Vastu-shastra (Vol. I: Hindu Science of Architecture; Vol. II: Hindu Canons of Iconography and Painting) v1.c49.4

v1.c49.4

Accordingly after we have sufficiently covered the background of our subject matter, let us now expound the Śāstra in a bit more technical and practical manner. Hindu science of architecture, as we have seen, not only formulates fundamental canons of the planning what may be termed as the engineering of architecture, but also exhaustively deals with the principal types of architectural planning—the towns, the temples and the residential houses. This part is reserved for the exposition of town-planning in ancient India. Naturally, therefore, we have to pen this subject in its manifold aspects, the region or country, the sites and soils, thus determining the selection of the site for the planning of the various and manifold types of towns, villages and forts. Towns in ancient times rose not in haphazard manner. Every town had its own history. Accordingly towns grew with a distinct and definite socio-political and religio-cultural need. There were capital cities, the Rājadhānī towns and there were the commercial towns, harbours, the ports etc., the Pattana. Similarly the temple-cities, garden-cities, health-resorts, riparine towns etc., etc. also came to their existence as per the above dictum. But before we proceed with this pre-requisite of the site-planning or its selection we have to give an account, not only of the rise and development of manifold types of towns and their special categories, the different and manifold varieties of villages and forts, but also of some of the basic factors which contributed towards this evolution and which, in the context of human civilization and the humanity at large are really most fundamental. Thus this forms the subject matter of the first two chapters.