Town Planning in Ancient India c8.100

c8.100

The ditches were fitted with hidden sluices or with a secret mechanism with which to regulate the current and the depth of water within them.² The ditches were filled with either stagnant or current water. Kauṭilya is particular about the ditches to be “filled with perennial flowing water or with water drawn from some other source.” This was possible, because the ditches were connected with rivers. In case of emergency these mechanical gates could be utilised even to inundate the whole city and the surrounding plots of land.³ It may not be inapt here to remark that the courses of Indian rivers present us with a marvellously faithful history of the growth of Indo-Aryan civilisation. Because of the riparian or littoral situation of cities, whether in India or anywhere else, flowing water was easily available. Thus the towns of Pāṭaliputra, Delhi, Poona, among many others, had rivers flowing into their ditches. That the above explanation is not at all imaginary is evident from the Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa :¹—" The ditches were excavated with their gates connected with rivers." The Devī Purāṇa suggests that the drains of the town should clear themselves into these ditches.² Crocodiles, sharks, and other ferocious fishes were let off in them so that no enemy could swim across them with safety.³ Nor were the Aryan town-planners slow to seize the slightest opportunity of making the city as picturesque as they could. In the ditches brimming with stagnant water were carefully nurtured lotus and lily plants. We read in the description of a Tamil poet that " in the broad moat surrounding the fort of Pukar, the capital of Chola kings, the waters of which were covered with beautiful flowers, the chirping of birds never ceased."⁴ There was a broad belt of thorny jungle surrounding the ditch as in Bharatpur.⁵ The ditches were spanned by bridges, for every gate of the town must have a bridge in front of it for traffic. These bridges could be raised or lowered when occasions arose. They were, in some instances, so adjusted with mechanical devices that an enemy, once having set his feet on them, could be easily swung into the ditches. It is thus described in the Rāmāyaṇa that “ at every gate of Laṅkā, the capital of Rāvana, was suspended a gigantic bridge from a mechanical structure which defended the bridge from the onset of the belligerents. It was by means of this machine that antagonists were slung into the trenches.” From the peculiar nature of the Indian civic art, the utility of these ditches is manifold. They were not mere defensive works; nor were they enjoined simply for beauty’s sake. They formed not only an important part of the complex drainage system of the city, but also supplied the quantity of mud necessary for the erection of the city-walls, for filling up the low bogs and marshes of the city-ground, making the surface of the ground slant in one direction, or making it convex in accordance with the time-honoured rules of the Indo-Aryan civic art. Bharat expressly lays down that the walls are to be constructed of the mud dug out of the ditches.¹