Town Planning in Ancient India (An Old and Rare Book)

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"No study has so potent an influence in forming a nation's mind and a nation's character as a critical and careful study of its past history."

To-day is Saturday and one of these Saturdays, in the month of Ashadha, the planets, satellites, and constellations of the Universe conjoined and evolved into an aspect and configuration favour- able for the physical manifestation of this Self until then immanent in it and I was ushered into mundane existence. It is a well-known immemo- rial doctrine of Hinduism that every Hindu is born to a debt to the sage savants, Rshis, of old and hallowed memory. These selfless souls laid humanity under a sacred obligation by communi- cating the fruits of their profound meditation and beatific realisation to their disciples as well as by preserving them in treatises. And it is the pious duty of every Hindu to pay off this holy debt by acquiring and assimilating them through study and devotion as also by disseminating them broad- cast among mankind. This is the only recom- pense which our intellectual forebears may expect of us for their labours and gratuitous services.

Since the fundamental discovery of the world- importance of Sanskrit, not only for the philology of the Indo-European languages, but for the past of Aryan culture, there have been not a few further disclosures of the great past of India, and of the high levels attained, once and again, by its many and varied civilisations. Yet with all this increasing appreciation of ancient India- and not among her own children, but throughout the world-most still tend to think her achievements as all in the range of the subjective life, as of religion, philosophy and poetry, and as without parallels on the material and constructive side, of man's life and work: or at any rate that while princes and men of fortune may have attained to artistic magnificence of life, the ordi- nary life of the people was poor and deficient; as, alas, so much to-day.

Hence the value and significance of this book, as bringing out-not for the first time, but more clearly and extensively than heretofore-the evidence of a planned, organised and orderly life for all the people, in village, town and city alike. What better test, and proof, of true and general civilisation? Given such ordered communitary life-and with adequate homes, as we also know, -we cannot but see that the conditions of health and well-being have of old been realised; and these not only long before our present mingled dilapidation of the past and confusion of the present, but on a level ahead of our present practical endeavours. We understand better too how such communities have been truly educated, in religion and philosophy, in literature and art, and these with many and varied flowers, of which the few that remain are evidence of the many that have been lost. The historical value of this scholarly book is thus manifest and real.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages