Indian Antiquary Vol 54

SR No.: 032546
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1985
Total Pages: 376
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 18 MB

Page 373

DECEMBER, 1928)
ANCIENT TOWNS AND CITIES IN GUJARAT AND KATHIAWAD
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Its area then could hardly be more than one square mile. Bhamillika and Chandravati, though important feudatory centres in their own days, were, to judge from their ruins, only half a square mile in extent.207
From all this we may well conclude that the average flourishing and important city in ancient Gujarat was a square mile and a quarter in extent; its population then could hardly have, on the average, exceeded 25,000.
If such was the case with capitals, ports and forts, what was the case of towns, which were district head-quartors and sub-divisional head-quarters, we can well infer. These were not the places even of petty chiefs who could attract to them the needy Brahmana or the aspirant poet; sometimes, it is true, that the 'Dataka' or governor of a distriot was a soion of the royal family208 ; so he may have had a petty court of his own. But this must not have resulted in any appreciable augmentation of population. There were no irresistible economic forces operating at that time, as they operate now, causing villages to be depopulated and oities overcrowded. So these towns, on the average, could hardly have had a population of more than 10,000.
It is true that they were centres of administration of the whole district'; but we must also note that in the Ancient Hindu Polity, the principle of devolution was carried to the greatest possible extreme. Inscriptional evidence in Gujarat, as well as in the remaining parts of India, clearly shows that the adjudication of civil and criminal disputes used to take place locally in every village. Whenever a village is granted away, the donee is invariably invested with the right of receiving the proceeds of fines in civil and criminal cases that were adjudicated in the village. If the ancient villager had to run up to the Taluka and Zills head-quarter for the adjudication of the pettiest dispute, civil or criminal, this would hardly have been possible. From the Chola epigraphs, Nos. 77 of 1900, and 223 of 1902, it appears that even such grave cases, as those of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, were decided locally in villages. Ancient Indian villages were independent, self-contained units economically as well as administratively, a fact which must have adversely affected the development of Zilla head.quarters into cities of considerable dimensions. The fact that many of these like Karmantapura, Harshapura, Kasadraha, Kalapaka have dwindled down into villages a thousand or so in population, also shows that they could not have been at any time cities of over 10,000 population. No sudden devastation is known to have overcome them; and the shifting of the head-quarter of the district cannot account for so great a reduction.
If the district head-quarter was usually less than 10,000 in population, the sub-divisional and taluka head-quarters must usually have been only large villages of about four to six thousand population.
Defence.-Having thus determined the dimensions of our cities and towns, let us 600 what was their defence arrangement. Usually they were walled ; in cases of capitals, commerciai ports and frontier cities there were strong ramparts surrounded by deep ditches. We have already seen how capitals like Valabhi, Bhumillika, Bhinmal, Anahilapattana, ports like Bharoch and Hastaka vapra, and frontier towns liko Vardhamana, Darbhavati, Jhinjuwada were all strongly fortified places. Gates of the towns and cities were carefully guarded ; and ingress and egress was possible only through them. There was usually local militia to defend the town and cities ; many inscriptions are discovered in the south, immor. talising the memory of local heroes who had laid down their lives in the defence of their towns and villages 209
208 Oj. Siladitya !I, grant of, 362 G.E.
307 Vide back under ithumikhaka and Chandravati. 209 Hattimallur Inscription of Krishna I (765 A.D.)