Chapter Four of the Vishwakarma Prakash opens with a sentence that quietly reorganises everything that follows.
In a sleep cycle, the bed is called a person's house.
Which is why the chapter measures a bed with the same seriousness it brings to a building — and why, having done so, it moves on to chairs, to footwear, to the units of measurement themselves, and finally to the stone laid beneath the first pillar.
This is a summary of Chapter Four of The Ancient Science of Vāstu I: The Vishwakarma Prakash Retold.
The dimensions of a bed
The instruction is unambiguous: a person seeking happiness must plan the bed according to his own body. Not to a standard size. To his body.
The length should be 81 or 90 ungal — and since one ungal is approximately one inch, that is 6 feet 9 inches or 7 feet 6 inches. The width should be half the length. Eighty-one ungal is called universally suitable.
From there the proportions cascade outward. The pew is sized to the width of the bed. The chair is one quarter of the bed's width — about ten inches by this reckoning. And footwear is carved to the measurement of the foot, with a warning attached: any other measurement brings distress.
Then the verse that explains why any of this matters:
- A bed smaller than the body — disease.
- A bed larger than the body — distress.
- A bed of exact dimension — bliss and joy.
Anyone who has slept for years in a bed slightly too short will recognise the first of these without needing a scripture to confirm it.
One honest note: the chapter gives the bed's height twice and the two figures do not agree. Verse 4a makes it half the width; verse 10 makes it one third of the length. For an 81-ungal bed that is either 20 inches or 27. The text does not reconcile them, and neither will I.
Measuring from the body outward
The unit system here is worth pausing on, because it explains the whole approach.
| Unit | Equals |
|---|---|
| 8 yav | 1 ungal (about 1 inch) |
| 24 ungal | 1 hasth — the forearm |
| 4 hasth | 1 dand |
| 2,000 dand | 1 kosh |
| 4 kosh | 1 yojan |
A yav is a barley grain. An ungal is a finger-width. A hasth is a forearm. The entire system climbs from a seed, through the hand, to the arm, and out to the distance between islands — without ever leaving the body behind.
And the ungal is not fixed. It comes in four sizes: nine, eight, seven or six yav. The chapter then specifies which to use for what. The nine-yav ungal governs digging, wood carving, palace courtyards and lobbies. The eight-yav ungal governs land records, leather, surgical work, armaments, wells and cisterns, stables for horses and elephants, oil mills, ploughs, altar pillars, gaming tables, flags, boats, construction equipment, footwear, umbrellas and temple gardens.
That list is a fair inventory of what a society actually made. And the instruction is that the scale should change with the work — a surgeon's precision is not a well-digger's.
The larger units have their regions too. Hasth at Jalandhar, dand in Avadh, krosh in the middle country, yojan for distances between islands. And for measuring a town, village or fortress, the hasth used should be that of the artisan or of a sage who arrives unexpectedly at the site.
Fourteen houses, named for what they are made of
The chapter then does something a modern building code would never do. It gives each construction material its own name for the resulting house.
| Material | Name |
|---|---|
| Stone | Mandir |
| Strong brick | Bhavan |
| Weak brick | Suman |
| Mud mortar | Sudhar |
| Wood | Manasya |
| Cane | Chandan |
| Fine cloth | Vijay |
| Grass or thatch | Kaal |
| Gold | Kar |
| Silver | Sreebhav |
| Copper | Suryamantra |
| Iron | Chaund |
| Lacquer | Anil |
| Surrounded by water | Prayuv |
Note that a stone house is called Mandir — temple. And a house of grass and thatch is called Kaal, which is to say time, or death. The names carry a judgement about permanence that no separate verse needs to state.
The chapter is candid, incidentally, about one line it cannot interpret — a reference to Dev, Danav, Gandharva, Yaksha, Raksha and Pannag that sits in the middle of this passage without explanation. The translation says so rather than inventing a meaning, which is the right instinct.
