, the former is a natural unit. Hence nature plays an important role in rural life and can have wanton growth, whereas in a town which focuses and embodies the political and economic life of the people, buildings upon buildings are congregated together to accommodate maximum number of inhabitants within a minimum space, without jeopardising at the same time the city sanitation. A village may be said to be a garden interspersed with human habitations.