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52
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[ DECEMBER, 1925
Buildings. During the earlier period, mud and brick was the material usually used, stone masonry came in vogue only in the ninth century. Specimens of many of the bricks used for ancient houses are discovered in the ruins of Valabhi, Ghumli and Chandravati, they show that the bricks were nearly as strong, for all practical purposes, as stones them. selves. Even when the stone was introduced along with the marble, it was used chiefly for temples, tanks and dams; ordinary houses including public buildings usually consisted for the most part of bricks.
Public Buildings.-Secular public buildings were not many in ancient towns and cities. Administration being largely decentralised, there was no necessity of having an endless number of central offices to be located in the district head-quarters. Each town, however, had at least one public hall called 'nigama sabha' (Nasik Insc., No. 12) which was used for the transaction of public business, for the preservation of public records and other similar purposes.
Religious public buildings, i.e., temples, viharas,' etc., were in our Gujarat cities very numerous. In mort of the cities that Hiuen Tsiang visited, he notes, as we have already seen, the presence of a number of 'viharas' and temples. Whore a modern city possesses one temple, the ancient one possessed probably five. And no wonder; for people were in those days more religious, faithful and devotional than they are now, and their charity was usually directed to the erection, reparation, enlargement or endowment of temples and * viharas.' If after the Muhammadan rule of more than 300 years, Wadnagar could posse88 in 1600 A.D. more than 300 temples, as noted by Abul Fazl, we may well conclude that the averago Gujarat town of our period possessed far more temples than the average modern town.
Water supply.--Where citizens were unable to get the necessary water supply from wells, large tanks were usually constructed for that purpose. We have already seen how many of our towns like Godhra, Dholka, Dohad, Dabhoi, although they were not capitals, possessed large tanks for drinking-water. In capital cities like Anahilapattana and Bhinmal, tanks were many; and some of them at least were set apart as public baths; for prabandhas refer to people sporting in tanks.210 From drinking-water tanks, water was taken to con. venient centres in the towns and stored thore in wells, from which the locality around would derive its water supply.
Gardens and Orchards. It appears that gardens and orchards were an important feature of ancient Gujarat towns and cities. We need not base this conclusion upon the poetic description of our prabandhas; there is ample other evidence. For, as we have already seen in many of our grants, the granted property consists of gardens and orchards situated either within the town or on its precincts. In fact, the presence of numerous temples and pious devotees inevitably entailed the laying out of numerous gardens.
These gardens, though originally intended, in most cases, for the purposes of divine worship, must have also incidentally served the purpose of human recreation. The statement about Daśapura gardens :
स्वपुष्पभारावनैर्तनेगन्द्रैः मदप्रगल्भालिकुलस्वनैश्च । ।
2017 201 fata 97 Aagala || Mandsor Inscr. clearly shows that some were definitely reserved as places of public recreation.
Wealth and Commerce.-Gujarat and Kathiawad have been, since earliest times, rich in natural wealth, we have seen how the author of the Periplus' was impressed by the bounty
310 Compare the following verse in the description of Dasapura.
सटोस्थवृक्षग्युतनकपुष्पविचित्रतीरान्तजलानि भान्ति | प्रफुलपयाभरणानि यष सरांसि कारंडवसंकुलानि ॥
