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Town Planning in Ancient India c3: Foreword

Town Planning in Ancient India c3

Language
English

Foreword

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"No study has so potent an influence in forming a nation's mind and a nation's character as a critical and careful study of its past history."
R. C. Dutt, (*Early Hindu Civilisation*)

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To-day is Saturday and one of these Saturdays, in the month of Āshāḍha, the planets, satellites, and constellations of the Universe conjoined and evolved into an aspect and configuration favourable for the physical manifestation of this Self until then immanent in it and I was ushered into mundane existence. It is a well-known immemorial doctrine of Hinduism that every Hindu is born to a debt to the sage savants, Ṛṣhis, of old and hallowed memory. These selfless souls laid humanity under a sacred obligation by communicating the fruits of their profound meditation and beatific realisation to their disciples as well as by preserving them in treatises. And it is the pious duty of every Hindu to pay off this holy debt by acquiring and assimilating them through study and devotion as also by disseminating them broadcast among mankind. This is the only recompense which our intellectual forebears may expect of us for their labours and gratuitous services.

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Rather, this is the utmost that we may do to them in return for the inestimable services which they have thereby rendered to us simply out of love. I do not know whether I shall be instrumental to adulterating and profaning its religious sanctity and obligatoriness when I make bold to interpret this scriptural injunction as an essentially Hindu method of preserving the lore and culture of the ancient savant seers and providing for their transmission to posterity, perpetuation and promulgation. It is the bounden duty, therefore, of every Indian, specially of a Hindu, to rescue from oblivion, from the ravages of time and tyrants, the sciences which our ancesters, thousand years ago, knew, the culture which they evolved, the practices which they observed, and the achievements which they made in the social and political fields. We must know and spread what they knew and thought, said and wrote, attained and accomplished. It is by such action that we shall be able to discharge ourselves in some measure from obligations to them and prove ourselves as their worthy descendants. We shall be justified in declaring ourselves as their true heirs not as much by pointing to the movables and immovables inherited as pre-eminently by our acquisition and realisation in life of their culture and wisdom which constitutes our true heritage and patrimony. It is by *kshema* (preservation and consolidation of what one possesses) that India can be qualified for *yoga* (fresh acquisition). Her glorious Past must be resuscitated and rehabilitated in her Present that a far more glorious Future may blossom out of it. Thus will her life be flowing, undammed and unchoked, rupturously from times immemorial to æons immortal. It is this spirit which has always inspired this humble worker in his exploration into a hitherto neglected field of Indian Śilpa, some results of which he has essayed to shapen, systematise, and embody in the following pages.

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Though India’s Past had then, as it has now, a great fascination for me, yet it was not this spirit which impelled me to commence work in this line. It is an accident that drew me to it. Some years ago Prof. Patrick Geddes organised town-planning exhibitions in some important metropolises of India. The Calcutta exhibition aroused the imagination of a revered brother of mine who urged me to investigate what progress ancient India might have made in the field of civic science. The present writer who had till then come across only florid and fantastic descriptions of forts and capitals in the Epics and the Purāṇas, and scrappy treatment of the science in the latter works, did not feel himself encouraged to launch upon such a venture as these materials, until then the only within his knowledge, could, in his opinion, be hardly developed into even a decent monograph on the subject to be placed beside the bulky volumes that the West has of late contributed to its parallel there. The result, he thought, would hardly repay the arduous labour involved. The optimistic enthusiasm of my brother was not however to be damped by such diffident and discouraging considerations which, as he truly thought, ignorance usually engenders. He continued to goad and exhort me until I had perforce to direct my attention to it. I was really unprepared for the happy disillusionment which awaited me and followed soon after the commencement of the investigation. A vast splendid landscape of ancient India, quite unknown to me, opened up before my admiring eyes. The materials began to accumulate with unexpected rapidity and to-day they baffle my anxiety and capacity to bring them all together. I have met, in references, with many works, published and unpublished, which with all my efforts I have failed to get at. The materials to my hand are however enough for writing a good volume on the subject and, reserving the unsecured materials for its further improvement and future edition, I have thought it wise to put the results of my labour up to this day in black and white and to place them before the critical world. No one is more conscious of the defects and shortcomings of this book than its humble author. He hopes however, with the generous assistance of his sympathetic readers, to improve and develop the volume into its full dimensions in its future editions.

