Town Planning in Ancient India c16.11.1

c16.11.1

Patriarchism also accounts to some extent for trade-guilds, as the castes or their sub-divisions really were, inasmuch as any profession used to be handed down from generation to generation, i.e. sons in almost all cases followed the trade and crafts of their parents. This guild system no less than the division of social functions and theory of decentralisation of government made the village community an autonomous unit and gave rise to that peculiar social organism of the Hindus known as the Varṇāśram-adharma. This Hindu sociology, dividing the whole Hindu community into four principal castes which ultimately disintegrated into many more sub-castes, stamped the Aryan town or village-planning with indelible marks of its own. For, we find, in the town or village, different building-plots or wards were assigned to different castes or subcastes and the Śilpa Śāstras are very much particular in their distribution. In this stratification of the society also, com-munalism asserted itself, for every building-block or ward of a town was planned exactly in accordance with the same principles as were followed in village-planning and consequently such communal centres as the council tree and the square were necessarily provided for in the wards or the building-plots.