Research On Urban Development Of Early India

India is one of the cradles of human civilization, it once had a brilliant ancient civilization.Ancient cities of the Indus Valley had already shown excellent technique both in the aspect of urban planning and architectural designing as early as 2500 years ago; With the withering away of Harappan civilization, the urban civilization of ancient India was going on on the vast land of Ganges River Valleys and gradually spread to the entire Indian peninsula; At the same time, the urbanization process of South India has always belonged to another independent system. Not until the magnificent islamic architecture of mughal has changed the appearance of most cities, did India’s early urban development came to an end and a new chapter was opened.In the long history of Indian urban civilization, the fate of cities fluctuated under the influence of natural conditions, economic conditions, political reasons and the spread of religious, the early urban development process of India also presents distinct features under the background of the times. Indian cities have had great achievement long before the British Raj and have formed several typical types such as religion center, education center, trade center cities and so on.The root of this thesis lies in the history of Indian. On a macro level, it figures out the process of how ancient Indian cities grew out of nothing and became massive gradually as well as how they rise and fell; On a meso-leve, it analyzes different city types in order to summarize the characteristics and explore the regulations of economy, culture and life style during different stages of urbanization; Finally, on the micro level, some typical objects are chosen to unscramble the urban layout, programming method, spatial characteristics, building types, material and structure of ancient cities from the perspective of urban planning and architecture designing.The main text is divided into five chapters: The first chapter is the introduction, It discusses the topic background, research purpose and methods, defines the related concept and put forward the general idea. The second chapter and the third chapter is key to this article;The former expounds the earliest urban civilization of Indian subcontinent. In this chapter, the development of the prehistoric Indus civilization and the earliest city construction is introduced, typical harappan cities are analyzed as examples and characteristics of prehistoric urban civilization in India is concluded. The third chapter introduces the second Indian urban civilization, namely north India’s urban civilization. On the basis of summarizing the social and historical background of the second Indian urban civilization, this chapter seizes the buddhist influence on early north Indian cities, it introduced important examples of north Indian buddhist holy cities in detail from the aspects of historical documents, situation of unearthed relics and urban structure. The content of the fourth chapter is the mature period of Indian second urban civilization, in other words, the urban civilization of the whole Indian peninsula. From a more macro level, this chapter summarizes the development trends and characteristics of the mature stage of urban development, gives a relatively detailed introduction according to the status of different parts of the subcontinent, and emphatically discusses the characteristics of the urban development process of south India. The last chapter sums up the main types of ancient Indian cities and spatial characteristics, it takes the prominent characteristics of each stage of urban civilization as the breakthrough point to classify early Indian cities and makes deep analysis and discussion on the layout and spatial structure during each period of history.