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Town Planning in Ancient India c6: Chapter II: The Origin and Growth of Indian Cities

Town Planning in Ancient India c6

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Chapter II: The Origin and Growth of Indian Cities

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A city, as a concrete expression of the motive forces and ideas regulating the life of the citizens, is the noblest monument of human art and conception. In its genesis is wrapped up to a great measure the evolution of the civilization of the people who built it. This is specially true of the western world where civilization originated, evolved, and still continues to do so, in the cities. Even in India where a village, in its wider sense, is the centre of civilisation, it is no less true as we shall presently realise when we trace the origin and growth of Indian cities.

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Cities may be grouped into two main divisions according as they evolved consciously or unconsciously. It cannot be definitely asserted in the history of any city that every stage of its growth from the very foundation was due to deliberate efforts to improve and expand it. Neither can the contrary proposition be seriously adduced, that at no period of a certain city did it receive any trimming from human hands. The truth perhaps lies midway between these extremes. Either it was first laid out by a certain king; then it grew and grew until the unseemly state of things called for an appropriate resetting. Or it may be where we now find a full-fledged city, there resided a patriarchal family in days of hoary antiquity. The family grew into a village; the village, possibly because of containing a market-centre, outgrew its rural dimensions and significance until it came to be a city and was, at some stage or other, rightened and improved according to the best town-planning traditions. Any locality bidding fair to grow into a town must be endowed with advantages of a market or temple, facilities of easy access and conveyance especially by water (e.g., prominent trade-routes, navigable rivers or seas), a satrapy or fortress. This is true for all towns, whether in India or outside it. It may be the existence of a river or of a trade-route attracted the others. Generally in all countries it is the temples or churches that are established in the already existing towns and not the towns that are founded about them. Only in India it has been possible for a temple to throw out a city round about it.

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The Savdakalpadruma gives the following synonyms of ‘puram’, the Sanskrit equivalent of a city : a house (geha); a place containing a market and the like (haṭṭādi-viśiṣṭa-sthānam); a place of intercourse between and including many villages (vahū-grāmīya-vyavahāra-sthānam); a place of palaces or royal residence (purī); a town (nagara);

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an emporium (pattanam); a local fastness (sthānīyam); a camp (kaṭakam); a crossing of great highways (paṭṭam); a commercial centre (nigama); a place on a river side (puṭabhedanam). A close study of the above synonyms will reveal the history and explain the origin and characteristics of the Indo-Aryan cities. "The cities stand always, as Kropotkin points out, at the crossings of the great highways.....The ideal city is the meeting place of shepherd and peasant, of merchant and artificer, of priest and pilgrim, of court and camp. It is the centre towards which converge streams that rise in all the quarters of the globe. It is a market-place and exchange, a focus of wealth and industry, a hall of international council, and the quadrangle of world-university."¹ The above list contains almost all the varieties of cities which had conscious origin as well as those which evolved naturally.

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¹ Sister Nivedita, Civic and National Ideals, p. 17.

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It should be noticed that the origin of those towns which grew independently of any deliberate planning from the beginning, can be traced to a house, a temple, a village (if it contains a market or a manufactory), or a market and to natural advantages of the locality such as an island, a river-bend, a sea-coast, a mountain valley and the like. A house, rather a patriarchal family, is the nucleus round which developed a village as the word ‘ekabhogam’ (denoting a village exclusively inhabited by a single patriarch with his family and retinue) clearly demonstrates.¹ The ‘pārās’ of Bengal, e.g., the ‘pārās’ of the Ghoses, the ‘pārās’ of the Dattas, of the Banerjees, or Mukherjees of a modern complex village, which are genealogically derived from the same patriarch, are nothing short of a village-unit. A modern village is nothing but a conglomeration of such units of different ‘gotras’ or primitive stocks. Similarly an Indo-Aryan city was a market-village grown to greatness. It consisted of several villages or wards, each ward being set apart for a single community exactly like a ‘pārā’ in a village. Like their western counterparts which “were originally nothing more than the township-mark of a Teutonic village-community”, the large majority of Indian towns had their origin in villages. This is corroborated by the different grades of respective measurements of a town and of a village.² It will be observed that some grades of city-area more or less tally with the highest grades of a village-area. It goes to prove that

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¹ *Vide* Manushyālayachandrikā, Ch. 3, śloka, 19.

