Views on Indian urbanization
While bhArata has had a long history of urbanization, there is a certain view that we have absolutely no memory of the first such event. As per this view the first urbanization is a purely archaeological phenomenon – it occurred in North-Western India along the regions watered by the Indus – the famous IVC. This period of urbanization is believed to have been followed by a period of disintegration during which cities grew disorganized and were eventually abandoned for rural settlements. This is supposed to have been complete by around 1200-1100 BCE. Several vociferous white indologists and their admirers hold the view this period following the disintegration of urban centers was the “Vedic night” during which the technologically backward Indo-Aryans settled the Indian subcontinent (they would invariably use the despicable term “South Asia” as though it had an innocent geographical meaning) which had been shorn of its cities and composed the RV. A couple of centuries later the iron-age is supposed to have dawned in India followed by the composition of the YV and later Vedic texts. The Vedic nomads are believed to have kept the subcontinent in a technologically limited, rural condition (e.g. these indologists claim that the Indo-Aryans possessed the most rudimentary methods of pot-making and the flimsiest of dwellings) until eventually influences from the Middle East drifted in to seed a second urbanization closer to the time of the tathAgata and the nagna. These indologists believe that upaniShad-s like the ChAndogya were composed in these newly urbanizing centers in eastern India. Now the popular Indian counter-point has been that the SSVC cities were actually occupied by the Vedic people, who according to them were urban autochthons of India. Both these models have glaring problems many of which we have discussed before on these pages. More recently, Danino and the late Balasubramanian provided strong evidence that the metrology of the SSVC was congruent to the subsequent Hindu metrology. Their work indicates that these units of length, weight and volume that were in use in the SSVC were also reported as being in use by kauTilya in the mauryan era that was well into the second phase of urbanization. Further, these length measures continued to be used in urban architecture well into the Mohammedan occupation of the subcontinent (e.g. in Saracenic tombs like the Taj Mahal). This observation was interesting in many ways because it implied that even though the urban society of the SSVC had collapsed, its measures survived in Indo-Aryan tradition for a long time. This work of Danino and Balasubramanian, among others, is for the first time a reasonably convincing connection between classical textual evidence and archaeology has been established. Yet, in our opinion one of the big under-explored issues has been the textual analysis of the urbanization of India. This is a vast area of research needing enormous energy and we are not attempting to achieve all of that in this epistle. What we wish to do here is merely touch upon some key points of textual continuity and to see if it might throw any light at all on the relative dates of the extant textual memories of the urbanization process in India.
The reacquisition of the Hindu knowledge on town planning
There is a vast body of literature on town planning and urban architecture in the Hindu world. Tradition attributes the origin of this literature to the guild of architects who call themselves the vishvakarman-s after their claim of descent from the deva tvaShTar (the architect of the gods) [Footnote 1]. Similar literature is also extensively found in the tantra-s of saiddhAntika shaiva-s and the pA~ncharAtrika vaiShNava-s. The best known of the vishvakarman texts is the mAnasAra that is composed in a rather vulgar register of Sanskrit. The renewal of interest in the mAnasAra came due to a remarkable man Ram Raj, whose well-known history I feel an urge to retell. Ram Raj was a kShatriya of the clan of the brave rAmarAya of Aravidu, whose family lived in the late 1700s near Kumbhaghona in Tanjavur, very close the hamlet of my ancestors. As a youth he was of scholarly disposition and studied from his family texts as well as from whichever learned brAhmaNa-s he could meet. He picked knowledge on a wide range of topics including astronomy, mathematics and Sanskrit literature and he also acquired some knowledge of the language of the rising mlechCha-s of the time. Due to poverty visiting him from the loss of his property in the Carnatic wars he took a post as a lowly infantry man in the English army. The English quickly recognized that he could speak their language and had the brain. So they appointed him, still in his late teens, to a clerical post in the army. Seeing that his intellectual capacity was far more than that of a clerk the English officials promoted him to a lecturer in their Madras fort’s college to teach astronomy and mathematics. Subsequently, the commandant of the fort Captain Harkins recommended him to be appointed as a senior judge of the Bangalore court. He died a few years later at the age of 40. From around the age of 20 Ram Raj began collecting, editing and studying manuscripts of the mAnasAra. He observed that though the learned brAhmaNa-s could help him with navigating the language of the text they had the slightest memory of the actual architectural practices embodied in it. On the other side the illiterate artisans who preserved hereditary techniques had no knowledge about the textual authorities of their work. He finally wrote an essay on Hindu architecture and town planning, replete with reconstructive illustrations, based on his studies of the mAnasAra and in a sense dredged up this long sunken knowledge. Thus, Ram Raj had brought back to the general consciousness the textual precedents of town planning, which at that point was apparently lost even among the surviving vishvakarman-s of the age.
