Town Planning in Ancient India c2.1

c2.1

Since the fundamental discovery of the world-importance of Sanskrit, not only for the philology of the Indo-European languages, but for the past of Aryan culture, there have been not a few further disclosures of the great past of India, and of the high levels attained, once and again, by its many and varied civilisations. Yet with all this increasing appreciation of ancient India—and not only among her own children, but throughout the world—most still tend to think her achievements as all in the range of the subjective life, as of religion, philosophy and poetry, and as without parallels on the material and constructive side, of man's life and work : or at any rate that while princes and men of fortune may have attained to artistic magnificence of life, the ordinary life of the people was poor and deficient ; as, alas, so much to-day.