Chapter 8 - Inauspicious Towns

As in the laying out a residential house or planning a temple and building them, utmost care is to be taken by an expert architect, similarly, supreme care is to be bestowed by a town planner upon the planning of the town and housing the different localities both secular and religious, so that auspicious results are achieved.

The Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra lays down:

śāstrajñaḥ sthapatistasmāt prayatnaparayā dhiyā |
yathāvat kathitaṃ cāru nagaraṃ viniveśayet || (a0 10.66)

The word ‘Cāru’, beautiful, is significant. After all, architecture is only one of the fine arts. And hence unless an aesthetic experience like that of poetry or painting is produced, it is no art at all.

Moreover, the injunctions as laid down in the scriptures—the ancient manuals of the science, if violated, bad results befall the townsmen, they never flourish to the fullest extent of health and longevity, peace and prosperity, wealth and progeny—the bad results of the bad planning of the town not only affect the town itself, but the whole Nation, of which the town is only a unit—cf. S. S, X-67 and onwards, vide also V.L.

The inauspiciousness or unsuitability or imperfection of a townplan mostly rests on the occurrence of a variation in the shape contrary to the one deemed fit and auspicious. While the authoritative sources like Mayamata (Ch. X) and Devī Purāṇa (Ch. 72) recommend a variety of good many shapes—square, rectangular or oblong, circular, elliptical, triangular, etc. the Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra restricts its prescription to only one shape—the square one. The accounts of Agni (Ch. 106) and Matsya (Ch. 217) to some extent are not very different from those of the Samarāṅgaṇa. Apart from the square shape the Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra can admit of no other shape. It recommends square plan in relation to the towns. The square is the fundamental form of Indian architecture. It is the mark of order, of finality to expanding life, its form and of perfection beyond life and death. It has its sanctity from the Vedic altar.

From square as fundamental sacrificial symbolism, the temple architecture was evolved in its likeness. Hence,

“Bhoja (vide his Yukti Kalpataru) cites with approval, the opinion of Bhaviṣyottara Purāṇa that hardly ever should towns be shaped triangular or circular, while longitudinal or square towns are the best”.

“Both concur in the view that long-shaped towns make for permanence, peace and prosperity: while a square capital yields to the sovereign all the four fruitions (catur-varga), piety, means, desire and salvation. Triangular towns annihilate the three powers whereas circular ones are hot beds of many endemic pestilences”.

Again,

“It is clear that the rectangular or square shapes were the most favourable with the Indo-Aryan town-planners and were generally adopted in practice. The circular, triangular, multi-triangular or any irregular civic contours were denounced, because such shapes would react upon the planning of sites, and buildings and their orientation” (T.P. In Ancient India—103 & 101).

It is in keeping with this broad outlook of Indian architecture that the Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra recommends the square shape as the best shape and its corresponding square plan of 64 square, as the site-plan for towns and its other categories (Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra 13-5).

These inauspicious towns as enumerated by the text are:—

1. Chinnakarṇa,
2. Vikarṇa,
3. Vajrākṛti,
4. Sūcīmukha,
5. Vartula,
6. Vyajanākāra,
7. Cāpākāra,
8. Śakaṭadvisama,
9. Vidikstha,
10. Bhujaṅgakuṭila.

All these forms after which these different varieties have taken their names are not auspicious or at least inconsistent with the standard measurement of a Town-plan. The Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra, as we have seen, considers the square plan as the most perfect plan.

Let us now take them one by one:—

1. Chinnakarṇa—A town whose ears as it were, are cut down, i.e. not in square shape—fear of theft, breaking out of epidemics, rising of the enemies, these are the consequences of this inauspicious shape of the town.

2. Vikarṇa—People living in this category of the inauspicious town suffer from jealously, enemity, the absence of progeny, the most universal curse, and the loss of longevity.

3, Vajrākāra—Octogonal town brings about servile attitude of men towards their women-folk. The illnesses of poisons consequent upon too many conspiracies are most common. Agnipurāṇa also condemns this shape (Ch. 106).

4. Sūcīmukha—Needle-shaped town is devoid of any prosperity. People living there die of starvation and epidemics.

5. Vartula—Circular towns augar ills—the townsmen living there get poor and are deprived of their savings and do not live long and get misery along with their king. But the accounts of Purāṇas like Matsya (Ch. 72), Brahmāṇḍa (Ch. 8) and Kālikā (Ch 84) favour this shape.

6. Vyajanakāra—Fan-shaped town abound in liars and people are short-lived; because of illness arising from Vāta and of unsteady minds. Kalikāpurāṇa (ibid) also condemns it and it says, that redoubtable monarch Bali had a most formidable capital Śoṇitapura and yet was forsaken by fortune; because of its shape like a fan.

7. Cāpākāra—A bow-shaped town. It is a bit curious to note that the bow-shape is reckoned as an inauspicious shape by the Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra; whereas Agni (Ch. 72) eulogizes it as the best variety and the ancient city of Varanasi presents a semi-lunar aspect. Kalikāpurāṇa says, ‘the town of Ayodhya of the Ikṣvāku-family, because of its shape like a bow, had earned many victories. But the Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra has it otherwise’. According to it, those living in this town have corrupt wives, and themselves arc impotent.

8. Śakaṭadvisama [Śakaṭa-dvi-samākāra]—Resembling two carts, it is altogether an innovation. Here the fear of thief, sufferings, sorrows, fires, are always there. It is also called Dviguṇāyatasaṃsthāna, parallel and longitudinal two towns having the middle belt joined to one another. Such a town is bad from the very beginning actions devoid of fruitions, Brahmins, are in constant fear, the relatives are always quarreling among themselves, the townsmen along with king are suffering from the loss of elephants, horses, and are least susceptible to the attacks of the enemies.

9. Diṅmūḍha—Wrongly oriented, a town brings about the loss of men, outbreaks of fire, fears from women and constant misery. And lastly—

10. Bhujaṅga-kuṭila—A town of crooked shape, resembling to a serpent, is also inauspicious—people living there never grow and are in constant fear of the weapons (symbolic of fights), demons, fires, storms and spirits, demi-gods together with bodily ailments.

Now in the end some other varieties of the inauspicious towns arc cited. We find that triangular or drum-shaped (Yava-madhya) towns are also reckoned as inauspicious and Kālikā-Purāṇa is more emphatic in saying that this variety of the shape (Mṛdaṅgākṛti) annihilates the dynasty of reigning king, as Laṅka [Laṅkā], the Capital of Rāvaṇa, the king of Rākṣasas, being drum-shaped was conquered and left in debris.