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² *Vide* Chapter VIII.

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एकविप्रवरागारतत्कुटुम्बसमन्वितम् ।
एकभोगं भवेद् ग्रामं तदभ्यायतनाहतम् ॥१९

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the towns had a small beginning from a village. It may further be taken to indicate the different measurements of a single town in its different stages of development. Sir Henry Maine in his treatise on village communities says:—"The village, in becoming more populous from some cause or other, has got separated from its cultivated or common domain; the domain has been swallowed up in it; or a number of different villages have been founded close together on what was perhaps at one time unprofitable waste land, but which has become exceptionally valuable through advantages of situation. This last was the origin of the great Anglo-Indian city of Calcutta, which is really a collection of villages of very modern foundation."

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I must confess that the meaning of the foregoing proposition is not quite clear. The instancing of Calcutta is surely not happy, for Calcutta was the outcome of deliberate efforts of the East India Company. It is true no doubt that many towns were established by agglutinating several adjoining villages. But Sir Henry Maine seems to be considering the unconscious growth of villages into towns. If so, then he has partially failed to indicate the motive power that worked from within to 'civilise' the rural areas. Residential villages can by no means develop, of their own accord, into towns, for they lack the centrifugal impetus. In the United Provinces and the Punjab it is still to be observed that a village is only a hamlet, called ‘muhallā’, a juxtaposition of several huts surrounded by a wall. Round about it is the vast expanse of paddy field. It is impossible for such a hamlet to develop into a town. It is the market places surrounded by many such hamlets,—(for it is natural that hamlets should be laid out in the vicinity of a market for the many advantages which it affords or that many hamlets should organise a market in their centre)—that were the Indian towns in embryo. The word ‘vahū-grāmīya-vyavahāra-sthānam’ clearly establishes it. The ancient renowned town of Saptagrāma, (literally, a town consisting of seven villages), was an important emporium where merchants from remote realms gathered together for traffic. The small subdivisional towns are only expansions of the original markets (hāts or bāzārs) as the names of Cox’s Bazar in Chittagong, Bagerhāt in Khulna, Rampurhāt in Birbhum unquestionably point out. It is to be noticed that it is the markets where distinctive characteristics of town life are more or less evident and which accentuate civic tendencies. It is significant that in very many towns the ‘sāhāganj’ or the general market is located in the centre.

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But Maine's proposition stands true so far as it relates to a University town, a temple city, or a town noted for its specialities in local arts and manufactures. The famous University town of ancient Nālandā had, I presume, a humble origin in a Buddhist monastery under a revered Sthavira like Sāriputra renowned far and wide for his learning and piety. Many disciples approached him, sat at his feet, drank deep of his religious lore; some chose to remain under his inspiring influence; some after completing their training left to spread their activities in other climes. The disciples began to pour in in growing numbers. With royal or local help the monastery grew beyond its ‘local habitation and name’. In course of time it developed into so well-organised a University as that of the renowned Nālandā. A ‘kulapati’ is a sage who trains and maintains ten thousand disciples. Hence his hermitage can be nothing short of a University town; nay, in strength of students it can favourably compare with the best residential Universities of the modern world. The great ‘Naimishāraṇya’ of mythological fame, where all the Purāṇas and Upapurāṇas are said to have been narrated by the sage Sauti amidst a vast congregation of inquisitive hermits listening to him with rapt and respectful attention, gives us a fair idea of an Indo-Aryan University. Navadvīp of Bengal with its Bhaṭṭapallī famous for ages as a great centre of Sanskrit learning can be likened to a University.

