Characteristics of the Ancient cities

• Kautilya's Arthasastra (CE 350 - 283 BCE), Ptolemy's (CE 127-151) writings and Buddhist texts are good sources of descriptions of ancient cities.
  
  
• In the Buddhist texts the term for city in Pali is thira (sthira , in Sanskrit) which means stable, durable.
  
  
• The city was defined as buildings surrounded by a wall with gates and towers, and a deep moat. The city was characterized by well-laid out streets, crossroads, and places where business was transacted.
  
  
• A treatise on architecture in Sanskrit edited between sixth to eighth centuries CE states that circumvallation and fortification were constructed for most cities.
  
  
• This made the word fort interchangeable with the word city.
  
  
• The text recognized eight types of urban settlement.