Town Planning in Ancient India c8.115

c8.115

I have already said that these gates were called “gopuras”. Mr. Havell takes the word as the compound of the two words ‘go’ (cow) and ‘pura’ (town or fort), and transliterates the word as ‘cow-fort’. He traces the origin of this significant name in this way :—" A broad belt of land surrounding the village (the microcosm of an Indo-Aryan city) boundaries was communal property cultivated by the villagers and the common pasture-grounds of their cattle, which were strictly guarded from wild beasts and hostile raiders by their herdsmen and the sentinels posted on the high towers or palisades over the village-gateways. Hence the latter were known as gopuras or cattle-forts, a name afterwards applied to the entrance gateways of Hindu temple enclosures which repeated the symbolism of the village plan." Though cattle played a very important part in the evolution of of Indo-Aryan civilisation and their security necessitated the pastoral Aryans to group themselves into a 'gotra' or village, which ultimately, in some cases, developed into towns, yet all these considerations cannot explain away how a gate can be identically allied with a fort. The author of the Savdakalpadruma derives the word from the root 'gup' meaning, to defend, to protect. Hence these gates were nothing but stupendous defensive structures forming an integral part of extensive fortifications of the Indo-Aryan town in the shape of embattled walls and deep trenches. Their importance in Indian town-planning cannot be over-estimated. Indeed the magnificent workmanship of gopuras, sometimes exhibiting the highest reaches of Indian architecture, presented opportunities to the Indo-Aryan architects to exercise their consummate skill and fertile imagination. The many gopuras in the famous temple of Jagatśeṭh at Bṛndāvan, or in the more ancient and renowned temple of Conjeeveram, may be instanced here. The splendid art displayed in the gopuras is indeed wonderful and is a living monumental tribute to the high level of æsthetic culture and to the religious spirit of the Hindus. The main road of the Indo-Aryan town terminated in these tower-gates and the reader can conceive in his mind’s eye the magnificent view presented to the eyes of a street-farer by these stately structures lording, as it were, over the whole city.