Book Title: Vishwakarma Vastushastram
Author(s): Vasudev Shastri, N B Gadre
Publisher: S Gopalan Tanjor

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Page 27
________________ xviii by soldiers. There is a single gateway strongly built and has a bridge to be crossed with sluice-gates and draw-bridge for entering the gate. It has a hundred main streets with subsidiary ones with all the amenities and requirements of an extensive town where the king might reside. The popu lation is about 12,000 and consists of all castes and professions. CITIES The next chapter deals with the planning of the city. Twenty types of cities are mentioned, namely, Padmanagara Sarvatōbhadra, Visweśabhadra, Kārmuka, Prastara, Swastika, Caturmukha, Sree Pratistha, Bali Deva, Devapura, Manuṣapura, Vaijayanta, Puța bhedana, Giri, Jala, Guha, Aṣṭamukha, Nandyavarta, and Rajadhani. 1 THE DIVISION OF SITES INTO PADAS OR SQUARES PRESIDED OVER BY DEITIES In every text on Architecture the site of the city is divided into twenty-five parts each associated with a parti cular deity and referred to by that name in describing the situation of various buildings etc. in the city. In this part of the subject our text makes a convenient deviation from the elaborate divisions of sites found in other texts, into 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, etc. parts up to 32x32 or 1024 parts each division assigning particular deities to particular parts. The propitiation of these deities with prescribed offerings is a part of the necessary preliminary to the beginning of construction. The Vastu purusa who is said to be pressed prone to the earth has his several limbs in particular portions of the site, and rules have been laid down both for the propitiation of Vastu puruşa and the avoidance of the particular portions of the site associated with particular limbs of his for particular purposes. 1. These names include those of the eight type-designs like Swastika, Nandyavarta which are mentioned in Silpa and allied Sastras. They are described with illustrative charts in the Appendix.

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