Town Planning in Ancient India c6.29

c6.29

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.