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Process of Urbanisation of Bihar during The Medieval Period

In the study of civilisation urban history occupy a place of great importance because it represent not only political processes and administrative structures of that period but also throw light on socio- economic and cultural achievements of the people. The term urbanisation in modern times is widely defined "as a process whereby population tends to agglomerate in cluster of more than a certain designated size". In this definiton density of population is taken as the most important criterion in identifying an urban centre. In 1951 one thousand inhabiants per square mile was fixed as the minimum population required of an Indian urban centre and the maximum population required was fixed at 5000. One of the characteristics of a city in western countries is 10000 people per square mile. By this yardstick only metro cities of the modern India can be considered truly an urban centre. Therefore, the definiton of an urban centre in terms of density of population in ancient, medieval and even modern Indian historical context is hardly relevant. In the absence of firm evidence on the size of population density per square mile, we take a simplistic definition of urbanisation in historical context, as being a process by which the rural character of a region was gradually removed and the people inhabiting it were predominantly non-agricultural and bought their food supply almost regularly. Under such a situation there was bound to be a gradual dominance of money economy, expansion of commodity production and growth of industry leading to internal as well as external commerce. Students of Indian history are familiar with the two distinct phase of Urbanisation in early India The first recognised phase is represented by the planned cites of Harrapan culture, while the second phase of urbanisation have been dated around the sixth century BC.

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