Town Planning in Ancient India c8.64

c8.64

It should be noted in the foregoing dissertation that except in the case of the ‘pārigha’ enumerated by Śukrāchāryya, nowhere is any reference made to the existence of any circumvallation. But all strongholds worth the name must have been invariably protected by walls.¹ Ditches were not essential as in the case of a fastness on the top of a mountain. "All forts must have unfailing stores of water, provisions, and arms, girt round by lofty gigantic trees, secured with walls, and furnished with many guarded gates."² The bulwarks are not alluded to because the classification of the forts is based on the fortificatory character of their natural environments. The Aryan town-planners were not slow to appreciate the utility of the local circumstances, but, on the contrary, they took advantage of the natural barriers and, with slight manipulation and modification, turned them into best fortifications where rivers and oceans, mountains and rocks, trees and bushes, deserts and swamps were made to play important parts of their own. But after all they did not favour a fort or town in the midst of a desert for the simple reason that the city in that case could with great difficulty maintain its food and water supply whether in times of peace or of war. For the sake of the best natural defence they always recommended a mountain-fort. The illustrious Hindu hero Śivājī also had predilection for this sort of fort as he built all his strongholds on the high summits of rocky cliffs. Śukrāchāryya arranges the forts in order of merit as follows: Giri, Jala, Dhanu, Vana, Pārikha, Airiṇa, and Pārigha.¹ “Of these, water and mountain fortifications are best suited to defend populous centres, whereas desert and forest fortifications are habitations in the wilderness (aṭavīsthānam).”² According to the Devī Purāṇa,³ the former should be resorted to by the civilised kings, while the barbarian hordes and wild tribes generally esconce themselves within the latter. The origin of this sort of fortification can be traced to the camp-life of the first Aryan settlers.⁴