Town Planning in Ancient India c18.18

c18.18

This genetic peculiarity of Indian towns probably influenced domestic architecture, at least, in the towns or cities. Almost every house in some Indian cities had an underground chamber. Though internecine conflicts subsided with the progress of time and these underground chambers fell into desuetude, yet their characteristics did not entirely disappear from posterior domestic architecture. The first storeys of the houses had no windows often no doors opening either upon the streets or upon the quadrangular courtyard. " A remarkable feature of these houses is that, although in some cases there are no doors communicating between two or more rooms, there are no doors giving direct access from these rooms to the interior court or to the streets outside,—the practice having apparently been to enter these lower chambers by means of stairways or ladders descending from the room above.”¹ This had the effect of giving every ward in a town the appearance of a walled stronghold. The practice was done away with in later periods. Another feature of Indian towns due to the selfsame cause lay in the copious provisions and food-stuff stored up in the towns. “Nearly all the movable capital of the empire or kingdom was at once swept away to its temporary centre, which became the exclusive seat of skilled manufacture and decorative art. Every man who claimed to belong to the higher class of artificers took his loom or his tools and followed in the train of the king. This diversion of the forms of industry which depend on movable wealth to the seat of the court, had its first result in the splendour of oriental capitals. But at the same time it made it easier to change their site regarded as they continued to be in the light of the encampment of the sovereign for the time being.”²