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I have not hesitated whenever necessary to draw upon the descriptions of towns and cities founded during the Indo-Moslem regime, in order to illustrate the principles of town-planning known to ancient India. That sums up as well my attitude towards the towns that sprang up during what is commonly called as the Buddhist period of Indian history. I do not for myself think that the Buddhist culture, both in its phases of art and religion, has any serious contra-Hinduistic air about it as a distinct growth, devoid of any organic affinity of origin and development with the pre-Buddhist Hindu culture of the land. Positively speaking, I believe, on the contrary, that, whatever may some scholars make of a distinctive Buddhist school, the Buddhist culture is an offshoot of, a growth out of the mighty tree of Hinduism. It possibly perished when it sought to disown its parent tree altogether. There may be some special features of Indian town-planning which may be credited to the Buddhists. I have not as yet succeeded in sifting out and ascertaining these special contributions. Whatever they might be, they were not certainly innovations subversive of the fundamentals of the science that were recognised and passed current prior to the spread of Buddhism in this land. They were, at most, improvements and embellishments upon the original fabric. All the existing treatises that are directly concerned with the treatment of the science as well as those that have contented themselves with its passing notice, bear strong testimony of their origin and composition under Hindu influence. This is evident from the shabby treatment which they have vouchsafed to the Buddhist fanes and institutions in allocation of the sites of a city. And the materials that have hitherto come to my knowledge will not justify me in building up a Buddhist school of Indian town-planning.

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There is however no such cogent reason for classifying the Indo-Moslem towns and capitals in the category of ancient Indian cities. But I am not aware of a Saracenic school of town-planning that may present remarkable marks of differentiation. The Moslem rulers of India had had to establish few new towns. Of these, many bear impressions of the town-planning traditions of India. Again many towns which go under Islamic denominations, or might have been extended and improved into seats of Moslem administration, evince characteristics which can be traced or likened to the Hindu system of town-planning. It is to these alone that I have referred to by way of illustrative examples, without losing myself in disquisitions about the propriety thereof.

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I have very keenly felt the want of illustrative plans of ancient Indian towns. The plans that have been prepared by the department of the Archæological Survey of India, may hardly be said to have been drawn up to indicate the methods of town-planning in ancient India. Only the map of Jaipur, to my knowledge, is fitted for this purpose. The Department of the Archæological Survey of India, as the only competent body, should undertake this task, following the example of similar bodies of the West, *e.g.*, of Germany. It is German excavations of the towns of the Græco-Roman world that have facilitated the study of their plans. Unless and until such plans of ancient Indian towns are forthcoming, any investigation into Indian town-planning will obviously remain more or less of a theoretical, even conjectural and hypothetical, character, bereft of that strength which illustrations of actual executions and achievements alone can impart and assure. I shall be highly obliged if any of the kind readers of these pages to whom the subject may appeal as one of interest and importance, supply me with such illustrative plans so that they may be utilised and incorporated in future editions of this volume. Needless to add, the writer shall only be too glad to acknowledge with gratitude his debt to him.

