In independent India, no ancient city other than Jaipur invited so much attention from scholars, architects and town planners for its unique town planning based on the tenets of Vaastu sastra. However, only a few people know that there is also one ancient town of Sadasivapet in Medak district in the State, which is built as per the principles of the ancient science of Vastu .
Logging on to Google maps to search Sadasivapet town in Medak district, one will be surprised to find an exhilarating chequered square locket studded with diamonds tagged to a black cord, that is National Highway No.9, connecting Hyderabad and Mumbai surrounded by natural landscape.
Ancient roots
This town was conceived and founded by Rani Lingayamma, daughter of Sadashiva Reddy, during her regime between1680 and 1692. Raminedu, one of the ancestors of Sadashiva Reddy was gifted Kalpagooru Pargana by Sultan Ferozshah of the Bahmani Sultanate after the downfall of the Padmanayaka kings who then ruled the present Medak area. The Kakatiya kings ruled this area prior to its conquest by the Bahmani Sultans and Andole was the capital. The present population of the town is 45,500 as per the 2011 census and it is located at 1,755 ft from sea level and its latitude and longitude are 17.400 N and 77.580 E, respectively.
In the ancient texts such as Manasara, Silparatna, Mayamata and Viswakarma Vaastu Shastra, different types of plans for Pattana, Nagara and Grama were described. According to Manasara there are eight types of plans for designing towns. They are Dandaka, Sarvatobhadra, Nandyavartha, Padmaka, Swastika, Prastara, Karmuka and Chaturmukha.
Sadasivapet is planned as per the Sarvatobhadra type. This type of plan is suitable for the design of larger villages and also towns where the selected site is a square.
It is a chess board pattern town (grid-iron) with 10 divisions on each side, making a total of 100 divisions facing coordinal points. In the ancient days, for this type of plan a wall was constructed around it with ramparts and moat all around, but for villages, rampart and moat was not necessary. The central space called Brahmasthana needed to be occupied by a temple.
Sadasivapet is divided in to 10 divisions on each side. It is surrounded by a fort wall with four gates on four sides. The roads are laid exactly facing North-South and East-West direction. The speciality of this town is it satisfies the requirements of Koorma Vrusta Vaastu. In this, the central place will be at a higher level and the four sides and four corner points will be at a low level. The central point is 25 feet elevated from the periphery. This is an eye-opener to those who say that south west (Nivruthi) of the site must be higher and North east (Eeshanya) should be at lower level.
Jaipur
Few decades after founding of Sadasivapet, old Jaipur in Rajasthan was founded in November 1727 by King Sawai Jai Singh (1700-1743). The architect for conceiving the plan of that town was Vidyadhar Bhattacharya.
Many scholars have attributed the basic concept plan of old Jaipur as being a Prastara type of mandala mentioned in Manasara, one of the ancient treatises on Hindu town planning. The scholars say that Prastara plan is square or oblong in form and divided into four, nine or 16 major wards by appropriate number of roads which run East-West and North-South and the wards in turn planned as a chess-board pattern.
In 1946, M.Fayazuddin, then town planner to Nizam’s Local Government, published a surveyed map of Sadasivapet showing the road pattern and physical development. This plan shows vacant areas in South-East and North-East corners utilised for cultivation. The highest contour level is 1,785 at the centre of the town and 1,760 near the periphery. The town was encircled with a fort wall comprising four gates on four sides leading to Nandi Kandi on East, Siddapuram on South, Kohir in West and Atmakur on North. Presently, there are no such gateways. After scrutinising the town map in Google Earth and the map prepared by M.Fayazuddin, it was found that during the last six decades buildings have come up in the cultivated lands and spread outside the fort walls in a haphazard manner due to urbanisation. The government should take appropriate action to conserve this town for its unique architecture for posterity.
(The authors can be contacted at ‘archineers212@yahoo.com’)
