Town Planning in Ancient India c8.94

c8.94

The magnitudes of the trenches were commensurate with the defensive necessities and civic requirements such as the lie of the city ground or the erection of ramparts. The ditches of Dvārāvatī (modern Dvārakā), the capital of Srī Kṛṣṇa, looked like the river Ganges.² Indraprastha, the new capital founded by the king Yudhishthira, was girt with ditches resembling seas by their width.³ Śukrāchāryya lays down that "the ditch is to be constructed making the width double its depth."⁴ The author of the Brahmavaivarta Purāṇa puts down hundred cubits as the suitable breadth for a ditch while the depth of ten cubits will suffice for it round an encampment.⁵ Kauṭilya’s details about the proportions of the ditches are fuller. According to him the three ditches round the fort are to be "fourteen, twelve, and ten daṇḍas respectively in width with depth less by one-quarter or by one-half of their width, square at their bottom, one third as wide as at their top.”¹ The comparatively short breadth of Kauṭilya’s trenches is due to his provision for their greater number. But the ditch round Pāṭaliputra is reported by Megasthenes to be six hundred feet broad and forty-five feet deep.