The Indian treatise on statecraft, attributed to the minister of the Maurya founder. Its second book tells the king how to build a fortified capital: moats and ramparts, twelve gates, royal roads, and the quarters of gods, castes and trades.
Tradition names the author as Kauṭilya (also called Cāṇakya), adviser to Chandragupta Maurya in the late fourth century BC; the text as we have it was probably compiled over several centuries around the turn of the era. It was lost to modern scholarship until a manuscript was found in 1905 and published, with an English translation, by R. Shamasastry (1909, 1915).
Book II, chapters 3 and 4 plan the fortified city. The site is enclosed by three moats and an earthen rampart topped by a wall with towers; three royal roads run east–west and three north–south, giving twelve gates. The palace stands north of the centre; the shrines of the city’s gods are in the middle; the guardian gods of the quarters are set at the gates; and the four varṇas live in the four quarters. Cemeteries and the dwellings of outcastes lie outside.
The book, part by part
I Book II, ch. 3: building the fort
Moats, rampart, wall, towers and gates.
II Book II, ch. 4: laying out the fortified city
The royal roads and twelve gates; the palace, the shrines at the centre and at the gates; the quarters of the four varṇas and of the crafts.