Nearly 80 years after the death of Ram Raj a new study of the mAnasAra was initiated by PK Acharya who spent the reminder of his life compiling a massive 7 volume study of the mAnasAra, which includes a critical edition, English translation, glossary of technical terms, diagrams of all structures as specified in the text, and a comparative study of Hindu architecture as found in the text and in practice across greater India. This monumental work of PK Acharya cost him his eyesight and health, but it offered before the Hindus a foundation to understand the urban philosophy of their ancestors. Since the mAnasAra’s edition by PK Acharya, a number of other texts have been edited and studied to a certain degree. Hence, some of his conclusions have become dubious or need major modification. Nevertheless, his study remains indispensable as a starting point and the descriptive aspects of it are still remarkably relevant.
Different flavors of architectural texts and their historical practice: the Tantric age
The architectural texts can be categorized in two major groups:
-The “smArta texts”
These texts are defined by their general acceptance of the authority of the veda and a tendency to be unbiased in terms of the deities who occupy temples in the central zones of a town. In the classical phase the main deities they paid attention to were both viShNu, shiva, sUrya, and forms of the trans-functional shakti, but they also might provide some details pertaining to gaNesha, skanda and specific devI-s like the sapta-/aShTa- mAtR^ika-s. Sometimes, they also gave the essential details for establishing temples for jaina-s and bauddha-s. They also tend to respect the role for the smArta brAhmaNa as the primary ritualist in the vAstu and sthApana rites and a non-sectarian vishvakarman as the primary architect. The mAnasAra is one of the best-known and probably the most detailed text of this type. However, such material was composed over several centuries, either as standalone texts, like the mAnasAra, or as parts of more encyclopedic works. One of the early specimens of such a work, embedded within a more encyclopedic work, is found in the second section of the arthashAstra of kauTilya of the maurya period, where we already notice the elements of vAstu-vidyA that were to be seen in the later architectural texts. A point to note is that chANakya in the arthashAstra specifies a more diversified set of temples, beyond those of just the primary sectarian deities, in the city center:
aparAjitA .apratihata jayanta vaijayanta koShThAn shiva vaishravaNa ashvi shrI madirA gRhANi cha pura madhye kArayet || AS2.4.17
I would interpret aparAjitA as durgA/the transfunctional goddess, apratihata (could be indra or viShNu), jayanta as skanda, vaijayanta (could be mostly indra but could also be viShNu) whose temples were for the granaries or the treasuries. Alternatively (more tenuously), aparAjita, apratihata, jayanta and vaijayanta could be the names of the four kaumAra deities, i.e. kumAra and his three emanations. Of the rest whose temples were in the middle of the city shiva, vaishravaNa, the ashvin-s and shrI seem obvious. The wine-goddess madirA could be a manifestation of the trans-functional goddess, who by that period was already receiving alcoholic offerings. This appears to be the more ancient condition, which was standardized to the classical Pauranic pattern of deities by the time of the mAnasAra. More perfunctory treatments of the smArta type are also seen in the purANa-s like the agnipurANa and the bR^ihatsaMhitA of varahAmihira from the gupta age. Later works of this type are the samarA~NgaNa-sUtradhAra of the bhojadeva paramAra (who was a saiddhAntika shaiva himself) and the material embedded in the mAnasollAsa of someshvara-deva chAlukya. Both these royal works, like that of chANakya and the mAnasAra have a considerable focus on royal issues, whereas the Pauranic and the bR^ihat saMhitA have much less or none of this.
