Draw ten lines down a plot and ten across. You have eighty-one cells. Each is called a pad.
Now lay the Vastu Purush across that grid, face down, head to the northeast. Every cell falls on some part of him — head, eyes, shoulder, heart, thigh, feet.
And here is the claim the whole chapter rests on: if a cell is weak, the person living on that plot has trouble in the matching part of their own body. A deficient pad over the heart, and the owner has heart trouble.
Whether or not you accept the mechanism, notice what the model does. It makes the building and the body the same object, so that neglecting one is understood as neglecting the other.
This is a summary of Chapter Five of The Ancient Science of Vāstu I: The Vishwakarma Prakash Retold.
Thirty-two grids, not one
Most people meet Vastu through a single nine-by-nine diagram and assume that is the system. It is one of thirty-two.
The grids run from Sakal at a single cell through Pechak at four, Peeth at nine, up through Chaditah at sixty-four and Paramshayik at eighty-one, and onward to Chandrakanth at 1,024 cells.
And they are not interchangeable. The scriptures assign each to particular work:
| Cells | Used for |
|---|---|
| 9 | Pujan |
| 25 | Pujan |
| 49 | Renovation, pujan |
| 64 | Home, colony, town, temple |
| 81 | Home |
| 100 | Palace, mandap |
| 144 | Chariot shed, ships, stable |
| 196 | Well, lake, water reservoir |
| 1000 | Grand pujan |
So a temple is read on a sixty-four grid, a house on eighty-one, a reservoir on a hundred and ninety-six. The resolution changes with what you are building.
Forty-five deities on a single body
The chapter then places the deities across the Vastu Purush, and the anatomy is precise.
Agni on the head. Aap at the mouth. Aryama at the breast, Aapvats at the chest. Parjanya at the eyes, Jayant at the ears, Indra at the chest, Surya at the shoulder. Five deities from Satya along the arm; Savitra, Saavitra, Vitatha and Grihakshat at the hand. Vivasvan at the stomach. Yama, Gandharva, Bhringraj and Mrag across thigh, knee, calf and back — that on the right, with the left an exact mirror. Pitra, the ancestors, at the feet.
And at the heart, Lord Brahma. Forty-five deities arranged around him.
Which is why the Brahmasthan — the centre of a plot — matters more than any other zone. In the body-map, the centre of your plot is a heart.
The veins of a building
A human body carries life energy through veins. The Vastu Purush has them too, and they are called Shiras. Obstruct them and you have a defect.
On the grid these appear as named lines. On a sixty-four-cell layout, running east to west: Shriya, Yasowati, Kanta, Supriya, Para, Sheva, Sushobha, Sadhna, Ebha. Running north to south: Dhanya, Dhara, Vishala, Sthira, Roopa, Gada, Nisha, Vibhava, Prabhava, Soumya.
Alongside them run the Vansh lines — Rog to Vayu, Shikhi to Pitr, Mukhya to Bhrsh, Shokh to Vipath, Sugriv to Aditi, Bringu to Jayant.
The proportions are fixed by a neat rule. The width of Vansh in ungal equals the width of a pad in hasth; Shira is one and a half times Vansh. On a 108-foot plot with 81 pads, each pad is twelve feet, so Vansh comes to six inches and Shira to nine.
Marma: the vital points
This is the part of the chapter that working consultants use most.
Where Vansh lines cross, the intersection is a marma point. Its size is one eighth of a pad. On a nine-by-nine-foot plot, each pad is one foot, so marma is an inch and a half.
These are the vital points of the Vastu Purush — the exact analogue of the marma points of Ayurvedic medicine, where a strike can be fatal. The text is blunt about what not to do:
- No columns or pillars on a marma point.
- No used utensils, and no pins. The verse is that specific.
- The same applies where Vansh and Shira intersect within a pad — points named Pravesh, Trishul and Konak. No pillars, no beams, no columns.
Violating a marma is classed as a form of shailya defect, and the text says plainly that it brings agony to the owner.
Now the practical part, because the chapter does not leave you stranded. If a consultant finds a fault at these points, the suggested corrections are small: place small pieces of gold on the columns, and move the washing area for used utensils and the shoe rack away from the marma.
Not demolition. A shoe rack shifted three feet.
Reading the land through fire
There is a diagnostic in this chapter that I have not seen anywhere else, and it is worth stating exactly.
During the yagna, if the owner feels an itch somewhere on his body, there is a shailya defect at the matching point on the land. And if the fire itself burns deformed or disorderly, that too indicates shailya.
Read charitably, this is a method for paying attention. A person standing at their own site during a long ceremony, told to notice what their body is doing, will notice things about that site they would otherwise walk past.
What is buried, and what it does
Shailya is buried impurity, and Chapter Five gives the correspondences:
| What is buried | Effect |
|---|---|
| Wood | Loss of wealth |
| Bones | Fear of disease, cattle decline |
| Iron | Fear of weapons |
| Skull | Death |
| Hair | Death |
| Coal | Fear of theft |
| Ash | Fear of fire |
| Dry grass | Hindrance in gains |
Elephant's tooth is named as inauspicious too. And if any of these sit on a marma point, the text calls it highly inauspicious — the two defects compounding.
The full remedy comes in Chapter Twelve, Shailyodwar.
What you draw the lines with
The chapter's closing passage is, on the face of it, about stationery. It is actually about attention.
The grid lines may be drawn with the thumb, the index or the middle finger. With a piece of gold or silver. Marked out with fruits, curd, rice or gems.
They may not be drawn with:
- A weapon — fear of losing life in a duel
- An iron rod — chance of imprisonment
- Ash — fear of fire
- Wood or grass — trouble with the government
- Leather, teeth, coal or bone — ruinous, possibly fatal
And one more, which is the telling one: if the line is fractured, badly drawn, or not straight, the owner lives in fear of enemies. A line that is out of shape or lacking grace is called ruinous.
Strip the consequences away and a single instruction remains: set this out carefully, by hand, with something clean. A grid drawn carelessly produces a building laid out carelessly. The verse simply makes the stakes vivid enough that nobody rushes it.
Why this chapter is the foundation
Chapter One taught you to read the land. Chapter Two matched the house to the owner. Chapter Three timed the beginning. Chapter Four set the measurements.
Chapter Five is where the plot stops being ground and becomes a body — with a head, a heart at the centre, veins that can be blocked, and vital points that must not be built over.
Everything the later chapters say about doors, rooms, temples and defects is positioned on this grid. It is why the text elsewhere states flatly that without Padavinyasa, there is no Vastu.
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 81-deity table, the full 64-cell configuration, the Vansh and Shira line diagrams and the marma calculations summarised here.
Earlier in this series: Chapter 1, Chapter 2 Part 1, Chapter 2 Part 2, Chapter 3 and Chapter 4.
Next: Chapter 6, Prasad Vidhaan — Temple Rules.
