IDEAS ABOUT THE IDEAL CITY-FORTRESS IN THE ARTHASHASTRA
This article is the development of the previous article published by the author in Journal of the Institute of Oriental Studies RAS (No. 3, 2018). The earlier publication dealt with the image of an ideal city in Pali texts. An interesting problem is the comparison of this image with similar images in Sanskrit texts. This article is devoted, first of all, to the image of the ideal city-fortress in the Arthashastra . In this text, the city-fortress presents a square plan, cut crosswise by roads and oriented to the cardinal directions. It is important that the place, where there is a building or complex of buildings, is called vastu , as in the Pali Canon (Pali vatthu ). So, in the ideal city of Arthashastra buildings were built in accordance with the rules of Vastu Vidya , with the performance of ceremonies similar to those described in the Pali Canon (the episode of the construction of the city of Pataliputra). The author solves the debatable problem of the location of the “inner city”, with the help of Ramayana . In the future, according to the author, a thorough study of Ramayana will significantly expand our understanding of the ideal city in the culture of Ancient India.