-The tAntrika texts
These texts are squarely associated with the respective mantramArga streams to which they belong. Hence, the majority of them are pA~ncharAtrika vaiShNava or saiddhAntika shaiva. There is a smaller set which might also be called shAkta or nAstika. The core of these texts is primarily concerned with the details of designing temples for their chief sectarian deities and those for their parivAra-s. They accord a central position for the tantra-s of their respective systems in the vAstu and sthApana rituals, though they might not dismiss the veda-s. The primary officiant in these texts is a brAhmaNa deshika, learned in the mantra-shAstra of the given sect, rather than a smArta brAhmaNa. However, they also those took up the task, just like the smArta texts, of installing temples of the primary deities of the other sects. Thus, a shaiva and, in some cases, even a pA~ncharAtrika deshika might see himself as a sarvAdhikAri and a svayamAchArya who would install not just their own shaiva or vaiShNava temples respectively but also those of other sects, including those of the nAstika-s, like bauddha-s. Beyond this all the major tAntrika streams also contain significant texts that are devoted to more “secular” issues such as town planning, hydraulic works and fort construction just as the smArta works. The early shaiva works in this category are the maya-saMgraha, pi~NgalAmata, devyAmata and nandikeshvaramata. On the pA~ncharAtrika side we find the encyclopedic pAdma saMhitA and the aniruddha saMhitA providing details regarding planning or rural and urban settlements in many ways similar to the parallel sections in the devyAmata of the shaiva world. In the case of the shAkta realm we have the Southern yAmala tantra-s which are related to rural and to some extant urban design. These texts also specialize in settlements and shrines established by shUdra ritualists. Another peculiar text of this class that could also be considered shAkta is the sAmrAjyalakShmI pIThika. While somewhat later than the former texts, its focus is mainly royal, with considerable attention to design and provisioning of fortifications, and appears to have had currency both in South India and the Himalayan region. Like many other facets of Astika knowledge, the vAstu-shAstra was also internalized by the tAntrika nAstika-s. An example of this type of text is the vAstu-vidyA of ma~njushrI.
Starting with the gupta period there was a great efflorescence in temple building across the Indian subcontinent. The ripples of this traveled beyond into Shrilanka and the Hindu states that were being founded and expanded in the Far East. This resulted in both sectarian maThAdipati-s (starting with the pAshupata shaiva-s all over the country, vaikhAnasa-s in South India and pA~ncharAtrika-s within the gupta realm and the peri-gupta regimes [both temporally and geographically] in the Andhra country) and kings constructing new temples. The unification under the gupta-s and the vAkATaka-s provided new impetus for many of the temples to become pan-Indian pilgrimage centers (e.g. the jyotirli~Nga shrines and the temples arising in the great tIrtha-s) and in some cases the temples became the nuclei of new towns. Given that the vAstu-systems of both the tAntrika and smArta types give prominence to the temple in the center of the village or town, the new villages and towns built by these rulers were associated with temple building activity. The gupta era also saw a considerable rise in the popularity of the “Pauranic” system, thereby providing new niches for the sectarian ritualists of shiva, viShNu, kumAra and the trans-functional shakti in the newly emerging temples. In addition, it coupled the rural and urban design principles with that of the temple itself, and these materials were incorporated as a unit into the emerging pratiShTha tantra-s of the various sects.
Following the decline of the gupta-s, the building of new temples, villages and towns by the local rulers only increased further. As we have discussed before, this period marked the height of the “Tantric states” across greater India – as a result the leading deshika-s of the shaiva and vaiShNava sects had, in certain cases, much greater trans-regional influence then their royal patrons themselves and were now custodians of the trans-regional pilgrimage networks. As result the planning of new villages and towns under the models provided by the sectarian pratiShTha tantra-s became the norm. Thus, a millennium after the supposed start of the second urbanization of India we see a major phase of urban development with the dominant directing force being the pratiShTha tantra-s, rather than the smArta texts. Support for this readily emerges from architectural, textual and epigraphical evidence. For example, the pA~nchArAtrika model deployed extensively in course of the rise of the great Kashmirian rulers: The greatest of their conquerors, latitAdiya, the suppressor of the duShTa-s like the turuShka-s, bhauTTa-s and chIna-s, built the city of parihAsapura around the temple of viShNu, parihAsa-keshava, with the electrum image, and also another town darpitapura with centered on a viShNu temple. His successor jayApIDa built the new city of jayapura centered on the viShNu temples of chaturAtma-keshava and ananta-shayana.Outside the subcontinent the pA~ncharAtrika model was operational in the design of the great Khmer capital of Angkor with its central temple of viShNu. The shaiva-s, both of the mantra-mArga and those of the pAshupata lineages (e.g. the kAlAmukha-s), were even more active in development of temples, settlements and irrigation works.
