Vedic Age Cities, Towns and Town Planning

  Rebuttal to false claims of Michael Witzel, Asko Parpola, Romila Thapar and others of their likes

                                                Lalit Mishra, email - mishra.lalit@gmail.com

 

 

The makers of Vedic civilization who developed Vedic culture and envisioned entire planet earth as one integral family of theirs,  way back in the era when size and shape of earth was unimaginable, such a refined magnanimous vision suggests Vedic people led an advanced life, spread evenly in cities, towns and villages.

In any civilization to transition from rudimentary living in huts, mud houses in villages to developed cities, it requires to have an advanced economy with good trade and commerce activities, so was the case with Vedic Age Aryans who could built large fortified towns in the Indus - Saraswati basin that we know as Indus Valley Civilization.

A strong yet wrong perception is built by Asko Parpola and Witzel that Vedic economy was merely an Agro-Pastoral economy as they find in Ural steppe, Vedic Urban life echoed in Vedic mantras rejects such ideas. Here is a list of significant key words showing advanced state of Vedic Age economy, that had already been matured when Rig Veda was composed.

श्रेणी, Shreni (Rig Veda 10.142.5) - Business corporates aligned due to contracts or through common objective or business interests, functioning in contingents  वनिक Vanik ( Rigveda 5.45.6) Businessman
अनवभ्र्राध, Anavabhraraadh ( Rig Veda 2.34.4) – Wealth earned right manners.अभिह्रित, Abhihrit (Rig Veda 1.189.6) = Fraud, Cheat कुसीदी,Kusidi (Rig Veda 8.81/82) – Money lender who lends money to earn interest.आय, Aaya (Rig Veda 1.125.3) -  Incomeऋण, Rina ( Rigveda 8:47:17) – Loan.ऋणया, Rinayaa (Rigveda 2:23:11) – Person who collects loan amount.ऋणकाति, Rinakati (Rig Veda 8.61.2) – Ensured loanऋणवान, Rrinwan (Rig Veda 1.169.7) – Person under loanऋण सन्नयन, Rin Sannaya (Rig Veda, 8.47.17) – Collection of installments of 1/8’th or 1/16’th of loan, a precursor to idea of EMI, in Atharveda ( 19.45.1) we find idea of compound interest on loanक्रीणाति, Krinati (Rigveda 4:24:10) –  To Purchase अविक्रीति, Avikreeti (Rig Veda 4.24.9) - Goods, not soldअधिवक्ता, Advocate (ayurveda 16.5) – Authorized Spokesperson, An advocate

Vedic hymns give thorough light on design and architecture for building towns and cities and advanced state of economy.

The city life of vedic period is the  focus of this paper wherein we make attempts to remove the unqualified myth getting perpetuated by Romila Thapar and her camp of historians that vedic age people didn’t know of large cities to the scale of Indus Valley civilization, However, way back in previous decades, a few cynics admitted existence of towns although they made attempts to downsize the area of towns without supporting citations, claiming that there are only ruins of small settlements in the name of towns ('armaka', Falk 1981) or ruins of small forts ('Pur', Rau 1976), all such bogus claims were further selectively quoted and re-asserted  by M Witzel and his talebearers in India who appeared quite a bit under-informed in the subject at first sight, it has happened in the previous century as well.

Let’s explore what is found in Vedic  corpus,  The overabundant importance and admirations for 'Ashva', 'Gau', 'Dyau' is peculiar to Vedic culture. The 'Ashva' symbolizes the year (samvatsar) and the horse , 'Gau' symbolizes Sun rays and 'Cows' and 'Dyau' represents ecliptic and horizon , The interpretation of mantras highly depends upon the running context in the concerned hymns, It’s obvious to  find very  idea of Ashvamedha rite in the Rigveda itself, since, Asvamedha represents global aspirations of Aryans for making a civilized world, The idea of Asvamedha  emerged for the first time in Rigvedic  mantra ( 4.48.8), The mantra explains initial two day’s rituals of total 21 days long rite of Asvamedha , Shatpath Brahaman upholds the Aryan idea of making a civilized world.

 

It’s obvious for the Vedic people to develop cities and towns who had dreams of conquering world and converting it into a family and not into a colony of theirs. It’s not a co-incidence that makers of Sumerian , Chaldean and Egyptian civilizations were said to have come from the EAST, Who else were those eastern flag bearers of humanity, if not the Aryans, who had this grand wisdom that is echoed in Vedas.

