Vastu Shastra

The door's position along its side is not known.

No cell can be read. The verses attach a result to each eighth of each side, so the eighth is the whole input - give the pada 1-8 counted from the side's own starting corner, or the door's distance along that side together with the plot's dimensions.

The entrance is the largest single input this reading takes: each of the thirty-two cells of 53.71-75 carries its own result, and the Brahmā-gate interlock of 53.78 is decided by that same cell. Name the door's side and its pada 1-8 and both are read at once.

Seven rooms are placed by name in these verses - the shrine in the north-east, the kitchen in the south-east, the store in the south-west, the treasury and the granary in the north-west, the water-store to the north, and the bathing place outside the building altogether. Not one of them can be inferred from a plot's measurements; each needs someone to say what is where.

Until that is said the seven verses stand unread, and an unread verse has not been satisfied.

Seven rooms are placed by name in 53.118 and the Matsya parallels, and none of them can be read off a measurement — somebody has to say what is where.

This verse is a complete eight-cell table: only the north and the north-east are auspicious, and the other six quarters each carry a named harm. It is the cited warrant behind the north-east water rule that modern practice repeats without one - but it decides nothing at all until someone says whether there is a well, tank or sump here and where it lies.

53.119 is a complete eight-cell table and every cell of it is waiting on one fact: is there a well, tank or sump on this plot, and in which quarter does it lie?

The ground is levelled before building.

The verse asks one thing of the ground — that it be equally high on every side — and half a description cannot show that. A defect can be proved from a partial answer, because one raised portion is enough; an absence of defects cannot. Report the sides AND the corners, or that neither rises.

The north-eastern CORNER is at a higher level than the rest.

53.115 prices a raised CORNER, and a corner is not a side — a plot can be level along all four edges and still rise at the north-east. It is asked separately because the verse asks it separately.

The ground's slope is chosen.

The building should be made having downward slopes towards the NORTH - the north side low, the south high. That is the opposite of what Bṛhat Saṁhitā 53.116 tolerates. Two classical texts, two directions, and this app renders the conflict rather than picking a winner.

This is the one place where two classical texts point in opposite directions — Matsya 256.1 wants the fall towards the north, Bṛhat Saṁhitā 53.116 tolerates the east or the north being HIGH. An unstated slope leaves both rows unread rather than settling either.

Cited at chapter and verse, but from a single reading of a single scan — the adversarial cross-check could not reach this edition, so the wording here is ours, not the translator's.

The house is extended towards one direction only.

The governing principle: the house should not be extended in one direction only; if extension is to be made it should be made uniformly and symmetrically in all directions. Every single-direction extension below carries a named harm, the north-east included.

The governing principle is about UNIFORMITY, so it needs the whole outline, not one direction: an extension towards the north-east alone and an extension on all eight sides are opposite answers to the same verse. Name every direction the plan runs out in, or say it runs out in none.

Cited at chapter and verse, but from a single reading of a single scan — the adversarial cross-check could not reach this edition, so the wording here is ours, not the translator's.

A limb of the Vāstu Puruṣa is missing - the classical form of a cut corner.

Right arm missing → loss of wealth. Left arm missing → loss of wealth and grain. Head missing → every virtue quits the household. An uninjured Vāstu Puruṣa → honour, wealth and comfort. This is the classical original of the modern corner-cut doctrine, and note that it is stated in terms of the BODY, not of the corner.

Two further clauses of 53.67-68 are withheld: they are chastity verdicts, the class §15 excludes.

A cut corner is the classical aṅga-hāni — a missing limb of the Vāstu Puruṣa — and the corpus prices it by which limb it is, not by which corner. Head is north-east, feet south-west, right side to the south-east half. Which limb is missing is the whole rule, so name the cut corners — or say the outline is whole.

A marma is violated by a pillar, a peg, an impurity or a buried śalya.

The vaṁśa lines and their nine crossings are computed from the grid and returned with it; what stands ON them is not something a grid can know. A pillar, a peg, an impurity or something buried — name the pada it sits on, 1 to 81, and the body map of 53.51-54 does the rest.

Something stands opposite the gate at a measurable distance.

Six things are priced when they face a gate — a street, a tree, a street corner, a well, a pillar, a gutter — and two more are added by the same verses. Say which of them faces yours and at what distance, and the one quantified exemption in the chapter, d > 2h, can be applied.

Twelve faults in this passage are about the door's conduct rather than its position - a leaf that opens or closes of itself, an over-size door, one set in low ground, a gate above a gate, an entrance that cannot be shut, one bent inward or outward, one that equals the inner door.

None of them can be read off a plan; each is something a household notices by using the door. Until they are described these twelve verses stand unread, which is not the same as their being absent.

Twelve cited results are waiting on this and none of them can be computed — go and look at the door.

Seven rules hang on this: four named species, each harmful on one side and prosperous on the side opposite, and three classes - thorny, milky and fruit-bearing - that the verse prices wherever they stand. The side is half of the first four rules, so a species named without a side still decides nothing.

Say what stands close to the house and on which side of it, and these verses can be read.

Seven cited results are waiting on this — four species with a side each, and three classes that count wherever they stand.

Seven neighbours are named in this passage - a minister's house, a cheat's house, a temple, a meeting of four roads, a Buddhist temple, ant-hills, a ditch - and the verse prices each without asking on which side it stands or how far off.

It is the one family here that needs no measurement at all, only a look around; until that look is reported, none of the seven has been ruled out.

The cheapest input in this whole reading — it costs one walk around the block — and seven cited results are waiting on it.

The ground is of irregular shape, or has irregular sides.

Ground of irregular shape → kinsmen die. Irregular sides → no pregnancy. Ground that faces no particular direction → no children.

Two numbers do not give a shape. A length and a breadth describe the rectangle this reading lays its grid on; whether the ground under it is actually four-sided and even is a separate question, and it is the one 53.115 asks.

Dig a pit one cubit each way at the centre of the site and refill it with the earth taken out.

Earth left over → increase of wealth. Exactly enough → a middling site. Not enough to fill it → misery. This test and the next are the two that return a verdict rather than a caste, and they are the two this app evaluates.

Dig one cubit each way at the centre of the site and refill the pit with the same earth; report whether earth was left over, whether it came out exact, or whether it fell short. Nothing about this can be inferred from a measurement, and an unrun test is not a good result.

Fill the same pit with water, walk a hundred feet away and return.

If the water has not fallen, increase of wealth.

Fill the same pit with water, walk a hundred feet away and come back; report whether the water had fallen. The verse asks about this ground on this day, so no soil map and no measurement stands in for it.

Plough the land and sow seed; watch what comes up in three, five or seven days.

Big sprouts → the best land. Middling sprouts → middling land. Small sprouts → avoid the land. A sixth test the Bṛhat Saṁhitā does not have, and the one Matsya test that returns a verdict rather than a varṇa.

Plough the land, sow seed and see what comes up in three, five or seven days. This is the sixth test and the only one of Matsya's that returns a verdict rather than a varṇa — and it is the slowest, which is a poor reason to treat it as answered.

Cited at chapter and verse, but from a single reading of a single scan — the adversarial cross-check could not reach this edition, so the wording here is ours, not the translator's.

The nine central padas - the Brahmasthāna - are defiled by impurities.

The grid names exactly which padas these are, and this reading returns them. Whether they are kept clean or carry impurities is the one thing about them no computation can see, and it is the whole of the rule.