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Moreover, the sites of great cities have often been indicated by some nascent industry—viz., a mine, a bed of flint, a layer of clay useful for household utensils. In cases like these it is quite possible that villages which have specialised in any art, working upon local materials, have grown into towns. Who can say that the importance of the localities which once developed into the famous towns, of Dacca noted for its finest muslin, of Kṛṣṇanagar renowned for clay-modelling, of Murshidabad distinguished for its silk-clothings, of Golkuṇḍa famous for its diamonds, of Agra known for its perfumery and marble works, was not partially derived from their excellent local manufactures which commanded a respectable market beyond the limits of the manufactories and that they were not the market-places where the artisans brought their articles for sale? There can also be cited here many modern instances of such factory towns, to wit, Jheria and Jamshedpur.¹

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¹ Cf. Śilparatna, Ch. 5, śloka 34, and also Īśānaśivagurudevapaddhati, p. 327.

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वने वा नगरोपान्ते नागरैस्तु जनैर्वृतम् ।
चैतारामादियुतं शास्त्रनगरमिष्यते ॥

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The necessity of a trading post led to the growth of many commercial towns in India, as also in other countries. From the very earliest times it has been customary for several tribes to share a common trysting place where they held their councils, and bartered their goods in the common markets. The present Howra-Hāt, *i.e.*, Howra market, in Howra is an illustration in point. The origin of the towns of the ancient Saptagrām, modern Chittagong, and other towns situated on a sea-coast or on a river-bank, specially on the bend of a river, can be traced to marts of ancient times. The definition of a ‘pattana’ given in the Mayamata bears testimony to this:—“A ‘pattana’ is a town abounding in articles imported from other islands, alive with all classes of people, a land of commercial transactions in the shape of sale and purchase, replete with jewellery, precious stones, money, silk cloths, perfumery and the like, situated in the vicinity of a sea-coast”, lying lengthwise along it.¹ Mr. Venkatarama Ayar furnishes us with an instance of such a commercial town. “Kaveripumpattinam is a very ancient city which was once a flourishing sea-port and a great centre of commerce. It is the Khabiros Emporion of the Greeks. It is also known as Pukar or the city at the mouth of the Kaveri. It had a splendid harbour and a lighthouse. This ancient sea-port which had an extensive commerce has ceased to be of importance owing to the silting up of the Kaveri.¹ Moreover, a trade centre like a mart is very likely to be posted on or near by the well-known trade routes of the ancient world. It was on such a trade route that the ancient town of Taxila grew up. "The valley in which the remains of Taxila lie is a singularly pleasant one, well-watered by the Haro river and its tributaries, and protected by a girdle of hills;—on the north and east by the snow-mountains of Hazra and the Murree ridge, on the south and west by the well-known Margalla spur and other lower eminences. This position on the great trade route which used to connect Hindustan with Central and Western Asia, coupled with the strength of its natural defences, the fertility of the soil, and a constant supply of good water, readily accounts for the importance of the city in early times."²

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¹ Ch. 10, ll. 55–7.

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¹ Town-Planning in Ancient Deccan, pp. 14–15.

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² Sir J. Marshall, Guide to Taxila, pp. 1–2.

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River sites, sea coasts, especially the mouths of rivers offer the best facilities for the origin and growth of cities, because a river is not only a means of communication with the interior of the country, a way of transport and locomotion, but it also offers an outlet unto the outer world, thus fostering and encouraging commerce. Rivers are national assets of no mean importance. Even in times of antiquity when the itinerant Aryans were spreading their civilisation and modern commercialism was out of the question, the great rivers of India offered the best routes for their spread and advance. Hence the first Indo-Aryan colonies were planted on the valleys of the Indus and the Ganges. Āryyāvarta was the country where Aryan civilisation was promulgated first and this is the part of India which was watered by the above two great river systems, viz., the Indus and the Ganges. Besides, a coast belt, a river side, or a mountain valley is as easy of defence in times of war as of access in times of peace. These have also a never-failing sanitary importance. To these reasons combined with local advantages we owe the evolution of a great many Indo-Aryan settlements in the shape of riparian towns. It should be observed here that the orthodox treatises make it a rule to establish towns on the right bank of a river. Consequently all Hindu towns in India that are situated on the river lie on its right side. Hence any town in India whose location violates this rule, e.g. Calcutta, may be presumed to have grown up or been established under non-Hindu influence.