Wiztell presents ultra-simplistic idea that  Vedic  “Pura” is small fort and makes his story around it, seemingly, he is unaware of citation like “Tripur” (Krishna Yajurveda  6.23 and Shatpath Brahman, 6.3.3.25) and  “Mahapur” ( Krishna Yajurveda, 6.2.3.1 and Aitereya Brahman, 1.23.2), these terms definitely points to larger towns with multiple sectors, Rigveda (7.56.16) mentions a multi storied building.

Rigveda (2.41.5 and 3.8.3) cites grand villas erected with thousand pillars for rulers of those times, God Varuna’s house is cited having thousand doors also, construction of such large villas can happen in large towns, citation of pillars shows matured town planning and construction engineering, such grand villas can not be built only on making walls, even today such a large construction requires pillars, There can not be second opinion that construction engineering was comperatively enough advanced.

Wiztell, Romila Thapar etc. doesn’t seem to have known that Taittiriya Arranyak uses term “Nagar” ( 1.11.7 and 1.31.2), It’s notable that Aranyakas are the texts pertaining to secluded life of Sages in the forests and finding  reference to “Nagar” or “Town” in Aranyakas is critical to students conducting study of Vedic science and engineering, We know that the term “Nagar” is still in use in India for “towns”.

Rigveda ( 7.88.5 ) and Atharva Veda (9.3.19) gives rise to idea that in the vedic age measurement of the area designated for the construction was taken, they were using two distinct terms “nimit” and “mit” for the measurement, Atharva Veda (9.3.19) suggests that “mit” was used for the measurement of larger area, probably the external or exposed area, large houses normaly had smaller rooms ( 9.3.20) builit inside.

 

One can linguistically trace origin of IE word “Limit” into vedic word “mit”.
 

It’s said that Varuna’s villa had large meeting rooms ( Rigveda 2.41.45), Moreover, Rigveda (1.167.3) talks about making specific rooms allocated n houses for women and Atharva veda (9.6.5) mentions guest rooms for guests visiting to a household.

 

We find that during the time of Rigveda, They Vedic people already had practice of growing trees before the houses and even trimming the unwanted leafs, One my like to refer to Rigveda (8.40.6)

 

अपि वृश्च पुराणवद् व्रततेरिव गुष्पितमोजो दासस्य दम्भय ( ऋग्वेद 8. 40 . 6 )

 

Reference to various types of utensils used to store food grains is found, food grains were stored in designated places called “sthavi”.

The basis of “Vastu” that is the branch of town planning and construnction engineering and  in use even today, is available in Rigveda in it’s seventh mandala as well as in many other mandalas that imagines “Vastospati” in two hymns (7.54 and 7.55 ), Shatpath brahman (5.1.19) relates shape of houses with human body.

In the vedic age, people used to wear colorful dresses and ornaments made of Gold and Silver, they also used to wear jackets ( Pesas) and waistcoats (Drapi ) along with more popular Uttariya.

 

It’s pathetic to see that Romila thapar fails to see ( "Hindutva and history", Oct 2000) structured irrigation  system by making canals and large wells. in the central and eastern India, common folks still call large wells “INDARA” in the memory of vedic god Indra who w’d have started making large wells. Readers can refer to unsubstantiated false writings of Romila Thapar accessible with link -

http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl1720/17200150.htm

Citations to huge amount of donations, large armies and demolition of forts in large numbers too directly or indirectly indicates existence of towns and cities in addition to villages during Vedic age.  

Rigveda (4.24.9) briefs on making terms and conditions for business transactions, Business through large ships and boats was already a regular practice  done in Rigvedic India (Rigveda, 1.116.5), large ships were called “Shataritra”, Vedic sage Shunahshepa says that he knows about sea routes.

 

Conclusion

 

In the Vedic age, sages had everything available to them such as advanced mathematics, knowledge of building architectures, astronomy along with sufficient financial resources on account of trades and seafarers that’s required for making large multistoried houses, villas and town and cities, therefore, It’s concluded  that statements like vedic sages and common people didn’t know about Towns and Cities is not true.

 

      End of The Document