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A few scholars have preceded me in tackling this subject. Mr. Rāmrāz dwelt upon it in passing in his classical monograph on Hindu architecture. He drew mainly upon the Mānasāra in this matter and I venture to say that he only touched the fringe of this vast subject. Mr. Havell in his "Aryan Rule in Ancient India" and "Ancient and Mediaval Architecture", have merely transcribed what Rāmrāz wrote two score years before him, with a few new points here and there derived from Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra and the Jātakas. Dr. P. K. Acharyya who have followed them up has barely touched upon the subject in his "Summary of the Mānasāra." The first scholar who has therefore seriously essayed to deal with this subject is Mr. Venkatarama Iyer of the Madras University whose "Town-planning in Ancient Deccan", in its own sphere, is an eminently good work. Unfortunately he has contented himself in localising his investigations exclusively in the field of the vernacular Tamil literature and has reviewed and presented the descriptions of towns and villages made therein from the stand-point of town-planning. He has not widened his exploration into the vast field which the Silpa Sāstras cover about this subject, although, as an inhabitant of the Deccan which is rich with these works, he was eminently posted for this task and specially so, when we bear in mind that the descendants of the old school of masons and artisans who are alone conversant to-day with the technical terms abounding in the orthodox treatises on Silpa, were within easy reach of him. As regards his own sphere of exploration too, he had been anticipated, in some measure, by Mr. V. Kanaksavai Pillai who had compiled, in his book, “Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago”, the descriptions of ancient towns and villages that could possibly be met with in Tamil literature. The credit of Mr. Iyer lies principally therefore in surveying the same field, of course, on a fuller and grander scale, from a different view-point and consequently in its method of presentation. Notwithstanding all these, his work deserves credit for the materials which it contains, much of which is not available elsewhere. Prof. Radhakamal Mukerjee contributed two or three articles relating to this subject to the *Modern Review* and, in these, he surveyed the subject from the stand-point of an exponent of Hindu communalism that he is. Prof. Patrick Geddes also contributed to the same journal an informed and instructive article on temple-cities of India. I think I need not offer words of apology for freely and copiously drawing upon the works of my predecessors which I must, if I am to make my treatise as complete, exhaustive, and up-to-date as is possible under the present circumstances. I feel sincere pleasure in remembering my indebtedness to them.

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The method of transliteration followed in this book tallies substantially with the current system, with a very few deviations. The following may however require special notice : ṅ for ङ ṁ for ञ ṇ for ण ś for श

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When I think of offering my sincere thanks to those who have assisted me in my work, the outstanding figure that shines forth first in my mind is that of one who suggested this subject to me for research. Not content with electrifying away the lethargy and procrastination of the writer with his own enthusiasm, he has collected many materials for him, studied much of them himself, gone through the chapters one by one, carefully criticised them, suggested many hints for improvement, and has patiently borne the tedious drudgery of seeing the book through the press and correcting the proofs. In a word, he has worked for me; he has worked through me. But my relation with him is such that my Hindu instinct precludes me from marring its sanctity and naturalness with any expression that may, even remotely, smack of ceremoniousness. Ours is a natural bond in which reciprocal assistance and co-operation is a divine duty. Therefore bowing to him in reverence I turn to the first man who claims my heart-felt thanks. I gratefully acknowledge the invaluable assistance which Mr. O. C. Gangooly, the gifted editor of the *Rupam*, has rendered me by allowing me to use and utilise his manuscript copy of the Mānasāra. Prof. Radhakamal Mukerjee and Prof. Beni Madhav Barua have also laid me under obligation by supplying me with references of books that may have dealt with the subject of my investigation. Last but not the least to whom my heart goes out to offer its sincere tribute of gratefulness is Prof. Patrick Geddes who has obliged this juvenile author, unknown to fame as he is, by consenting to write the introduction which adorns these pages at a time when he was seriously ill and was hurrying through his pre-occupations to go home in order to recoup his shattered health. He is pre-eminently the fittest person, as one who first kindled the imagination of the inspiring genius of this thesis, to act as the priest of introducing it to the public with his benedictions.

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In fine, I invite suggestions for improvement, helpful criticism, and supply of new materials all of which will be received with gratitude.

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Saturday, The 20th September, 1924

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BINODE BEHARI DUTT, Vil. Kanungoepara, P.O. Saroatali, Chittagong. (India)

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CHAPTER I

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Introductory

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Orthodox texts on Indo-Aryan town-planning—Meaning and scope of Vāstu-vidyā and Silpa Sāstra—Antiquity of Indian town-planning—Traditions about its origin—The four classes of artists and their deified ancestors—The Vedic origin of town-planning—The Vedic towns and villages—The high standard attained by the Hindus in the science—Diffusion of its knowledge among the people—High civic consciousness of the Hindus—The high social status of the civic architect—The scope of Indian town-planning and its principal subdivisions—The order and method of treatment adopted in this book .... .... Page 1

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CHAPTER II

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The Origin and Growth of Indian Cities

