Town Planning in Ancient India c8.116.1

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).