The most comprehensive of the Sanskrit treatises on vāstu (building): seventy chapters on the architect, measurement, site, orientation, squared site diagrams, villages and towns, temples and palaces of one to twelve storeys, columns, gateways, vehicles, furniture and the proportions of images.
The name means something like “the essence of measure”, and measure is the book’s constant theme. Everything (the plan of a village, the height of a column, the face of an image) is fixed by a system of units that runs from the aṅgula (the finger-breadth, itself subdivided down to the size of an atom) through the hasta or cubit to the rod and the cord. A building’s dimensions are chosen so that they satisfy astrological formulas as well as proportional ones, which is why the text gives several permissible sizes rather than one.
The treatise opens with the qualifications of the four kinds of builder: the sthapati (master-architect), the sūtragrāhin (surveyor, “holder of the cord”), the vardhaki (who works out proportions and draws) and the takṣaka (carpenter and carver). It then proceeds, like the building itself, from the ground up: the testing of the soil, the setting up of a gnomon to find the cardinal directions, and the division of the site into squares, from one to 1,024, each assigned to a deity. It describes eight types of village plan, each named for its figure, and the planning of towns and forts.
The central chapters treat the vimāna (the shrine with its superstructure) storey by storey, from one to twelve, and classify buildings by the shape of the crowning member into nāgara (square), drāviḍa (octagonal) and vesara (round). There are chapters on the base, the column (with five kinds distinguished by their section), the entablature, the gateway, the pavilion and the hall, and a long section on the proportions of sculpture.
The date is uncertain; scholars have placed it anywhere between about the sixth and the fifteenth century, most often in the second half of the first millennium AD, and the text as we have it is probably a compilation. It became widely known through P. K. Acharya’s edition and English translation (1927–1934), which also compared it, sometimes too eagerly, with Vitruvius.
The book, part by part
I The architect and the units
The four grades of builder and their qualifications; the system of measures from the atom to the cubit; the scales of proportion (tāla).
II Site, gnomon and diagram
Examination and testing of the soil; the gnomon and the finding of the cardinal points; the thirty-two site diagrams from one to 1,024 squares.
Rules: Find the cardinal points with a gnomon · The site is a squared diagram
III Villages, towns and forts
Eight village plans, each named for its figure; streets, gates and the placing of temples and castes; towns and fortified cities.
IV Temples and palaces
The vimāna of one to twelve storeys; its members from base to finial; the three shapes nāgara, drāviḍa and vesara; halls, pavilions and gateways.
Rules: Nāgara, drāviḍa, vesara · Storeys of miniature shrines
V Columns, furniture, images
Five kinds of column distinguished by section; thrones, beds and cars; iconometry of images by the tāla system.