Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c12.91

c12.91

The normal plan of well-to-do houses seems to have been based on a courtyard, to which access was gained by a door which normally led not from the main street but from a side alley; there is often provision for a watchman immediately inside the entrance. Round the courtyard or on two or three sides only are grouped rooms of varying sizes, including bathrooms with very well-made brick floors and elaborate drains running out to the street, though privies are practically unknown. Rubbish-shoots occur, however, running out through the wall into a brick-built rectangular bin outside, presumably cleared by order of the municipal authorities, who must similarly have been responsible for the elaborate drainage system which ran under the streets and into which house drains communicated. The main drains could be cleared by lifting large, specially made brick ‘manhole-covers’, and the whole conception shows a remarkable concern for sanitation and health without parallel in the Orient in the prehistoric past or at the present day. Soak-pits took the eventual sewage.