Town Planning in Ancient India c6.35

c6.35

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