vāstuśāstra

The term “vāstuśāstra” as used today refers to the knowledge and practice of the choosing an appropriate piece of land; planning towns, gardens, and parks, as well as constructing religious, domestic, healing, royal, defense, business, and recreational structures; the placement of various built units in towns and in the natural landscape; orientation of various units in the natural environment to face the most auspicious direction; designing the correct ratio and proportion among various units of the building or facility; and the placement of rooms, doors, windows, furniture – such that those who reside in or avail themselves of the facilities feel at harmony with one another and the cosmos and are led to higher levels of prosperity, well-being, and peace. Vāstu refers to a site or a dwelling, usually a house; in popular culture, vāstu is said to be derived from an unspecified vedic source, vasanti prāṇinaḥ yatra, “a place where living beings abide.”

Content and Scope of the Term Vāstu

Traditional knowledge systems in India take pride in their interdisciplinary nature. Architecture is called sthāpatyaveda – the knowledge of placing something. This field is considered to be an Upaveda or an ancillary to the four Vedas. Although connected with the Vedas, it is sometimes seen as part of the natural rhythm or in accordance with the natural law of the universe. It is also part of the larger Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions. According to traditional scholars, vāstu is part of the larger knowledge of śilpa. The Sanskrit term śilpa, which is ordinarily understood as sculpture, has a much larger meaning; it is said to be the mental conceptualization of art that is then translated into a material form. Śilpa is divided into many subcategories, including the building of water, land, and airborne vehicles (including and not limited to chariots, ships, boats, and vimānas or flying chariots); forts, towns, machines, military weapons, metal, wood, gold objects, sculptures, icons/deities; and finally grahavāstuśilpa or the art and science that deal with dwellings. Vāstu is sometimes divided into devaśilpa, which deals with religious constructions, sacrificial structures, icons and so on , and mānavaśilpa, or those structures and dwellings which deal with all human activities (Muralidhar Rao, 2002, 28).

Vāstu paṇḍits today have varying visions about the scope of the field. Traditionally, it includes the orientation of the site, house, and subunit, including furniture, to the cardinal directions; site planning; measurements and proportion; what is known as the six canons of vedic architecture (referring to a set of six formulas to which the perimeter of the building should correspond); and the aesthetics and functionality of a building (Muralidhar Rao, 2002, 30–45). Further, the art and “science” of vāstu are closely intertwined with astrology. In recent years, vāstu experts have connected it with the human body, yoga , feng shui, āyurveda , and the magnetic fields of the earth.

Since an important part of vāstu is ratios and proportions among various measurements, this mathematical aspet of the discipline is significant in everything from the ratio among the various parts of icons and sculptures to the proportions of rooms vis-à-vis the rest of the house and the site as well as their placement in their locations. Vāstu, as expounded today in popular books and Internet sites, includes discussions on many kinds of dwellings from the list given above. This entry will address general principles of vāstu related to dwelling places, as presented in some traditional texts, books, and Internet sites dealing with popular culture, but will focus primarily on issues concerning a house.

Scholars of vāstu disagree on whether one should follow the principles expounded in the books as closely as we can (conceding that there is a diversity of opinions in the texts themselves and that one cannot know all of them) or whether we can use vāstu as general guidelines that we can adopt and then adept, depending on the continent, country, climate, and local culture. K. Cox, a popular advocate of vāstu living in North America, advocates not only flexibility, but also a commitment to hold some principles as significant. She also asks one to pay attention to what she calls the “three critical principles of vāstu.” These are honoring the five elements (pañcabhūta or air, fire, earth, sky/air, water; mahābhūtas), respecting nature and all forms of beings, and celebrating ourselves and our personal identity (Cox, 2002, 13).

The benefits of following the principles of vāstu are elaborated in almost all texts on the subject. The primary aim of vāstu is to create a sense of harmony and peace and to enable human beings to flourish. Some rules are general, and some specific, as when the astrological natal charts of the occupants are cast  and the correct dates worked out for the starting of the house, the installation of the first door, and the day of entry. Many of the texts quote a verse said to be from a text called the Viśvakarmavāstuśāstra, to describe the benefits one may derive from vāstu. Viśvakarman is the legendary architect in South and Southeast Asian lore. A passage quoted from this text of unknown date says that by following the precepts of vāstuśāstra, vigor, joy, and prosperity will pervade the universe; human beings become divine with this knowledge, and those who know this Śilpaśāstra also know the nature of all existence. The passage concludes by saying that those who follow vāstuśāstra gain the pleasures of the world and eventually go to heaven (Arya, 2000, 14; Muralidhar Rao, 2002, 26). Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1914–2009), who has made this knowledge popular in the Western world with an accessible rationale, says that “Sthapatya Veda provides the knowledge to connect the individual with his cosmic potential” (http://www.globalcountry.org.uk.sci-hub.cc/newsletters/2004/uk20040218n_nl1.htm). The Web sites claim that "the principle of Maharishi Sthapatya Veda is to establish any building, any village, any city, any country in full alignment with the structuring dynamics of the whole universe, which maintains the connectedness of everything with everything else" 

