Town Planning in Ancient India c9.53

c9.53

But it must not be supposed that diagonal streets were never used. We find in the circular form of the Nandyāvarta town-plan that streets radiated from the centre of the town. But it is not definitely known if this scheme of radiating streets proceeded from any conscious understanding of the principles for which they stand. It is more likely they were the result of merely copying the configuration of the ribs of the nadyāvarta flower.¹ But the circular type of the Nandyāvarta village was seldom executed in practice, for generally the village was planned after the mystic geometrical figure Nandyāvarta. Inclined streets were sometimes adopted along the outskirts as in the Swastika or multi-lateral village plans. In these, they could not be avoided.¹ But maps of many towns of ancient India, especially of Rājputanā and the Deccan, show that there are many diagonal curved streets in them. I am not sure if all of them were laid out according to orthodox town-plans or according to any pre-designed plan at all, though the town-planning traditions might have unconsciously asserted themselves in some features. Curved streets might have been there, prior to the foundation of the town and it was thought advisable not to deviate them, for natural routes best adjust themselves to the exigencies of the situation. Again many of the towns in Rājputanā and the Deccan are situated in hilly tracts where curved streets are inevitable and enhance the effectiveness of mountain vistas. Thus in the city of Vijayanagara, “ instead of a flat-lying town surrounded by cultivated fields and intersected by streets regularly laid out, we find the whole site interspersed with groups of bare rocky hills or huge granite boulders, with little vegetation of any sort upon them. The ancient streets or bāzārs are placed in the villages among the hills.”¹ We have at least one definite instance of a diagonal street that was deliberately conceived and laid out as a direct approach from the king’s palace to another city. This was the ‘ Pān Supāri Bāzār ’ street of Vijayanagar. Even in abstract theory we find in the Garuḍa fort that central diagonal streets were advocated to be laid out connecting one corner with its opposite. As in the case of city contours where, though exact mathematical figures were recommended in the authoritative treatises on Indian town-planning, yet the territorial restrictions made irregular zigzag shapes unavoidable, so was the case with the planning of streets. They certainly were made to conform to local conditions so that, economic and æsthetic considerations were not sacrificed to the fetish of symmetry or rectilinearity in a fixed direction. It cannot be said that the curved form of these streets was due to the ignorance of the master-builders of the directions of the town-planning authorities; for there exist even to-day in Southern India numerous descendants of these master-builders of olden times who understand and preserve the traditional lore on town-planning. Indeed they are the only persons extant who can explain the technical terms of architecture and cognate subject of town-planning. The very existence in India of the sub-castes, trade guilds in fact, is a sure guarantee that the principles of caste-profession were handed down from generation to generation.