Town Planning in Ancient India c5.21

c5.21

Without assuming the somewhat suppositional assertions of the Russian scholar and launching upon disquisitions on those premises about the antiquity of Indo-Aryan town-planning, it may be safely taken that the Vedic Aryans had certainly developed a far more advanced knowledge in the science of building than a mere inchoate and crude sciolism. The plan of the towns and their denominations were identical with those of the geometrical figures that had to be, and are even now, drawn on the sacrificial altars. These figures suggested the plans and the names. It is sure that the Vedic civilisation had long ago immensely outgrown the primitive stage and still glows with innumerable and irrefragable evidences of its high water-mark. Certainly the people who could construct iron forts, plan colonnaded edifices, lay out large villages, can be credited with some scientific knowledge of the civic arts. Mr. Havell puts down the composition of the oldest of the extant Śilpa Śāstras to the 5th or 6th century A.D.¹