Town Planning in Ancient India c3.8

c3.8

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.