Town Planning in Ancient India c8.116.3

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;