Enter the compass bearing of your main door above and this checker finds which of the 32 entrance padas it falls in: the pada’s name and deity, what the Brihat Samhita says about a door there, where the two English translations disagree, and what modern guides add. Nothing is scored and nothing is predicted. It is a lookup into a very old table, shown with its limits.
How to take the bearing
Stand in the middle of the home, or of the plot if you are on one, and face the main door. Open the compass app on your phone, hold the phone flat and level, and read the bearing the door is on. This is the bearing from the centre to the door, not the direction the door opens towards, because a door on the east wall faces east whichever pada it sits in. The bearing is what tells the padas along that wall apart.
A few habits make the reading trustworthy. Calibrate the compass first, usually by moving the phone in a figure of eight. Step away from steel beams, fridges, cars, speakers and the phone’s own magnetic case, all of which pull the needle. Take three readings from slightly different spots and use the middle one. If your phone offers a choice between magnetic north and true north, either is fine here.
Magnetic declination in India is small. The gap between magnetic and true north is only a degree or two across most of the country, well inside the error of a phone compass, so you can ignore it for this purpose. Phone compasses themselves are rarely better than five to ten degrees, which is why the checker tells you when your bearing is close to the edge of a pada.
How this checker works
The Vastu Purusha Mandala divides the plot into squares, and the 32 squares around its edge, eight on each side, each belong to a deity. A door is judged by the deity of the square it stands in. The classical text measures this along the wall, from the corner.
To turn it into a compass reading, this checker splits the full circle into 32 equal sectors of 11.25 degrees. The east side runs from 45 to 135 degrees, the south side from 135 to 225, the west side from 225 to 315 and the north side from 315 to 45, each side holding eight sectors. The first pada, Shikhi, starts at 45 degrees, the north-east corner, and the list runs clockwise in the order the Brihat Samhita gives it. Due north, 0 degrees, falls in Soma.
The names and order follow Brihat Samhita chapter 53, verses 43 to 45, by Varahamihira in the sixth century. The results follow verses 72 to 75, as rendered in the 1884 English translation by N. Chidambaram Iyer and the 1946 translation by V. Subrahmanya Sastri. Everything runs in your own browser.
Reading your result
The result shows the pada, the side of the home it is on, and the text’s result in plain words. A band beside it says whether the text is favourable, cautions, or is mixed or disputed. That band is this site’s grouping of what the verse says and nothing more.
Read a result the way you would read a line in a very old building regulation. It records one author’s judgement, written for a household of his own time, measured in sons, wealth and the king’s favour. It says nothing about your health, your money or your safety, and it is not a reason to change a door.
Where traditions differ
Three differences matter. First, the translators disagree about a few padas. Yama, the thirteenth, is given as anger in one translation and honour in the other, and Roga, the twenty-fifth, reads very differently in the two, so both are shown as mixed and explained. Second, the classical table is finer than modern practice. Popular guides usually sort entrances by side, north and east good, south and west bad. The classical table says something about each of the 32 squares, and the pattern is not a neat one: the south side has a favourable pada and the north side has cautioned ones. Third, the compass-sector method used here is a modern convenience. It is exact for a square plot and approximate for any other.
The entrance article explains the padas in full, and the hub page explains how this section is sourced.
What it cannot tell you
It cannot tell you whether a door is good for you. A classical result belongs to a household on its own plot in a village or town of the sixth century, not to a flat on the ninth floor. It does not look at your birth chart, your neighbours, the road, the light or how you live. It does not diagnose anything, promise anything or recommend that you move, rebuild or buy anything. If a result worries you, read remedies without demolition first.
Frequently asked questions
↳ Which direction should I measure, the way the door faces or the way it sits from the centre?
The bearing from the centre of the home to the door. A door on an east wall faces east whichever pada it sits in, so the facing direction cannot tell the eight padas along that wall apart. The bearing from the centre can.
↳ Does magnetic declination matter in India?
Very little. Across most of India the gap between magnetic and true north is a degree or two, which is smaller than the error of a typical phone compass. You can ignore it, and the checker warns you when your bearing is close to a pada boundary.
↳ Why does the checker use equal sectors of 11.25 degrees?
Because a compass gives an angle and the classical method gives a position along a wall. Equal sectors are the usual way to convert one into the other. They are exact for a square plot and approximate otherwise. If you know which wall your door is on and how far along it, counting the eight padas from the corner is more faithful to the text.
↳ My door fell in a pada the text cautions. Should I change it?
No. None of the texts this site has read asks you to move a door on the strength of this table, and the table was written for freestanding houses on their own plots. Keep the entrance clean, dry and well lit. The page on remedies without demolition covers the gentler options.
↳ Why does the checker say a result is disputed?
Because two English translations of the same Sanskrit verses give different results for a few padas, and this site will not pick one and hide the other. Yama and Roga are the clearest cases. Where the translations agree the result is shown once.
↳ Does it apply to a flat?
Only loosely. The padas describe a plot with a house on it. In a flat you can still take the bearing of your own front door, but the text's results were not written for a door opening onto a shared corridor, and the apartments article explains what carries over and what does not.
Sources
- Varahamihira, Brihat Samhita, chapter 53 (Vastu-vidya), verses 42 to 50 for the 81 squares and 32 outer deities, and 72 to 75 for the entrance results. English translation by N. Chidambaram Iyer (1884), as reproduced at wisdomlib.org.
- Varahamihira, Brihat Samhita, English translation by V. Subrahmanya Sastri, volumes 1 and 2 (1946), the same verses, for the readings that differ from Iyer. Scanned copy at archive.org.
- Prasanna Kumar Acharya, Summary of the Manasara, chapter 7 (Padavinyasa), for the 32 grid schemes of which the 64 and 81 square ones are used.