How many cells, for what
A short but consequential passage sets the grid density for different kinds of construction:
- Homes — 81 padavinyas
- Temples and mandaps — 64 padavinyas
- Towns — 100 padavinyas
Special ciboriums, arbours and canopies also use the 64-cell method. The grid you lay over the ground is not universal; it changes with what you intend to put on it.
The tree that must fall north
Before anything is set out, the Shanku — the gnomon used to find true direction — has to be made. The chapter is specific about its wood.
Suitable trees: those grown on slick soil, banyan, bel, black catechu, ghaf, Indian fig, deodar, trees that secrete a milky liquid, and fruit-bearing trees.
Then the procedure. The artisan, while fasting, strikes the tree with an axe. If the tree falls towards the north, its wood may be used for the shanku. If not, presumably, one finds another tree. The wood — four hasth or two — is kept at home until the shanku is established.
An instrument for finding direction, made from a tree that chose a direction as it fell.
Shilanyas: the stone beneath the pillar
The chapter's final section is its most substantial. Shila plus nyas — stone, and to establish. The laying of the foundation stone.
Depending on the building, one, four, five or nine stones are set. Four go in the vidisha, the corner directions. Five means four corners and one at the centre. Nine means eight directions and the centre. The stone may be of copper, silver or gold.
The four corner stones have names, and each carries its own emblem:
| Shila | Direction | Symbol |
|---|---|---|
| Shukla (Nandeti) | Northeast | Bull |
| Subhaga | Southeast | Horse |
| Sumangali | Southwest | Man |
| Bhadrankari | Northwest | Snake |
The centre stone is embossed with a tortoise, Sheshnag, Lord Vishnu and Shri Dhruv.
The requirements for the stone itself are strict and plainly practical. It must be unblemished, intact, shapely, strong. Not dilapidated, crumbling, worn or discoloured — the text says a degraded stone leads to the misplacement of wealth. And it must not be black. A stone house takes a stone shila; a brick house takes a brick one; a house of boulders takes rock. The shila is laid at the base of the first and main pillar.
Then the consecration. A pit five ungal deep. A kalash placed at its base, filled to the brim with water, rice, grain, panchagavya, honey and ghee. Around it, the offerings: gems from the ocean, gold and silver, auspicious seeds, fragrances, bulrush, cane, kush grass, flowers, white mustard, melted ghee, honey, fruits, gorochan, savouries and jewels. Mantras to the Dikpals. And a Vastulogist performing the puja with, as the verse puts it, a calm and focused mind.
Why bury gold under a building
The chapter offers its own reasoning, and it is worth quoting the shape of it.
Ground that has been energised with auspicious items carries a frequency, and that frequency reaches those who live above it. The commentary draws an analogy: a satellite can detect a gold or coal seam from orbit because the deposit's frequency travels. Most Indian temples, it notes, have gold and gems placed beneath them, and this is part of why they feel as they do.
You can take that literally or not. What is harder to dismiss is the behaviour it produces. Someone who has buried something precious under the first pillar of a house has made a commitment that cannot be casually undone.
The thread running through it
A bed fitted to a body. A unit derived from a finger. A chair proportioned to a bed. A gnomon cut from a tree that fell the right way. A stone chosen for being sound rather than convenient, set under the pillar that carries the most weight.
None of it is arbitrary, and none of it is abstract. Each measure is taken from something real and specific — usually a body, sometimes a tree, sometimes the earth itself.
Which is, in the end, what the opening line was telling you. The bed is a house. The house is a body. The measurements had better match.
Read the full text
The Ancient Science of Vāstu I: The Vishwakarma Prakash Retold carries all 13 chapters and 1,400+ verses in English — including the complete unit tables, the full Shilanyas procedure and the dimensional rules summarised here.
Earlier in this series: Chapter 1 — Before the First Brick, Chapter 2 Part 1, Chapter 2 Part 2, and Chapter 3 — How Long Will Your House Last?
Next: Chapter 5, Vastupadvinyas — Division of Land at the Micro Level.