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The city and its importance in the history of civilization—Two main classes of Indian cities—Various synonyms of "puram" and their historical connotations—Towns of unconscious origin and growth—Maine's opinion criticised—Origin of towns from temples, villages, markets and monasteries—The university towns—Sites of great cities— a mine, a trading post, sea-coast, river-bank or confluence of rivers—The word "mandira" and its historical import—Close affinity between temples and towns—Similarity of village-plans and town-plans—Political towns and military outposts—Amalgamation of several villages into a city—Cities as seats of government—Origin of cities in camps—Historical knowledge essential for a town-planner . . . . . Page 18

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CHAPTER III

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Preliminary to City-Foundation : Survey of the City

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The present requirements and the prospective tendencies of the projected town—Selection of the site—Sukracharyya's directions—Utility of planting trees in towns—Examination of the ground—Its fitness according to its colour, smell, taste, shape, direction, sound and touch—The proclivity of the ground—The ground to be avoided—The merits and demerits of proclivities—Castes and qualities of the ground—Solidity of the ground and various methods of ascertaining it—Purification and consecration of the ground—Determination of the cardinal directions—Dimensions of the city or village—Arteries of communication surveyed—Division of the ground into square or oblong plots—Geological survey of the locality and its neighbourhood . . . . . 44

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CHAPTER IV

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On Boundaries and Approaches

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Essentiality of circumvallation and surrounding ditches—Various kinds of fortifications—Classes of forts—Walls, their number, their shape, their measurements—Ramparts—Kauṭilya's particulars about fortification—Ditches and their construction, their dimensions—Sluices and mechanisms in the ditches—The bridges—The "gopuras" or gates, their allocation and denominations—The radical import of "gopura"—Shapes of towns; their advantages and disadvantages—Arteries of communication with the outlying regions—Pratical utility of the walls .... .... Page 70

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CHAPTER V

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Streets and their Planning

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Purposes of streets and rules of their lay-out—Importance of light and air in street-planning—Adjustment of the width of streets to the volume of traffic—Different kinds of streets and their widths—Chess-board system of street-planning—Classification and desingnation of cities according to the number and direction of the streets in them—The names of different towns and the lay-out of streets—The doors and arches of roads and their architecture—Classification and denomination of cities according to street-planning and site-planning—Types of such towns—Names and nature of the streets—Mahākāla, or Vāmana-patha—The Brahmavīthi—Central streets and military and commercial routes—Diagonal radiating streets—Their partial advocacy and adoption in the Nandyāvarta town-plan—Foot-paths—Street-crossings; their special edification and their civic importance—“Pradakshiṇa” of the crossings and their significance in traffic regulation—Pictorial and arboreal ornamentation of the streets and its aesthetic and cultural importance—Buildings and their facades—Tortoise-like elevation of the streets—The drainage system—Walls ranging along the streets . . . . . Page 109

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CHAPTER VI

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Site-planning and Folk-planning

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Pada-vinyāsa—Dedication of the padas in the names of deities—Segregation of professions and castes—Kauṭilya’s folk-planning—Śukrāchāryya’s scheme—Agni Purāṇa’s scheme—Mayamata’s allocation of the residential quarters—Mayamata’a site-planning—Bhoja’s plan—Centralisation of public buildings—Description of Anahilapura .... .... 142

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CHAPTER VII

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Improvement and Expansion of Towns

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General observations—The board of civic functionaries—Sthapati, his coadjutors and subordinates—Their qualifications—Their controlling and supervising powers over civic constructions—Gṛhādyadhipati and his functions—Extension and Improvement of Dvārāvatī—Extension of Vijayanagara—Various artifices adopted to keep down town-population—Expansion and improvement of Madurā after inundation—Reclamation of a belt of land around—Rule of diminishing contiguity of buildings—Foundation of supplementary faubourgs or sub-towns—Subsidiary towns in the neighbourhood—Method of laying out and adding new muhallas—Evolution of the town of Śrīraṅgam—Decay and demolition of city-walls and its effect on towns .... .... Page 165

