New Insights into Harappan Town-Planning

Dholavira’s elaborate town-planning rests on the conscious use of specific proportions for its successive enclosures. Those proportions combined with the city’s dimensions allow us to calculate precisely the unit of length used for the fortifications, to relate it to the Lothal ivory scale, and to work out potential subunits. Both proportions and units receive overwhelming confirmation from structures of Dholavira and other Harappan sites. Units are finally refined to a dhanus of 190.1 cm and an angula of 1.76 cm, the former being 108 times the latter. The Dholavirian scheme of units is then shown to be related to historical unit systems in several ways; in particular, the Arthashastra’s scheme of linear measures conclusively has Harappan roots. Finally, the paper attempts to outline some of the abstract concepts underlying Dholavira’s geometry, taking a peep at a hitherto neglected component of the Harappan mind.