Vastu is one of those subjects everybody has heard of and few have read. The word means the dwelling place, and the Sanskrit texts of Vastu Shastra describe how to choose a site, lay it out, place a house on it and enter it with respect. Over the last few decades a popular version has grown up beside them, full of charts, corner rules and remedies to buy, and the two are often presented as one thing.
This section is for readers who want the difference. It reports what the classical texts actually say, in the translations we could read, names the verse where we can, and says plainly when something is a later or modern convention. Where the texts or the translators disagree, both readings are shown.
What Vastu is, and what it is not
It is a body of classical knowledge about land, building and direction, preserved in texts that include the Brihat Samhita of Varahamihira (sixth century), the Manasara and the Mayamata of south India, the Samarangana Sutradhara of King Bhoja (eleventh century) and the Vishvakarma Prakasha, together with chapters of the Puranas such as the Matsya Purana. Its central device is the Vastu Purusha Mandala, a grid laid over a plot in which every square belongs to a deity.
It is not a system of guaranteed results. It is not a substitute for a structural engineer, a doctor or a financial adviser, and it is not, in the texts we read, a demand that anyone demolish, rebuild or buy. A door in a cautioned square is not a curse. A flat whose kitchen is in the wrong corner is an ordinary flat.
It is also not one system. The classical texts differ from one another, the translations differ from the texts, and modern practice differs from all of them. Part of the reason to read the sources is to see how much of what is now taught as settled is a choice.
How this section is sourced
Every article names the texts it draws on and the verses where they can be cited, and ends with a Sources note. The main texts we could read in full or in part are the English translations of Brihat Samhita chapter 53 by N. Chidambaram Iyer (1884) and V. Subrahmanya Sastri (1946), which we compared verse by verse, and P. K. Acharya’s summary of the Manasara. The Mayamata, in Bruno Dagens’ translation, and the Samarangana Sutradhara, the Vishvakarma Prakasha and the Matsya Purana are named and described, but we did not have their full text, and the articles do not claim more than we read.
Every article uses the same three labels, and they mean the same thing throughout:
- Classical means we found it in a verse of a named text.
- Modern means it is a convention of recent practice and we did not find it in the verses we read. That does not make it wrong. It means nobody should call it ancient.
- Disputed means the sources, or the translators, disagree, and the page says how.
The method page sets out the standards this whole site is held to, including the claims it refuses to make, and the corrections log records errors we have found and fixed.
What this section will not do
- It will not predict illness, loss, failure or death from the position of a room or a door.
- It will not promise a result from a remedy, or tell anyone they must spend money to correct a layout.
- It will not present an object, a yantra or a crystal as a cure you have to buy.
- Where a verse reflects the assumptions of its time, about caste or about women, it reports that the verse exists and does not repeat it as guidance.
Gemstones, where they come up, are treated as they are across this site: a valid remedy in Jyotish, suggested only when a chart calls for one, and never pushed.
The foundations
- The Vastu Purusha Mandala: the 64 and 81 square grids, the 45 devatas, the Brahmasthana and where the texts differ on the figure’s head.
- The eight directions: the guardians of the directions, the elements and the two planet-direction schemes.
- The entrance and the 32 padas: the full table, from the Brihat Samhita, with the translators’ disagreements.
- Plot shape, slope and surroundings: soil tests, slope and the verses that popular rules have replaced.
Rooms and practice
- Room-by-room placement: the four rooms the Brihat Samhita names, and a table of everything else sorted into classical and modern.
- The kitchen, bedrooms, the puja room and toilets and water.
- Apartments and flats: what carries over from plots to flats and what does not.
- Remedies without demolition: an honest guide, with questions to ask any consultant.
- Vastu and your birth chart: the 4th house, Mars and Saturn, with measured claims only.
A free tool
The Vastu entrance checker takes the compass bearing of your main door and shows which of the 32 padas it falls in, what the Brihat Samhita says, where the two English translations differ and what modern guides add. Like the other calculators here it runs in your browser, and it asks once for a confirmed email.
If you want help with a specific home
Reading a home well depends on the plan, the land and the people who live there, and this section cannot do that. If you would like to talk it through, a consultation is available, online, and it will say openly what the texts support and what they do not. There is no obligation and nothing on these pages depends on it.
The articles
The full list follows.