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CHAPTER VIII

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The Village

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Its meaning—Distinction between village and town—Kauṭilya’s directions about establishment of villages—Villages founded for military purposes—Nature of an Indo-Aryan village—Classification of Brāhmaṇ villages according to their population—General features of a typical village—Classification of villages according to their shapes and systems of street-planning, folk-planning and temple-planning—(1) Daṇḍaka and its features—(2) Sarvatobhadra and its features—(3) Nandyāvarta and its plans—(4) Scheme and characteristics of Padmaka—(5) Swastika and its features—(6) Scheme and characteristics of Prastara—(7) Kārmuka and its plan—(8) Chaturmukha and its scheme—(9) Prakīrṇaka—

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(10) Parāga—(11) Srīpratishṭhita—(12) Sampatkāra—(13) Kumbhakam—(14) & (15) Srīvatsa and Vaidika—Villages and garden-cities .... Page 195

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CHAPTER IX

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Of Buildings and Building Bye-Laws

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Principle and purpose of building bye-laws—Order of town-planning and house-planning—Plantation of trees—Structural peculiarities of the houses belonging to different castes—Fixation of the number of storeys in buildings—Regularity about heights of buildings—Emphasis on proper dimensions of buildings—Rules about "alinda" and "vīthikā" of the houses—Rule about their frontage—Arrangement of the doors of houses—Intervening space between houses—Illustrative example of the city of Sirkap .... .... 247

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CHAPTER X

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Of Centres and Enclosed Places

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Civic importance of centres—Centralisation of public buildings in ancient towns and its effect and significance—Subsidiary centres and places—The royal palace—Parks, gardens, tanks, and artificial hillocks—Elevation of the centres—Temples—The Asrama, Maṭha and the College—Public halls, rest-houses and markets—Places—Symmetric distribution of the centres and places .... .... 258

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CHAPTER XI

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Individuality of Indo-Aryan Towns

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Its utility and importance—Contributing factors of individuality—Local building materials—Various types of towns and townlets—Nagara—Rājadhānī—Paṭṭana—Durga—Kheṭa—Kharvaṭa—Sivira—Senāmukha—Skandhāvāra—Sthānīya—Droṇamukha—Koṭmakolaka—Nigama—Maṭha or Vihāra—Absence of allusion to diversity in plans and architectural peculiarities in them—What constitutes their personality—Variety in street-plans, distribution of public buildings—Temple-cities—Garden-cities—Abundance of tanks, parks, groves, gardens and trees in ancient towns of India—The city of Vijayanagara and its prominent features like a garden-city—Textual authority about the characteristics of ancient Indian cities resembling garden-cities .... Page 270

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CHAPTER XII

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City as the Expression of Civic Life—Interpretation of Civic Architecture: Cultural and Socio-political

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The town-planning art, its function and mission, and its historical importance—The fortificatory character of ancient towns—The gradual evolution of human abode from the mound to an open city and its etiological explanation—Reason of public buildings being centralised round the royal castle or citadel—The origin of communalism—Patriarchism and trade-guildism—Varṇāśramadharma and its influence upon town-planning—Social rank, *i.e.*, caste and profession (not wealth) the basis of site-planning and folk-planning—Religiosity of the Hindu mind and its influence upon Indian civic art and architecture—Street-temples and ward-deities—Distribution of gods—The scheme of Agni Purāṇa—Mayamuni's order—Idealisation of abode—Temples as cultural centres—Some communal festivities and their effect upon town-planning and civic life—Ornamental and pictorial decorations of public buildings and their value as agency of disseminating national culture 299

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APPENDIX A

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Some Noted Ancient Indian Towns

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Ayodhyā— Indraprastha— Pāṭaliputra— Madurā— Vamji or Karur .... .... Page 321

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APPENDIX B

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Camps

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Camp, the origin of Indian towns : the history its various synonyms in Sanskrit unfolds—Sivira as described in the Brahmavaivarta-purāṇa—Kāmandaka's description of a skandhāvāra—Kauṭilya's planning of an encampment—Juxtaposition of Indian cities and its explanation . . . . . 331

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APPENDIX C

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Distribution of City-Gates

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Preliminary observations — Principal gates — Their deviation from central positions — Subsequent gradual rectification of the gates — Merits and demerits of the gates — Water-gates and their location — Subsidiary gates — Disqualifications of the plots unsuitable for gates — Concluding remarks .... .... Page 340

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BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . 353

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