History and Narratives of Vāstu

Sthāpatyaveda or architecture, as the name denotes, is considered to be a “Veda” or a discipline of knowledge. The history of vāstu and sthāpatyaveda is generally traced to the four Vedas, the epics, Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa , and the Purāṇas, though some authors look for it in the towns built on grids in the Indus Valley civilization (Arya, 2000, 9–11). In building the vedic altar , the sacrificial body, the sacrificer is said to become the altar itself; he builds for himself a sacrificial body, moving beyond time and death. The altar is built in the likeness of the universe and in accordance with his own bodily measurements. Through this, it becomes his transformed, sacrificial body. The unit of time is brought into play too – there are as many layers in the altar as there are seasons in the year, and the total number of bricks to be used is the number of days in the year: 360. Thus, through numerical count, the notion of time is built into the space of the altar (Kramrisch, 1946, 69–70). Later, in the temple, the body is drawn on the ground and not formed with a brick structure. The Hindu temples continue the symbolism of the vedic altar and Agni, the god of fire.

A whole chapter in Bharata’s Nāṭyaśāstra, the treatise on dance composed probably in the first two centuries of the Common Era, focuses on the kind of site to be selected and details of how one may construct a stage, the shape, and the dimensions – the length and depth – all in accordance with how the divine architect ordained. Later texts on dance specify the directions in which the stage should be aligned and even note that the person who presides over the ceremonies should face east. The important points of the construction schedule should coincide with astrologically propitious moments. Such details are significant in orienting the stage – which itself is a kind of temple – in harmony with the cosmos.

The two epics and the Purāṇas carry many details on architecture, the building of dwellings, sites, and astrological details. The best-known codified books on architecture, however, are the Mānasāra (c. 10th cent. CE) and the Mayamata (c. 11th cent. CE). Although these books are thought to have been codified about the turn of the 1st millennium CE, the materials incorporated in them are several centuries earlier. The Mānasāra is veritably an encyclopedia on the subject, and its free-ranging topics include the qualifications of architects, systems of measurement, selection of site, examination of soil, orientation of buildings, sacrificial offerings, dimensions of buildings, foundations, details on the construction of the pedestal of columns, roofs, construction of buildings with one floor all the way to 12 stories, temples and palaces, measurements of doors and windows, astrology, and planning and layout of villages, towns, and forts. This work goes into a great deal of detail for almost every subject, starting with the selection of sites (“quadrangular ground which is elevated towards the south and towards the west is suitable for the buildings of the gods and the men respectively”; Acharya, 1980, 3), the examination of soil and what one should look for, and what is not acceptable. Numerous varieties of villages are catalogued, as are classes of kings, where and how the dwellings for each kind of king/chieftain should be built, and so on (Acharya, 1980). The Mānasāra also pays considerable attention to the measurements of a building. There are both general and very detailed rules; consider one on the height of the building, for instance:

"The height inclusive of the plinth and ending by the pinnacle is stated by the ancients versed in the science of (of architecture) to be twice the breadth in the smallest type of (one-storeyed buildings; in the foresaid intermediate type of one-storeyed buildings the height is stated to be greater than the breadth by three-fourths; and in the largest type of one-storeyed buildings the height should be greater than the breadth by one-half; as alternatives these (proportions) in the largest type, the height may be greater (than the breadth) by one-fourth, and in the smallest type, that may be equal to the breadth (in addition) to its being twice (the breadth)" (Acharya, 1980, 100–101).

The Mayamata is also known as the Mayamataśilpaśāstra (11th cent.) and covers the same ground as the Mānasāra. Several other texts including the Viṣṇudharmottara and the Gargasaṃhitā (which are all generally in the 1st millennium CE with materials accruing over the centuries) also deal with architecture, the designing of courts, compounds, room dimensions, and so on.

Although many of these books have gone into considerable detail on architecture and the flow of energy, many traditional architects (sthapati) do not read them. Rather, they have received their training congruent with the primary way in which these traditions have been passed on through the millennia – by apprenticing themselves with master architects and by learning from them. Many of these traditional sthapathis from India are very much in demand from the building of temples around the world to advice on how to place various units in a new industrial park or in Silicon Valley.