Inscriptions describe shaiva Acharya-s setting up the towns of mattamayUra (either near Gwalior or Ujjain by purandara), golagI (in Madhya Pradesh near Chattisgarh by prabhAva-shiva deshika) and shivAvati near koTivarSha (near modern Bangarh by indra-shiva deshika, the chief tAntrika guru of va~Nga in the late 900s) [Footnote 2] centered on towering temples of shiva. Another famous example which illustrates the pan-Indian influence of the great saiddhAntika tAntrika-s is given by the malkApuraM inscription pertaining to the illustrious tAntrika vishveshvara-shaMbhu. He was from the rAdha province of Bengal and is said to have been both a vaidika and tAntrika scholar, who was an adviser and mantra-vAdin to the kings of choLa, kAkatIya, paramAra and kalachuri dynasties. At the behest of the kAkatIya queen, in the Andhra country he set up a village named vishveshvara-golagI after the famed golagI in the kalachuri country. He unified it with some neighboring settlements around velangpuNDi to develop it into a town. Here he settled 60 brAhmaNa families from the Tamil country and made them in charge of the upkeep of the land. He also divided surrounding land for to obtain revenues to fund a maternity clinic, an assembly hall and a school to teach shaiva tantras, the veda-s, nyAya and kAvya. Another hospital with a doctor and an accountant to manage revenues were also appointed by him. For the central temple of vishveshvara he appointed a musician from Kashmir who along with 14 female singers and dancers conducted the theater. He also brought people of the various service castes such as metal workers, mason, wood-workers, an architect, barbers, potters and sundry artists. There are several such examples of shaiva tAntrika-s setting up villages and towns around temples but I chose this one because in it exemplifies several important activities of these AchArya-s: 1) their pan-Indian scope of action. 2) Their role in trans-regional unification by bringing in one place people from different parts of the subcontinent depending on their talents. 3) The creation of relatively self-sufficient systems (i.e. independent of the central rulers) to direct agrarian productivity towards urbanization. 4) Creation of employment opportunities across a wide range of capabilities.
Now, most of the classical historical studies have to a great extent ignored the role of the tAntrika Acharya-s maintaining a trans-regional system across the subcontinent and throughout greater India all the way to the island of Sumatra, even as various kShatriya-s (honorary or genuine) jousted for supremacy across this varied geographical canvas. Others who mildly recognized this fact saw it as development specific to the shaiva sect, quite disconnected from the rest of Indic tradition. Still others saw it as part of a radical doctrinal radical shift from the earlier doctrinal landscape dominated by the mImAmsaka-s and sAmkhya-s along with their nAstika rivals. Yet, despite the differences in the sectarian deities of the tantra-s, and local architectural styles there was a remarkable continuity in terms of rural and urban development all the way from the arthashAstra to the sthApana texts of the vaiShNava-s and shaiva-s. Behind the doctrinal differences the basic organizational principles in a Hindu construction, be it a town of a shaiva guru or that of a mauryan governor, remained rather intact over at least 1800 years. This is abundantly evident from the underlying homology seen in the sthApana material of the vaiShNava and shaiva tantra-s and further with the smArta material from the mAnasAra to the arthashAstra. At the heart of this homology lies a maNDala that says something of the very origins of this urban tradition.
From house to village to town – the seating of the gods on the demon
kim api kila bhUtam abhavad rundhAnaM rodasI sharIreNa|
tad amara-gaNena sahasA vinigR^ihya adhomukhaM nyastam | |
yatra ca yena gR^ihItaM vibudhena adhiShThitaH sa tatraiva |
tad amara-mayaM vidhAtA vAstu-naraM kalpayAm Asa || bR^ihatsaMhitA 52.2-3 (chapter 53 in South Indian vulgate)
Thus the bR^ihat-saMhitA provides us with a curious origin mythology for the vAstu- maNDala: “It has been said that once upon a time a gigantic being arose who concealed the hemispheres of heaven with his body. The gods forcibly seized him flattened him face down [into the ground]. Now the gods reside in which ever part of his body they seized (while flattening him). Thus, the being was declared by vidhAtR^i (understood as prajApati/brahmA) as vAstupuruSha comprised of deva-s corresponding to each part of his body.”
