In Chapter One, the Vishwakarma Prakash taught you how to choose your land — its shape, its soil, the six field tests. Chapter Two, Grihadi Vichar or Home Rumination, opens with a question that sounds almost impertinent after all that careful work:
Yes, but is it fortunate?
You have tested the ground with seed and water and flame. Everything says yes. The text now asks whether the land agrees with you specifically. And its first method for finding out is not a measurement at all. It is a dream.
This is Part One of a two-part summary of Chapter Two of The Ancient Science of Vāstu I: The Vishwakarma Prakash Retold.
Sleeping on the land: the Swapna Vidhi
The dream method is the first thing Chapter Two describes, and the procedure is exact.
The owner prepares the site: clean ground, a mat of kusha grass, new cloth spread over the earth. A kalash of fresh water is placed on each side of the sleeping area, and pots are set in the four directions, dressed with flowers and fruit. Brahmi, durva and other herbs are scattered around. Goddess Lakshmi is invoked at the bedside.
Then the practical instructions. Wear thin, plain cloth. Eat a light dinner — the text is specific about why, and the reasoning is physiological rather than mystical: a heavy meal pulls prana into digestion, when you want it available to the subconscious mind. Keep the mind free of agitated thought. Face east. Recite the Rudra mantra, then the Yajjagrato mantra. Sleep on your right side.
And then wait for the dream.
The text adds one detail any sleep researcher would recognise: the dream that matters is the one occurring in the last part of the night, around four or five in the morning — when REM sleep is longest and dreams are most vivid and most easily recalled. That is the dream to remember and interpret.
Strip away the ritual and what remains is a proposition worth sitting with. Before committing years of your life and most of your money to a piece of ground, spend a night on it, quietly, without distraction, and notice what your mind does.
Which way the water runs
Next the text turns to direction, using Shanku Sthapan — the gnomon method. A square of level ground at the centre of the plot, a circle drawn, and the sun's shadow used to establish true direction rather than approximate it.
Then it reads the slope of the land:
- East — money and riches
- North — auspicious, a flourishing lineage
- Northeast — beneficial, brings wealth and gems
- Southeast — grief
- South — death
- Southwest — fear and panic
- West — conflict
- Northwest — death
Land that is digmud — wayward, where you cannot tell which way it faces — is said to destroy future generations. Uneven land brings poverty.
The favoured slopes are north, northeast and east. This is guidance that runs through all of Vastu, and it has an obvious practical dimension in the Indian subcontinent: it puts drainage and morning light where you want them, and keeps the harsh afternoon sun off the parts of the house you actually live in.
When to begin construction
A large part of Chapter Two concerns timing, approached from several directions at once.
By lunar month. Each of the twelve months carries an outcome. Vaishakh, Ashadha, Shravan, Kartik, Margshirsh and Falgun are favourable — bringing wealth, vehicles, friendships, children. Chaitra brings illness. Jyeshta brings death. Bhadrapada brings loss. Ashwin brings conflict. Posha invites theft, Magha the fear of fire.
By the Sun's sign. Aries, Taurus, Cancer, Leo, Libra, Scorpio, Capricorn and Aquarius are favourable. Four are singled out to avoid — Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces — and the reason is given plainly: these are the signs ruled by Mercury and Jupiter, and construction begun under them is considered ill-omened.
By planetary period. The Mahadasha and Antardasha running in the owner's chart are weighed, along with the strength of individual planets and the position of the Sun in the birth chart. There are lists of days and combinations to avoid, and remedies for afflicted planets.
Two rules stand out for their practicality. If the solar month is unfavourable but the lunar month is good, the lunar month takes precedence. And — a genuinely useful exemption — a structure of grass or wood may be begun even at an inauspicious time, and the defect of the month is removed. Only brick and stone are held to the strict calendar.
Permanence is what raises the stakes. The heavier the commitment, the more the timing matters.
Aayadi: when dimensions become a chart
Here Chapter Two moves into its most distinctive material — the Aayadi calculations.
