116 SOCIAL SdlENtl^t and Great Traditions and that of the modern west. See Robert Redfield and Milton Singer, "The Cultural Role of Cities", Economic Development and Cultural Change, III, (1954-55) pp. 5373. The primary and seconnary urbanisation follows Morton Fried's distinction of pristine and secondary states in the discussion of Paul Wheatley and hence evolution of urbanism and the appearance of the early state institutions are taken to be a simultaneous development. The concept of the ceremonial centre is admirably worked out by Paul Wheatley (1971-p. 311). His study of the Chinese city of the second millennium B.C. (i.e. Shang-North China) is most interesting from the point of view of "traditional" societies. Its applicability to the medieval kingdoms of South East Asia is borne aut by the same work as well as by his article "Urban Genesis in Mainland South East Asia" in Smith and Waston Ced.) Early South East Asia—Essays in Archaeology, History and Geography, New York, 1979, where it is illustrated by the symbolism and structure of the ceremonial centre in the great complex at Angkor in Cambodia. This is also comparable to the process of Synoecism in ancient Greece. However, Wheatley's cross-cultural comparisons with Mesopotamia, Meso-America, Yoruba (Nigeria) and especially the Indus valley are fraught with great difficulties due to the methodological difficulties in using the kind of archaeological data unearthed in these places. Following Wheatley, Harold Carter uses the concepts of the ceremonial centre to explain the structure of the city in areas of nuclear urbanism as well as secondary urbanism. His methodology, derived as it is from historical geography, is more sound in so far as the structural design and regional variations are capable of being established (Harold Carter, op. cit. 1983). In a recent study of Madurai and Madras, Susan Lewandosky, tries to analyse the form and function of the ceremonial city and the colonial port, as ortho-genetic and heterogenetic cities respectively. She tries to establish a distinction between Madurai as representing the traditional ideology, the tripartite division of urban Madras being predicated on a western ideology that allowed for horizontal linkages within the city. See Susan Lewandowski, "Changing Form and Function of the Ceremonial and Colonial Port City in India : An Historical Analysis of Madurai and Madras", in K.N. Chaudhuri and C.J. Dewey (eds.) Economy and Society, OUP, 1917, pp. 229-329. 151. The implications of such a possibility are relevant to the question whether such towns led to the dissolution of existing social relations between the merchants and the agricultural elite. Emergence of commercial towns (closed towns) and the non-legitimate domination of merchants, it has been argued, led to the dissolution of existing social relations and the decline of feudalism in Europe. It has also been suggested that the merchant groups were alien bodies. Both propositions were found to be difficult to establish and hence the question became one of how control over production and towns of productive capacity became an important point of conflict between feudal lords and merchants* See Philip Abrams, 1978. 152. Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XXIII (1935-36) pp. 383-385. 153. 120 of ARE 1905. 154. 167 of ARE 1909. 155. SII, Vol. VI, Nos. 40 and 41.