This vastupuruSha is represented by a maNDala, the vAstu-maNDala and it lies at the heart of all Hindu constructions. The concept of the vAstu-maNDala is typically seen as something pertaining to the construction of a house. That is precisely how varAhamihira introduces it in the bR^ihatsaMhitA. However, in reality it went beyond that to encompass any type of construction. Indeed, as varAhamihira clarifies the Hindu constructions had a recursive framework of the vAstu-maNDala with its resident deva-s:
gR^iha nagara grAmeShu ca sarvatra evaM pratiShThitA devAH |
teShu ca yatha anurUpaM varNA viprAdayo vAsyAH || bR^ihatsaMhitA 52.67 (53.69 in S- vulgate)
As enumerated [in the section on houses] the deva-s occupy their positions all over [i.e. as per the vAstu-maNDala] not only in houses but also in villages and towns. According to this [arrangement of deva-s] the 4 castes starting from brAhmaNa-s will live in the places appropriate to them. Thus, the concept of the vAstu-maNDala repeated itself at different scales from a house, to a village to a town. An important point implicit in this regard is that the Hindu texts saw the town as a scale up of a village which in turn was derive from the house. Thus, it preserves within it the centrality of villages and the idea of them expanding upwards. This vastu-maNDala along with its recurrence at all scales is a conserved feature persists across the entire range of textual sources relating to rural and urban planning be they of the smArta or the tAntrika type. The implicit indications of it are already seen in the arthashAstra and persist through the pratiShTha tantra-s, suggesting that this feature was inherited from the common ancestor of all extant Hindu works on this matter. This further goes to suggest that the vAstu-maNDala was clearly linked to the emergence of the classical phase of planned Hindu settlements, which lasted until is submergence under the Mohammedan onslaught (though it is making a “new age” revival in modern bhArata). On these grounds it is rather obvious that the vAstu-maNDala was present in a recognizable form since the beginning of the so called second urbanization of India that is recognized on archeological grounds. However, a more difficult question is whether it had any connection to the first urbanization (i.e. the SSVC), especially in light of the proposed metrological continuity between the arthashAstra and the SSVC measures. To get some feel for the origin and evolution of the vAstu-maNDala we must now turn to its features and utilization.
Above are some reconstructed versions of the ancestral vAstu-maNDala-s. They are a system of grids and guides of increasing density that are deployed for different types of constructions and installations with the largest of them being used in houses, cities and towns. Certain key features are immediately apparent: 1) The deities which a consistently assigned to the cells are in large-part those who were predominant in the vaidika period. Even though the same system is used in various sectarian tantra-s they continue to use the same Vedic pantheon in the vAstu-maNDala. In fact certain powerful deities of the Tantro-Pauranic system are conspicuous by their absence. 2) In the corpus of the vAstu-puruSha the system recaptitulates the macranthropic motif that is prevalent in the veda, e.g. the puruSha. It is also reminiscent of the concept of placing the deva-s in different parts of the body which is prominent in vaidika thought. E.g. the sUkta in the taittirIya brAhmaNa 3.10.8.4-10 (agnir me vAchi shritaH …). 3) The placement of deva-s in various cardinal directions and inter-directions is a very frequently encountered concept in the veda – e.g. the sUkta in TB 3.11.5.1-3 or the sUkta 19.18 in the AV-vulgate. These vaidika mantra-s suggest the objective of covering the body or the directions with the deva-s as an act of protection. Likewise, we had earlier argued that the word maNDala is an internal development in Old Indo-Aryan from an Indo-Iranian root “mand” to cover or over-lay through the phenomenon of cerebralization. Thus, we see that term maNDala is likely to have been derived from this action of covering the ground or diagram or the direction (i.e. a space) with deva-s. It is important to stress that vAstu-maNDala-s deities are of the vaidika stratum, many of whom (e.g. pUShaN, vivasvAn, mitra, aryaman) had faded into oblivion by the classical Pauranic age. The maNDala still remembers some old associations, like that been mitra, varuNa (twinned in the maNDala-s) and aryaman (symmetric with them). Further, we find that deities place in a give directions, while roughly comparable to that of the classical period are not identical to the standard dikpAla set (e.g. sUrya in the east as against indra, soma in the north as against kubera). Thus, these vAstu-maNDala-s were in place before the emergence of the classical dikpAla system used in all tAntrika maNDala-s. The presence of yama in the south is first seen only in the yajurveda (e.g. in the formula: ye devA dakShiNasado yama netra rakShohaNas-tenaH pAntu teno.avantu tebhyo namastebhyas-svAhA |) Further, the larger of these maNDala-s have prajApati (or brahmA) as the deity in the center. This ascendance of prajApati is a feature of the vaidika stratum, starting with the late brAhmaNa period. While he is largely absent in the archaic sUkta-s and yajuSh-es, he is the most important or central deity of the late brAhmaNa texts. Together, these features suggest that vAstu-maNDala-s as they survive are most likely to be a direct inheritance of the late Vedic period, overlapping with the period composition of the brAhmaNa texts. This makes them the most archaic of the surviving Hindu maNDala-s. Thus like most features of the tantra, even the tAntrika maNDala-s are most likely an internal development with the Indo-Aryan thought from such precursors in the vaidika layers. In fact I would go as far as stating that the myth cited by varAhamihira on the vAstu-puruSha is likely to have been derived from a much earlier brAhmaNa-like passage.
