Indian Historys studies on urbanization and urban centers Studies on urbanization and urban centers during the medieval

period have largely remained a neglected and relatively less explored field. We do have several studies done on specific towns, cities and Indian history. But these got limited to eulogies and biographies. One can hardly put it in the category of urban history. Nonetheless, they simply cannot be brushed aside for they reflect, as S.C. Misra puts it, what the town was in the minds of its citizens. Nonetheless, one must differentiate between an urban history and an urban biography. The former relates and opens up enquiry into critical issues subject of course to modification or rejection. There is also hardly much work done to study the pattern of linkages between the towns, townships, and villages within the region as well as across regions. Medieval cities are generally seen as parasitic depending largely on countryside, extracting large surplus to its own advantage while hardly giving back anything in return. Yet vibrant commercial activities provided a town a distinct character. In the course of our discussion certain issues are worth attending to: whether towns were mere extension of a village? If partly the manufacturing was done in the village why did the populace have to migrate to the cities? Which section of rural population was subject to migration? Whether such migrations were seasonal? And above all, what was the relationship between the urban and rural population? Whether they totally dissociated themselves or rural-urban continuum was there? If so then what was its nature? What role did the state play in the growth of urban centres? It is very difficult to provide answers to all these questions in certain terms. Nonetheless, all these issues are important to view the growth of urban centers and the process of urbanization in medieval period about Indus valley civilizations.