Varāhamihira, Bṛhat Saṃhitā (c. 550) | The Textbook of Architecture

An encyclopaedia of omens, astronomy and practical knowledge by the great astronomer of Ujjain. Two of its chapters are the oldest dated Sanskrit texts on architecture: one on houses and the squared site diagram, one on temples.

Varāhamihira wrote in the sixth century under the patronage of the kings of Ujjain. Among some hundred chapters on planets, earthquakes, gems and the signs of good horses are chapters on finding underground water, on gardens, on house-building (vāstuvidyā) and on temples (prāsādalakṣaṇa); chapter numbers differ slightly between editions.

The house chapter scales dwellings to rank: the king’s palace largest, then the households of officials, then those of the four varṇas, each smaller than the one above. It lays out the site on the 81-square diagram and warns against building over its vital points. The temple chapter opens by saying where the gods like to live (beside lakes and rivers, in groves and gardens) and then describes twenty kinds of temple by plan and height.

Hendrik Kern published the Sanskrit text in 1865 and an English translation in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society in the 1870s.

The book, part by part

I ch. 53: house-building

Sizes of houses by rank and varṇa; the 81-square diagram; doors and their placing.

Rules: Houses sized by rank

II ch. 56: temples

The places the gods delight in; twenty kinds of temple.

Rules: The gods live where there is water

Rules drawn from Bṛhat Saṃhitā

Houses sized by rank

Give each house a breadth according to the rank of its owner, the largest for the king and for each varṇa less than the one above: thirty-two cubits for a Brahmin, then twenty-eight, twenty-four and twenty.

breadth = 32 − 4 k cubits (k = 0 … 3)

The gods live where there is water

Build temples near water and gardens (by lakes, rivers and lotus tanks, in groves and pleasure gardens), for the gods delight to dwell in such places; where there is none, make a tank beside the temple.