The late brAhmaNa period can be dated approximately from the statement in the kaushItaki brAhmaNa that the summer solstice was roughly between magha and tishya. This would conservatively give us period between 1500-1200 BCE. This places us in the range of the earliest layers of the archaeological town of kAmpilya, the pa~nchAla capital. The Italian-backed work down in kAmpilya suggests that there were multiple layers of urbanizations here. Early settlements were supposed to go back to the period of 1200 BC. This was followed by a town from the period of the classical second urbanization and finally a layer closer to the kushAna-gupta period. Given the evidence that vAstu-maNDala was likely to have been there well before the second urbanization, I would not be surprised if it was already in action even in the earlier archaeological layer seen in this site.The reason I point to kAmpilya is because several workers like Bisht, the Italian team and Danino have suggested that the town from the second urbanization at kAmpilya has features that resemble the much earlier Dholavira town from the height of the SSVC (~2600 BCE). Danino also suggests that certain ratios in Dholavira are consistent with those used in the mAnasAra. Based on this, he, like some other workers, suggests that there was continuity between the two urbanizations and that the later architectural traditions like that of the mAnasAra bore undercurrents of the original SSVC urbanization. Now on philological grounds we can argue that the vAstumaNDala grids that guided rural and urban planning are likely to be older than second urbanization and at least coeval with some of the settlements that preceded the second urbanization in sites like kAmpilya. This brings up the question what about the link of the vAstu-maNDala to the SSVC. Firstly, the structure of the vAstu-maNDala makes it clear that it was entirely of Indo-Aryan provenance and does not show any sign of non-Aryan influence. So if the SSVC was non-Aryan it was clearly not derived from it but inherited from earlier Aryan precursors. Secondly, on philological grounds it appears less likely that the full-blown vAstu-maNDala was as early as the early Indus cities that appear to be coeval with an earlier layer of vaidika composition, namely the “kR^ittikA period”. Thus, one could always argue that the invading Indo-Aryans adopted metrological conventions from the declining Indus cities as they invaded and incorporated it into their own framework of vAstu-mANDala. However, given that features beyond just the units (e.g. numbers and proportions, like 108 and the increment by 1/4th in the mAnasAra and Dholavira) appear to be congruent between the SSVC and the Indo-Aryan models, it is not impossible that the Indo-Aryans entered India much earlier during or before the height of the SSVC. In that case these features could all be of Aryan origin and the vAstu-maNDala could merely be based on even earlier lost precursors from the earlier strata of Aryan thought.
Footnote 1: Curiously, this claim mirrors that of the scribal guild, the kAyastha-s, who arrogate an origin for themselves from chitragupta, the scribe of yama.
Footnote 2: What happened to these great shaiva centers whose maTha-s are supposed to have been described as being large constructions covered with gold? It is clear that they were annihilated by the Meccan demons Qutb-ud-din Aibak, Shams-ud-din Iltutmish and Alla-ad-din Khalji. The learned English scholar Sanderson identified the location of the famed golagI as the modern Gurgi near Rewa. He is likely to be correct in this regard because in 1931 the archaeologist Banerji who discovered the IVC uncovered a sprawling shaiva ruins in Gurgi which are like to be remnant of the golagI maTha. These ruins were subsequently largely ignored – after all they are Hindu ruins and not some adorable Saracenic structure.
mAnasa-taraMgiNI 