Divide the square site into a grid of equal squares (padas), most often 8 × 8 = 64 or 9 × 9 = 81, and place every part of the building according to the grid.
64 padas (maṇḍūka) or 81 padas (paramaśāyika)
Walk round clockwise
Provide a path for circumambulation (pradakshina) in the clockwise direction, keeping the sacred object on the right, and enclose it with a railing that separates the sacred ground.
Worship at a stupa is movement. The pilgrim enters through a gate, turns to the left and walks round with the monument on the right hand, first on the ground-level path inside the railing (vedika), then on the upper path on the terrace, reached by a stair. The rock-cut chaitya halls of the western Deccan wrap an aisle round a stupa at the end of an apsidal nave for the same purpose, and the Hindu temple keeps the ambulatory round its sanctum.
The railing, even when carved in stone, keeps the form of a wooden fence (posts, three lens-shaped cross-bars, a rounded coping), a memory of the timber enclosures of sacred trees and shrines.
Related rules
Imagine the vāstupuruṣa lying face down on the diagram with his head in the north-east and his feet in the south-west, held down by the gods who occupy the padas; do not place walls, pillars or doors on his vital points.
Read the diagram from the centre outward: Brahmā at the heart, then a ring of the gods, a ring of human concerns, and on the outside the lesser spirits; the holiest function goes at the centre and the most worldly at the edge.
81 padas = 9 (Brahmā) + 16 + 24 + 32
Place the garbhagriha (the small dark chamber that houses the image) over the Brahmasthana, with its walls on the ring of the gods and its door on the axis, usually to the east.
Build the stupa as a solid hemispherical mound (anda) over relics, on a circular terrace (medhi), and crown it with a railed enclosure (harmika) and a mast of parasols (chattra).
Sanchi: Ø ≈ 36.6 m, height ≈ 16.5 m (without the crown)
Break each face of the square sanctum into projections (rathas), three, five, seven or more, that step forward towards the central one, and carry them up unbroken through the wall and the tower.
tri-ratha 3 · pancha-ratha 5 · sapta-ratha 7 projections per face
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Walk round clockwise”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/pradakshina. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.