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Looking through the hazes of the long-gone past, we shall find a holy shrine or temple in lieu of a good many Indian cities of to-day. In India it is a truism to say that a temple was a city in the making. The word ‘mandira’, the Sanskrit equivalent of a shrine or temple, bears two other imports : a house, a town. “In this connection it is well worth noticing that ‘Nakar’, the Tamil word for the city, is used variously in ancient Tamil literature to mean a house, a temple, a palace or a castle, and a city....The word ‘Nakar’ which is thus used to indicate at once a house, a palace, a temple, and a city, contains in a nutshell the chief dynamic principle of ancient town-planning, that these separate items should be so co-ordinated and each assigned such an important place in the city that the arrangement conduces to the efficiency of town life.”¹ Incidentally it may be observed here that this remark of Mr. C. P. Venkatarama Ayar applies more appropriately to deliberately planned towns, than to temple cities most of which evolved unconsciously, until a king chose one to turn it into his royal seat as at Conjeeveram. More accurately interpreted, those synonyms will unfold the history of the growth of temple cities and the nature of their growth, which was always from within.

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¹ Town-Planning in Ancient Deccan, p. 19. On page 21, Mr. Ayar seems to have hit upon the proper construction. Vide infra.

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A man cannot overlook the purity of his house any more than he can ignore the sanctity of his body which must be kept purged of all impurity and uncleanliness by daily ablutions. Consequently a healthy place and sacred surroundings are the first considerations for the location of a house. For these reasons Indians are, by their traditions and scriptural precepts, desirous to erect their humble dwellings by the side of a temple which, in times of importance and renown, becomes an object of pilgrimage. A properly conducted temple ensures many concomitants. It postulates salubrious surroundings, a perennial source of water like a large lake or tank, leafy trees or luxuriant vegetation which connotes fertility of the soil. For instance, the town of Kumbhakonam in Southern India is beautified and sanctified by its very ancient Mahāmakham tank. This fine large tank has sixteen small and picturesque shrines studding its banks, four on each side. The embankments and the surrounding ground are shaded over by tall branching trees like the mango and the banian. A temple in India gains in fame not only with the ever-increasingly felt powers of benediction of its deity but also with the reputation of the hermit who carries on his meditations under the blissful influence of the deity.¹ Over and above, in ancient India a temple was not only frequented by growing bands of pilgrims, but it was a seat of learning where the hermit, a wise sage, gave his disciples a spiritual training. In very many instances, it constituted a University in miniature where learned pandits gathered in the verandah or the roofed courtyard in front and trained the scholars in literature, astronomy, holy scriptures, and other branches of learning. In process of time the importance and reputation of the temple, its deity, and its sage extended beyond the local limits. Hindus, in their old age or when they renounce the world, generally love to raise their humble cottages in places of pilgrimage and some pilgrims would therefore take their permanent abode there. With the increasing population shops were started; resting houses were erected. It may be, the place grew and grew until a king selected the site for establishing his castle. What was before a secluded place with a solitary shrine was at once made into a full-fledged city. " Thus taking the palace or temple as a starting point, houses are built around them and the city grows gradually and expands. In the case of a temple city, there were streets about the temple where the priest and other servants of the temple had their residential quarters.¹ This is the story of the growth of Conjeeveram which has been quoted in *extenso* in another chapter.² More homely and modern instances may be cited of Tarakeswar at Burdwan, Sitakund at Chittagong, Meherkali's house near Bhingra station at Tipperah, where history is repeating itself and cities are unfolding.

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¹ Cf. the description of Dharmāranya and Satyamandira in the Skanda Purāna, Dharmāranya Khandas.

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¹ Town-Planning in Ancient Deccan, p. 21.

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² Ch. VII.

