Vastu-shastra (Vol. I: Hindu Science of Architecture; Vol. II: Hindu Canons of Iconography and Painting) v1.c53.3

v1.c53.3

With all round development in science and art, there is no dearth of the scientific and systematic canons of the town-planning in the present day world. Though, the fundamental canons of town-planning have not changed, some of the elaborations as per the characteristic requirements of the modern age—the Commerce, the Industry, and the Transport, the means of communication and the like, have revolutionised the very character of town-planning, as we had in ancient India, or for the matter of that in any ancient country of the world. The fortification so elaborately dealt with as a principal feature of the ancient and medieval town-plans has been bidden a goodbye; the temples, the dedication of the plots or wards to the different deities of the Hindu pantheon forming the very back-bone of the site-planning and the folk-planning, have become obsolete and they are only a matter of solitary ritual with no intrinsic value attached to them. In matters of town-planning in India today, the knowledge of the ancient town-planning canons must form an integral and indispensible discipline of a town-plannner. Copying the West is not only bad but injurious also. It can not give us the desired result.