The principle is that the measurements of a building are not arbitrary. Run through a formula, they yield values that determine whether the structure will be auspicious. Different Vastu texts use different formulae; Maymat and Mansar give six, the Vishwakarma Prakash gives nine.
The best known is Aay. Multiply length by width in hasth, divide by eight, take the remainder:
| Remainder | Aay | Meaning | Direction | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dhvaj | Flag | East | Auspicious |
| 2 | Dhoom | Smoke | Southeast | Inauspicious |
| 3 | Simha | Lion | Southwest | Auspicious |
| 4 | Svaan | Dog | Nairatya | Inauspicious |
| 5 | Vrish | Bull | West | Auspicious |
| 6 | Khaar | Maze | Northwest | Inauspicious |
| 7 | Gaj | Elephant | North | Auspicious |
| 8 / 0 | Dhvaanksh | Thorax | Northeast | Inauspicious |
The odd remainders are the favourable ones — which gives a simple working rule, since odd length and odd width always produce an odd remainder. For a home, Dhvaj, Simha, Gaj and Vrish are recommended, with Dhvaj auspicious by default.
Each Aay is strongest in its own direction and weaker elsewhere, and each has a use: Gaj for beds and bedrooms and for wells and ponds, Simha for seats, Vrish for where utensils are kept, Dhoom for the kitchen and anything involving fire, Dhvaj for a terrace or rain shelter. Simha, Vrish and Gaj serve for cities, forts and townships.
Alongside Aay come Vyay, Ansh, Yoni, Nakshatra, Tithi, Vaar, Dravya and Rinh — nine calculations, each derived from the same dimensions.
Note what the units make possible. Vastu measures in hasth and ungal — the forearm and the finger-width — and these are the dimensions of the person who will live there. A bed for someone six feet tall is not the bed for someone five feet tall. The measurements of the house are drawn from the body of its owner, which is precisely the point: it creates a correspondence between the building and the person inside it.
Grihamelapak: matching the two charts
All of this converges on the idea at the centre of Chapter Two.
Those nine calculations do not simply produce a verdict of good or bad. They produce a horoscope for the house — a Moon sign, a nakshatra, an ansh — derived entirely from its dimensions.
And once a house has a chart, that chart can be compared with the owner's, exactly as two charts are compared before a marriage. The text says so directly: as the horoscopes of bride and groom are matched, so are the charts of the owner and the house-to-be.
Counting from the owner's Moon sign to the house's:
- First or third — suitable for generating wealth
- Seventh — gains and happiness
- Tenth or eleventh — riches, long life, many children
- Second or twelfth — poverty
- Fifth or ninth — childlessness
- Sixth or eighth — potentially fatal
The full procedure, Grihamelapak, runs to eight points of compatibility, weighing nakshatra, tara, tithi, gana and vasya — the same eight-point framework used for marriage. The chapter includes a full nakshatra table for working out the Moon sign, and is careful to note where scholars disagree. On the question of the Moon in trines it records the dispute, then steps back with a line worth preserving: saints say this and not me.
A fourteen-hundred-verse scripture, pausing to distinguish what it is certain of from what it has merely inherited.
Why the framework holds up
It would be easy to read Grihamelapak as elaborate superstition. But look at what the framework actually does.
It forces a prospective owner to consider the same decision from five independent angles — intuition, terrain, timing, proportion, and personal fit — before committing. It sets proportion by the body of the person who will live in the space. It insists that a house good for one family may be wrong for another, which is simply true. And it treats the decision as a relationship being entered into rather than a transaction being completed.
You may never calculate your Aay. But the question underneath the chapter is one nobody should skip: does this house suit this particular life?
Read the full text
The Ancient Science of Vāstu I: The Vishwakarma Prakash Retold carries all 13 chapters and 1,400+ verses in English, with explanation alongside the verses — including the complete Aayadi formulae, the nakshatra tables and the full Grihamelapak procedure summarised here.
Continue to Part Two: Sixteen Ways to Lay Out a Home — Grihavinyas.
Read Chapter One: Before the First Brick — What the Vishwakarma Prakash Says About Choosing Land.