Vāstupuruṣamaṇḍala

Hindu temples were considered to be bodies. The temple could be the body of god; B. Dagens, translating several manuals of religious architecture, has shown the specific correlation of the anatomy of the divine and the architecture of temples. Others, quoting agamic texts, say that temples are built in the model of a human being. Archaeologists, art historians, and theologians have all weighed in on this topic. But the concept most pervasive in Hindu popular cultures is that of the vāstumaṇḍala – a specific geometric grid of 64 or 81 squares. Within the square we find the body of a person of somewhat ambivalent disposition, neither human nor divine. This is the vāstupuruṣa (“vāstu man”) that lies on the ground on which all buildings come into being. The presiding deity of the entire site on which one is going to build is vāstupuruṣa, and the person who occupies the central square is the supreme being, brahman . And who or what is this being, this vāstupuruṣa?

The legends are not very clear about the provenance of vāstupuruṣa. There are at least two explanations that are popular – one that he was an ill-fated experiment, fashioned by the creator god, Brahmā, and one that this puruṣa can be identified in some way with the supreme cosmic man, the Puruṣa of the Vedas. Although the second is not found in many of the vāstu texts of the 1st millennium, it has nevertheless gained currency. The story of how Brahmā created the vāstupuruṣa has been relatively unknown until the 20th century. Apparently, Brahmā created this being who kept growing, and his shadow covered earth. Many devas, the celestial beings, complained, and in order to subdue this creature, they (and Brahmā) jumped on him, and when he fell to earth, they pinned him to the ground. This vāstupuruṣa is depicted in a diagram with grids, and the body is depicted with various deities sitting on it. The head of this giant is to the northeast; this is the most auspicious direction, and the figure of this person is fitted into the square of the extended universe. The other way in which puruṣa is understood is as the cosmic person who was sacrificed in the Vedas, as attested to in the famous hymn of the Puruṣasūkta (ṚV. 10.90). Others identify this puruṣa with the category of soul or energy in Sāṃkhya philosophy (Muralidhar Rao, 2002, 32–34). In any case, the maṇḍala and the form of this vāstu become

"a diagrammatic field of co-ordinates, intersections and diagonals [and] is sensitive to any interference with its order and in this respect it functions like the subtle body of the human being" (Kramrisch, 1946, 71).

S. Kramrisch notes that “such constructions have wide currency Indian thought where they signify the universal law as a working entity.” The body is said to be a place of coordinated activitiy, each part being the seat of a special function. Such a coordinated function is made factually and repeatedly in Brahmanical cultures and Buddhism, in sacred texts, rituals, and works of arts.

According to the first story, the vāstupuruṣa forms the template for the location of various deities. The cardinal directions have presiding deities. The eight “directional deities” or the dikpālas are most significant. The following deities rule over the eight directions: This set of deities seems to be part of the common architectural syntax among Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions in South and Southeast Asia, and now in other parts of the world as well. Take, for instance, Īśana, the god of the northeast; in the Phimai Temple in Thailand, this deity is identified and carved on the northeast part of the temple. Agni, riding a ram, is a frequent sculpture seen in the southeast part of many temples in Bhubaneswar, Orissa, and in temples across Southeast Asia.

These deities have various propensities, and houses are supposed to have rooms connected with them. Thus, since Agni (“Fire”) presides over the southeast, a kitchen is advocated for this part of the house. Vāstu texts consider the southwest inauspicious, and in general directives, one is asked to place rooms where one spends the least amount of time in this direction. Thus, storerooms are said to be best in the southwest. Since the northeast is considered to be the most spiritual and inclined to give rise to noble thoughts, there is a general consensus that the room of prayer and worship, known as the pūjā room, be in this direction. When Swami Trigunatita built the Vedanta Temple in San Francisco in 1906, he ocated the worship room in the northeast. These notions are so part of everyday living and culture that even houses that did not follow vāstu ideas explicitly incorporated them most naturally. Because the east is the direction of the rising sun, it is considered to be extremely auspicious and beneficent to human beings, and it is recommended that nothing should block its life-giving rays. Thus even big plants and tall trees are “not allowed in the North and Eastern open spaces, because there should be an unhindered passage for the morning Sun-rays” (Muralidhar Rao, 2002, 26).