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It is significant that the plan of temples, especially in Southern India, corresponds to that of an Indo-Aryan village or town in its salient features. Answering to the gate-towers of the village or the town are the ‘Gopuram’ or the gateways of the temple. The fine alleys that lead to the temple form the prototypes of the main crossways (rājamārgāḥ) of the village or the city; the spacious corridors and paths encompassing the temple constitute the counterparts of the streets round the royal castle; while the girdle of wall and the ‘pradakshiṇa’ path or the path of circumambulation is the ‘Maṅgalabīthī’ or the boulevard going round the city. The pilgrims or devotees congregate in the ‘maṇḍapa’ of the temple which answers to the council house of the city. Every temple is well-provided with reservoirs, wells, tanks, drains, rest rooms, study or debating halls, small supplementary temples at the corners of the compound, well provisioned with granaries, stalls, and even markets. Here and there stands erect a mango or a banian tree, even within the compound, but the trees of the city are mainly respresented by the imposing and magnificent stone colonnade. Even as the royal castle is erected on the bank of a large tank round which the city grows, so in front of the temple is a small bathing ghāt into the tank the water of which is held sacred.

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The plan of an Indo-Aryan town fairly reproduces on a grander scale the plan of an Indo-Aryan village. This reproduction is in conformity with the rules of Mānasāra and Mayamuni. In both we find the two central cross roads and the ‘Maṅgala-bīthī’ or ‘pradakshiṇa’ path surrounding the village or the city. The same division of the ground into wards by a chess-board system of roads, the same method of distribution of the wards to people according to their profession and station in the social scale, the same type of communal temples, rendezvous under the shade of a mighty tree, communal tanks or wells, the similar towers over the gates at the four cardinal points with smaller doorways in the corner, all enclosed by a massive wall rising upon a belt of moat, we find in the village as in the city.¹ This similarity in the plan facilitated the development and extension of a village into a town, for an Indo-Aryan town is nothing but a congregation of such villages, which may be likened to the wards of a municipal corporation. A king who, attracted by its natural means of defence, by its site on the banks of a river, its material resources, or other local advantages, chose any village as a suitable site for his royal seat, could with the minimum of financial outlay, turn the village and the neighbouring ones into a great capital. It is stated that the city of Bijāpur covering an area of about two and a half square miles was made to absorb seven village sites, *viz.*, those of Gajkhanhatti, Bajkhanhatti, Chandankiri, Kyadgi, Khatarkiri, Kurburhatti and Kuzankutti.

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¹ *Vide* Text, Ch. VIII.

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For efficiency of administration and government, it was necessary to plant fortresses in the midst of villages which were grouped under their jurisdiction and supervision. William the Conqueror of England adopted the same policy of covering his kingdom with a net-work of strongholds in order to subjugate the refractory barons who used frequently to rise up against him. "There shall be a 'sthānīya' (a fortress of that name) in the centre of eight hundred villages, a 'droṇamukha' in the centre of four hundred villages, a ‘kharvaṭika’ in the centre of two hundred villages, and a ‘saṅgrahaṇa’ in the midst of a collection of ten villages.¹ These military outposts favoured the growth of towns about them and the urban tendency was accelerated by the fact that the construction of the Indo-Aryan villages proceeded on the same principle as that of a fortress. The names of the towns Cuttack (Kaṭaka), Sealkot, Nagarkot, Mangalkot speak of their genesis, inasmuch as ‘kaṭak’ or ‘kot’ means a fort. Indeed even an antique house represents a fort in structure. The predominance of defensive character in any sort of human habitation, in ancient India, be it a house, a village, or a town, is as old as the patriarchal rule in the Aryan social evolution. The word ‘gotra’, usually applied to denote a family descended from one of the several patriarchs, originally meant an enclosure for kine and this was the genesis of the Indo-Aryan village or town. Max Müller points out the connection between its etymological and secondary meanings thus: “In ancient times, when most wars were carried on, not to maintain the balance of power of Asia or Europe, but to take possession of good pasture, or to appropriate large herds of cattle; the hurdles grew naturally into the walls of fortresses, the hedges became strongholds; an Anglo-Saxon *tun*, a close (German *zaun*), a town; and those who lived behind the same walls were called a ‘gotra’, a family, a tribe, a race.”¹

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¹ *Vide* Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra, p.

