TOWN PLANNING

TOWN PLANNING

The town-planning of the Indus civilisation followed the grid system, Le., the roads oriented north-south and east­west cut across one another almost at right angles, and the city was divided into a number of rectangular or square blocks. The main roads (streets), some as much as 30 feet wide, were quite straight. Lamp posts at intervals indicate the existence of street lighting. Flanking the streets, lanes and bylanes were well-planned houses.

In none of the major cities has any stone building been found; standardised burnt brick of good quality was the usual building material for dwelling houses and public buildings alike. Elsewhere in the contemporary world, mud-bricks and wattle-and-daub were the usual building materials, and burnt-bricks were altogether unknown. The houses, often of two or more storeys, varied in size, but were all based on much the same plan-a square courtyard, around which were a number of rooms. The entrances were usually in wide alleys, and no windows faced the streets.

The houses had tiled bathrooms, the design of which shows that the people preferred to take their bath by pouring pitchers of water over the head and shoulders.
The bathrooms were provided with drains, which flowed into sewers under the main streets, leading to soak­pits. The sewers were covered throughout their length by large brick slabs. No other civilisation until that of the Romans had so efficient a system of drains. In Kalibangan many houses show the presence of wells.

The towns were generally divided into the citadel (acropolis) and the lower town. The citadel was an oblong artificial platform some 30-50 feet high and about 400x200 yards in area. It was enclosed by a thick (13 II)eters at Harappa) crenelated mud-brick wall, externally rivetted with burnt bricks, corner towers and occasional bastions built along the length. Although no separate fortified mound has been found at Lothal, the conception of an acropolis seems to have existed. On the citadel were erected the public buildings, while the lower town was the town proper, in any case at least a square-mile in area.

At Mohenjo-daro (mound of the dead), there lay in the citadel a 'college', a multi-pillared 'assembly hall', a public bath (the Great Bath) and a large granary consisting of a podium of square blocks of burnt-bricks with a wooden superstructure. Such blocks in mud-brick have also been found on the citadel-mound at Kalibangan and on the acropolis at Lothal. But in the citadel of Harappa, we come across a series of brick platforms which formed the basis for two rows of six granaries. At Harappa, to the south of the granary lay working floors, probably for pounding grain, and two rows of workmen's quarters The Great Bath, measuring 12 metres by 7 metres and 2.4 metres deep, had a floor of burnt bricks. Steps led from either end to the surface, while there were rooms alongside for changing cloths. A large well in an adjacent !oom was the source of water, and an outlet in a comer of the Bath drained it. The Bath was probably used for ritual bathing. ECONOMY
The Indus Valley Civilisation clearly had a well-developed economy.