Vāstu — the science of dwelling · door 8 of 10
Bhū-parīkṣā — examining the land
Soil, water and slope, before the first stone
Match the sky
0 of 6 matchedTap one on the left, then its partner on the right.
Three questions to seal this door
1. In the pit test, earth left over after refilling means —
2. A hasta is roughly —
3. Land sloping toward which directions is favoured?
The rishi's scroll — read more, if you wish
The texts examine a site before building on it. Varāhamihira and the Mayamata give a simple test: dig a pit one hasta (a forearm) deep, wide and long, and fill it again with the same earth. If earth is left over, the soil is excellent; if it is exactly level, middling; if it falls short, poor.
A second test uses water: fill the pit, walk away a hundred steps and come back; if the water still stands, the ground is good. The texts give versions of this test, and also read the colour, smell and feel of the soil. And the slope: land that falls toward the north and east is favoured, so rain drains away toward the morning light.
Read with a builder's eye, these tests check what an engineer checks: whether the soil is dense or loose, whether water drains or stands. The shastra adds the reverence: the ground is examined because it is about to carry a family's life.
The tables on this page are drawn from the same data VEDAUM reads charts with.