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¹ Chips from a German Workshop.

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One of the most potent factors which influenced the amalgamation of several villages into a city or a capital was the political condition of ancient India. When India began to evolve politically beyond its clannish or tribal state and advantages of unity against a common enemy impressed upon the tribes the utility of hegemony under a common chief or sovereign, they made amicable efforts to round off their angularities, and the assimilation of tribal traits due to frequent intercourse hastened the hegemony. Now a clan or tribe was nothing but a family of persons descended from the same primitive stock and hence each had its own village fort. Therefore a natural consequence of consolidation of the tribal system into greater states and kingdoms was the improvement and expansion, gradual and continual, of the Indo-Aryan villages into larger cities or capitals planned in the same way as many wards of a village fitted into a larger whole. Furthermore, an Indian village community, like the Russian communes, is an autonomous political unit exercising all the functions of a state. No change in the overlordship could seriously and permanently perturb the even tenor and harmony of its career. For mutual protection or by force of arms several villages were federated together into a large state and the political organisation thus brought into existence was a democratic institution, each village community forming a unit. A king, hereditary in some cases and elected in others, who lorded over them all, raised the central village or the one most suitably situated into his royal citadel.

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Though the ancient Indo-Aryan village was essentially a self-governing community, managing its own domestic concerns and only paying to a central authority the customary ‘vali’ or tribute due to it, the principle of co-operation for the purpose of carrying out larger public works which were beyond the means of a single village was also recognised. Not only were the village artisans liable to be called upon for their king’s service in war or peace, but the villages united of their own accord to build assembly halls, pilgrims’ rest houses, to perform irrigation works, to lay out and plant public parks, and to conserve the main roads of the district (cf. Rhys David, *Buddhist India*, p. 49). “The wonderful organisation of the Chandragupta’s empire, of which Megasthenes gives us glimpses, was not the creation of the Maurian statesman, but the centralisation of the social and economic activities of the self-governing Indo-Aryan village communities. Pāṭaliputra itself was only an aggregation of Indian villages joined together by spacious parks (the sacred groves) and stately avenues.”¹

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¹ Havell, Ancient and Mediæval Architecture, p. 24.

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This brings us to the main reason which I have assigned elsewhere for the origin and foundation of almost all the great cities of India. They were the capitals of the different dynasties of kings holding sway in different parts of ancient India at different epochs of history. Because India was not brought under the suzerainty of one single emperor, but on the contrary, was a medley of small principalities fighting with one another for overlordship, the military camps were turned into royal capitals. These continued to hold on for a century or a half, until they gave way under the overwhelming force of a mightier general. It was only on rare occasions that victors planted their thrones on the capitals of the vanquished; they would oftener lay out another splendid capital, perhaps on a grander scale, by the side of the fallen citadel which dwindled into a village unless its importance was sustained by any local manufactures or other special circumstances. This craze for founding new capitals was due to the constant belligerency of the states which bred suspicions about the nefarious activities of a vanquished enemy. The latter, previous to the evacuation or capitulation, might in all likelihood have sunk many pitfalls, poisoned the tanks and wells, and concocted other contrivances to avenge himself and entrap the victor. But the more probable reasons seem to be that, since the towns of ancient India were all, in a sense, forts and the security of the resident king there depended upon their defensive character, the victorious king could not turn the fallen town into his capital with safety inasmuch as the vanquished foe who had been driven out was aware of the ins and outs of the fort-town and could therefore recapture it with less difficulty. Moreover, the town was already inhabited by the subjects of his fallen foe some of whom might not have forsaken the town and might transfer their allegiance to the victor. The new king had to find quarters for his own following and subjects. Over and above, the king always tried to win the admiration and loyalty of his subjects and retinue, both old and new, and establish his superiority in regal power, by capturing their imagination with the surpassing grandeur of his capital. Hence it was almost an invariable principle emphasised by the Śilpa Śāstras that each new ruling dynasty should lay out its own capital. Thus Bhoja says: "A king residing in a city founded by his enemy or even by another king will meet death in no time.”¹ This accounts for the juxtaposition of many ruined cities in close proximity to one another, as in Delhi or Taxila. Because of this constant internecine warfare, purely commercial towns or emporiums could not flourish in large numbers. Commerce had to be centralised in the royal capital under the protective ægis and patronage of the royal arms and the wealth of the country flowed into this secure haven. These circumstances combined to account for the brilliant splendour and great magnitude of a metropolis in India as compared with what may be called the country town. Indeed it can be safely asserted that in India every town of note was once a capital of some kingdom or other. The myriads of towns that stud the map of Rājputanā were at one time headquarters of various chiefs and scions of the royal families continue to reign in most of them even down to this day.

