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CHAPTER VI HOUSES The term house' stands for building made for common people to live in, or a building made or used for some particular purpose or occupation Building or structure in architectural context denotes the construction or making by combining parts or putting materials together. The expression of house as a structural building meant for the uses of commonalty signifies the sala type of buildings mentioned in the Matsya Purana², Brihat Samhita of Varahamihira³, Samarangana Sutradhara 4 and the Apprajitaprccha.5 A number of architectural treatises such as Mayamata, Manasara Samaranganasutradhara, Yuktikalpataru, Aparajitaprccha VisvakarmaVastusastra, Sutras and Puranas present certain rules and regulations. which were observed during the planning of houses. These works deal with the selection of the sites, soil testing, kinds of plot, when to start construction, calculation of auspicious time of different months, influence of different stars, installation of pillar, way of locating the doors in a house. The architectural treatises also specify the height of the building and its width, home ceremony, the ways of having trees for the supply of wood for a building, location of the houses of four castes and instructions regarding the construction of different rooms in the house. First of all the question arises: what is house planning and why is it necessary? Either all houses are planned scientifically or they grow naturally? :

193 The basic and essential needs of a man are food, clothing and shelter. The shelter may be a cave of a mountain, a hollow of a tree, or a thatched house or a building constructed with bricks, stones and cement. A man has always protected himself from heat, cold, rain, wild animals by taking shelter in some enclosure or in some kind of a house. People in a civilized society always feel a need for a comfortable and cosy house. Archaeology as well as literary sources have revealed that the art of constructing houses was known in the remote past. The Rgveda the contains references to grha, dhama, harmya, all meaning 'a house'. In Yajurveda and Atharvaveda there are references to doors, assembly halls, pillars of different types, forts, various measurements used in a construction. The AV throws more light on the methods of house construction. The Asvalayanagrhyasutra suggests that the early building, planned on the pattern of a tree, was one with a central post as a trunk, and the thatches in all directions were like the outstretched branches of a 7 tree. The Matsya Purana supports the view that the primitive house or the first house on earth had tree as its model. Sala is stated to have been derived from 9 sakha. Similar descriptions regarding the tree as the model of the primitive house are available in the Markandeya Purana 10 and Vayu Purana.11

194 Bhoja in his Samarangana Sutradhara says that in the hoary past, people living in Bharatavarsa, resided in forests, on the banks of river, on the mountains and under the shady trees. In order to protect themselves from the troubles of weather and to seek privacy and shelter they thought of building houses in the shapes of salas mainly through the branches. 12 (sakhas). The Aparajitaprccha also mentions trnachanda as the first type of house structure made in the beginning of the creation. The literary accounts of the beginning of the first form of sala architecture are not simply mythological. The excavations at ChopaniMando 14 in the Belan valley of Uttar Pradesh, under the supervision of G.R. Sharma, reveal that the pattern of settlement at the site from the Palaeolithic to the advanced Mesolithic period is based on the wooden huts built on wooden posts. The screen or wall was of a reed or split bamboo, and were plastered with mud from both the sides, the remnant of which has survived in the form of burnt clay lumps with reed impressions. The planning of the Neolithic settlement at Mahagara 15 in Belan valley shows that the sides of the huts protected by screens made of bamboo, straw, grass and leaves are plastered by mud. Bamboo is reported to be the most common raw material used in the frame of the side screens and roofs of the huts. The excavation of the Chalcolithic settlement at Kakoria 16 and Koldihwa 17 have continued the evidence of mud walls, bamboo and reed impressions. The huts

195 supported on wooden bamboo posts and circular/oval on plan with use of wattle and daub were common to both Neolithic and Chalcolithic groups of culture in the Vindhyas and the Ganga valleys. Grass and bamboo huts may be visualised in the representations of Sudama cava at Barabar hills in Bihar.