Site & Building Principles: from land selection to plan

यह पृष्ठ अभी हिन्दी में अनूदित नहीं है। अंग्रेज़ी पाठ दिखाया जा रहा है।

Bhumi Pariksha — site examination — comes before the mandala, before proportion, before the first measure. The treatises give a sequence of tests, and most of them are still good practice.

The examination is empirical. Dig a pit and refill it: if soil is left over, the ground is sound; if it falls short, it is not. Flood it and watch the fall. Note the slope, the standing water, the trees that already thrive. The tests are proxies for bearing capacity, drainage and water table.

Slope, water and approach

A fall toward the north or east is preferred — in the monsoon belt it drains away from the built mass and keeps the lower, wetter ground on the shaded side. Approach is treated separately: where a plot is entered changes the whole internal hierarchy, whatever the compass says.

Setting out the plan

Only then is the Vastu Purusha Mandala laid over the site, in the square grid the text specifies for that building type. The padas give room boundaries, the brahmasthana is kept clear, and the perimeter carries the load. From the grid comes the module; from the module, every dimension.

Test the ground, then trust the grid.

Small plots and apartments

Most contemporary work inherits a plot and an orientation. The useful move is to apply the hierarchy at the scale you control — which rooms take morning light, where water and fire sit, what stays uncluttered at the centre — rather than force a mandala onto a footprint that cannot hold it.