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¹ Yuktikalpataru, verse 173.

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The foregoing causes and circumstances constrained the king and his following to lead what is termed ‘camp life’. That is to say, he had to change his royal seat from place to place and where he settled for some years, there was built up the royal palace and the quarters of his entourage including the army and the military officers. The same circumstances operated to cause wealth and commerce.

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arts and literature, to follow thither and thus to develop the royal citadel into a magnificent metropolis. We all know how Uday Sing, the Rānā of Chitore, father of the great Pratāp, defeated by Mahammadan arms under Akbar, took refuge in a sequestered mountain valley where he had already excavated a magnificent lake. Now he had his royal palace built on the embankment of this lake. The subjects followed their king and what followed was the gradual evolution of the noble town of Udaypur, extolled by all travellers for its splendid plan, architectural beauty, natural setting, and imposing grandeur. It is scarcely a hyperbolical expression to say that the royal home of Jeypur presents to the view a garden of palaces. At one side of the compound, surrounding a big courtyard stand erect the Court of Judicature and all the other offices. At another courtyard stands the public Darbar House (Dewan-i-am), while at a third rises the steeple of the private Darbar palace. And in the centre of the compound, the imperial mansion Chandramahal lords it over all. At the back of this lies a large flower garden intersected with drains and embellished with fountains. The garden terminates at the shrine of Govindji, the presiding deity of the royal house. Thus we see centralised in the compound of the imperial castle all the edifices for judicial and executive functions of the state.

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Finally, it is in the fitness of things that something should be said about the importance of a town-planner being conversant with the history of his town. I have to observe elsewhere that, as a preliminary to the planning of a town, the master-builder must take a historical and sociological survey of the site. It would be sheer iconoclasm if a civic architect did not respect the ancient historical relics of the place, if he pulled down and demolished everything that stood in the way of successful execution of his fanciful scheme, to advertise his own originality, and left no trace of the past with which were interwoven the traditions and sanctity of the place. It is not right and proper that the new city should be cut off from its ancient moorings, because for a healthy civic life and for the traditional sanctity of the city these historical reminiscences are essential and indispensable. It is a truism to say that the city reacted upon the life of its citizens in the same way as their culture gave the form and tone to the city. The city and citizens are indissolubly linked together. The influence of the one wove into the life and evolution of the other. Hence there must be a continuity in the growth of cities, which, in India, was from within. Put in the words of that gifted lady, Sister Nivedita, “The key to new conquests lies always in taking up rightly our connection with the past. The man who has no inheritance has no future (p. 67)……..In the making of history it is the guiding ideas which are more important than the massing of correct details. We shall become great historians, great singers of a people’s evolution, not merely in proportion as we are competent to adjudicate correctly the date of a king or battle, but rather as we are able to reveal the essential features of the past and gather from them the prophecy of the future. All historians, whether of communities or periods, have their central laws, without the recognition of which they are chaotic. Here we seek the story of the municipal ideal. Again we sit at the feet of a slowly evolving church” (p. 24).¹

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¹ Civic and National Ideals.

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