Town Planning in Ancient India c8.116

Language: English

c8.116.1

Since Indo-Aryan towns were circumscribed by walls and ditches which prevented the growth of promiscuous suburbs, it is natural that they should be given a definite shape by the town-planners of ancient India. In fact every dissertation on town-planning in any treatise dwells upon the suitability or unsuitability, auspiciousness or inauspiciousness of different shapes. The Mayamata thus recommends five different shapes of the ramparts (i.e., of the town):¹—(1) square (chaturasra), (2) rectangular or oblong (āyatasra), (3) roughly circular (vṛtta), (4) elliptical (vṛttāyata), and (5) completely circular (golāvṛtta). According to the Devī Purāṇa, the towns may have these shapes :¹—(1) quadrangular, *i.e.*, square, (2) circular, (3) triangular (tryasra), and (4) longitudinal or oblong (dīrgha). He says that in merit and auspiciousness they are, in order, best, mediocre, good, and worst. It cannot be that the Devī Purāṇa looks with disfavour a rectangular shape. It seems only to deprecate disproportionately great length of a town as compared with its breadth. Such a shape, besides presenting great difficulties to site-planning, placing and spacing of buildings, will weaken defence. The Agni Purāṇa expresses its opinion on the merits of various shapes in the following words :²—"A city should not be founded on plots remote from one another, nor it should be so built, as to have an angular or semi-lunar aspect (candrārdhābha).

c8.116.2

A city resembling a 'vajrasūcī' in shape (diamond-shaped, *i.e.*, octogonal) should be regarded as inauspicious. The forepart of a city laid out or constructed in the shape of a bow (cāpābha) or 'vajranāga' should be reckoned as the most auspicious." But unlike the Agni Purāṇa, the Matsya Purāṇa highly recommends the semi-lunar shape for riparian towns. Indeed every Hindu is aware that the holy city of Benares situate on the convex side of the Gangetic bend presents a semi-lunar aspect; while we learn on the authority of the Harivamśa that the town of Mathurā, standing on the bend of the river Jumna, looked like a half-moon.¹ The Matsya Purāṇa further adds that semi-lunar shape should be avoided anywhere else by those who have knowledge of the art. It approves the oblong, square, or circular shapes. According to it the triangular or drum-shaped (yava-madhya) towns are not conducive to peace and prosperity.² It supports even octogonal shapes like a diamond. Like the foregoing authors who deprecate the triangular shapes, Bhoja cites with approval the opinion of the Bhaviṣyottara Purāṇa that hardly ever should towns be shaped triangular or circular, while longitudinal or square towns are the best. By longitudinal (dīrgha) he means "extending in width to one quarter of the length of the town (pādaika-prasāra), while by 'tryasra' he means an equilateral triangle. Both concur in the view that long-shaped towns make for permanence, peace, and prosperity;

c8.116.3

while a square capital yields to the sovereign all the four fruitions (chaturvarga), Piety, Means, Desire, and Salvation. Triangular towns annihilate the three powers whereas circular ones are hot beds of many endemics and pestilences.¹ On the other hand, the author of the Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa looks with disfavour on longitudinal and fan-like forms, while, according to him, it is the inferior towns which are rotund. He highly extolls rectangular and square shapes with sides parallel to the cardinal directions of the compass.² The directions of the author of the Kālikā Purāṇa are particular and emphatic. He corroborates his propositions with historic and legendary illustrations. In his opinion, the shapes must be either triangular, bow-shaped (i.e., semi-lunar), circular, or quadrangular, and never of any other shape. For, a drum-shaped (mṛdaṅgākṛti) town annihilates the dynasty of the reigning king, as Laṅkā, the capital of the King of the Rākṣasas, being drum-shaped was conquered and left in debris. The redoubtable monarch Vali had a most formidable capital in Śoṇitpur and yet was forsaken by fortune, because of its shape like a fan. The pentagonal Saubha town of the king Śālva, pendent high in heavens, will also fall to the ground;

c8.116.4

while the town of Ayodhyā of the Ikṣvāku family, because of its shape like a bow, has earned many victories.³ From the above it is clear that the rectangular or square shapes were the most favourable with the Indo-Aryan town-planners and were generally adopted in practice. The circular, triangular, multi-angular, or any irregular civic contours were denounced because such shapes would react upon the planning of sites and buildings, and their orientation.