The orientation of the house is supposed to be most important. Although there are regional variations (in South India, for instance, a house facing south is said to bestow wealth on its occupants, but in the rest of India, this is considered to be very inauspicious). Most vāstu experts recommend a north, east, or west orientation for the house — that is, the main entrance should be from that direction – but are willing to work with and give remedies for other orientations. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s advice, however, is that one should only build houses facing north or east; all others are not acceptable. Even though the northeast is auspicious, houses should only face directly east or north, according to his system of vāstu.

"The middle of the vastu mandala is said to be the place of Brahma, the Brahmasthan, and is supposed to be left open, without anything in it. In addition to all commonly found facilities, there is one very special place in every Maharishi Sthapatya Veda structure. This is the Brahmasthan, the open central point – the seat of wholeness. Every home should have a Brahmasthan, where the totality of Natural Law is established. Then the home becomes a holistic structure of Natural Law. And every town, city, and country should have a Brahmasthan, so that every citizen is always connected with the wholeness of Cosmic Life."

Most popular books on vāstu contain several pages of possible plans one can adopt for the location of various rooms. In the recent revival of interest of this field of knowledge, older houses are also being reconstructed to include some of these principles, if they are absent. One of the greatest experiments in trying to have entire townships built on the principles of vāstu and even encouraging that governments should make the change comes with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi movement. Called the Maharishi Sthapatya Veda, it advocates the benefits of constructing buildings according to this body of knowledge and says that the human body, the house body, and the body of the universe should be in alignment to create harmony and prosperity.

"Buildings that are constructed according to Maharishi Sthapatya Veda are very soothing, uplifting, and evolutionary to everyone because every individual is essentially Cosmic in nature – the structure and functions of the individual physiology are an exact replica of the Cosmic Physiology, the physiology of the universe, because Natural Law is the basis of both" 

Connection of Vāstuśāstra with Other Fields of Indigenous Knowledge and Philosophical Schools

Vāstu has been connected from the beginning with astrology. The first time work begins in this site with the commencement of the bhūmipūjā, the time when the first doorway is erected, and the time when one formally enters the house (gṛhapraveśa) have to be done at auspicious moments (Muralidhar Rao, 2002, 9–13). Vāstu is sometimes said to be another word for prakṛti or material substance/nature. Since prakṛti or vāstu has five elements (fire, water, earth, air, space), what the texts advocate is a harmony between the human body and the environment. K. Cox repeatedly says that the body is the good example of vāstu (Cox, 2002, 13–15). More recently, the connections between vāstu and Sāṃkhya philosophy have been discussed; since vāstu is prakṛti on which the puruṣa (in this context, the soul or the spirit) lies, the dualism evokes the philosophy of Sāṃkhya (Sahasrabudhe & Mahatma, 1998). Other writers (Cox, 2002; Sahasrabudhe & Mahatme, 1998) connect the well-being of vāstu with that of yoga.

A new wave of vāstu experts connect vastu to Western science. The magnetic fields of the earth are supposed to have considerable influence on a human body. The human body is also supposed to be a magnet, with the head being the north pole (Muralidhar Rao, 2002, 27). One of the few places where there is a consensus among all writers, as well as in custom and practice, is that one should never sleep with one’s head to the north, facing south. Several explanations are given; south is the direction of Yama, the god of death, and death rituals are conducted facing south. Another explanation articulated in popular culture is that by doing so, “[t]he North Pole of the head and that of the human body repel each other affecting the blood circulation, causing disturbed sleep, tension, and other connected problems” (Muralidhar Rao, 2002, 27).

Traditions and rules dealing with home building, setting up of doors and windows, and certainly the auspicious moment to enter a new house or office have been practiced even through colonial times without interruption, but these practices were not known as vāstu by the larger population. But more detailed information has become available under the traditional name of vāstu in recent years, leading many to say that there has been a tremendous revival in the popularity of this branch of knowledge since the last quarter of the 20th century, along with other traditional systems of knowledge like āyurveda. This popularity is largely in India, but since the 1990s knowledge of vāstu has also increasing in the United States. One can attribute the rising popularity in India as a part of a postcolonial awakening in getting to know and taking pride in one’s heritage. Systems like vāstu also feed into the proclivity that we find in the many Indian cultural systems to enthusiastically maximize on situations that have a propensity of auspiciousness and avoid all that may bring about inauspiciousness. The gathering of disparate rules and points of knowledge under one name, along with some attention from the Western world, and the dissemination through advertising and Internet, have led to a commercial boom in vāstu productions. The new vāstu focuses not so much on the quality of the soil or the shape of the site as much as how to arrange an apartment or an office cubicle, demonstrating yet again the resilience, adaptability, and dynamism of traditions connected with the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions.