Deitydraftschool: pan-indian· Bṛhat Saṁhitā

Vastu Purusha

वास्तुपुरुषVāstupuruṣa

also: House-God, Vastu-deva, Vastunara

dev-vastu-purusha

Definition

The Being who, according to the root myth, obstructed earth and sky and was pinned face-down by the gods, each god presiding over the limb he held; ordained by the Creator as the deity of the dwelling. The site plan (mandala) is his body.
Classical

Prāṇa relevance

Vastu Purusha is the formal device by which the tradition identifies site with body: every locational rule that routes through his limbs (marmas, missing-limb effects, Brahma-at-heart) is implicitly a claim about effects on the resident's body. See pra-vastu-purusha-anga and cnx-0004.

Cross-book attributes (8) — fill / concur / diverge

Adaptability SvobodaFilledper txt-svoboda-vastu
⚑ Svoboda's distinctive 'squaring' doctrine: Vāstu Puruṣa is 'quite adaptable — he will gladly shrink or swell to fill the largest square or rectangle that can be sketched onto a surface.' Deviations from the ideal square/rectangular perimeter are 'bites' / injuries; remedies = redraw to a smaller symmetrical perimeter, add 'virtual walls' (fences/hedges) for missing physical walls, or expand into a symmetric verandah. All asymmetrical areas must be 'squared'.
MaṇḍAla As Body SvobodaFilledper txt-svoboda-vastu
the maṇḍala IS his body: every cell symbolises an individual component (vessels, organs, joints); his limbs indicate which portions of the designed space suit which functions, and 'loss of a limb means loss of that limb's function' — a quadrant absent/distorted in the plan injures the corresponding life-domain.
Origin Myth Source SvobodaFilledper txt-svoboda-vastu
Svoboda attributes the pinning-of-the-bhūta origin myth (gods pin the demon; each god presiding over a limb lends it his qualities; pacified, the bhūta is named Vāstu Puruṣa and awarded all construction-offerings as food) to the Bṛhat Saṁhitā — corroborating Book-1's root-myth source.
Per Room BodyFilledper txt-svoboda-vastu
⚑ Each ROOM (not only the whole plot) is overlaid with its own Vāstu Puruṣa Maṇḍala and so has its own Vāstu Puruṣa with limbs. The SE corner of a room is Vāstu Puruṣa's RIGHT HAND, 'the hand he uses to perform auspicious activities'; two staircases projecting into Marie's living room 'disfigure Vāstu Puruṣa's right hand'. A deformed right arm/hand 'weakens the focus and integrity of the energies that call the southeast quadrant home: the Fire Element, rajas, and Venus.'
Posture SvobodaFilledper txt-svoboda-vastu
lies face down (prone) on the site with HEAD turned into the NORTHEAST; splayed KNEES and ELBOWS occupy the SE and NW corners; FEET occupy the SW. ⚑ Svoboda quotes BS 53:51a in Sanskrit for the NE-head ('Pūrvottara din-mūrdhā... avāṅgmukho 'sya śirasi śikhī' — head turned toward the northeast).
Resident ResonanceFilledper txt-svoboda-vastu
⚑ 'The bodies and minds of those who inhabit a room will be inclined to resonate with the body and mind of that room's Vāstu Puruṣa; how he feels is how they will tend to feel.' The Three Doṣas govern Vāstu Puruṣa's physical health, the Three Guṇas his mental health, exactly as for a human — so a room's compromised limb is 'diagnosed' in vāta-pitta-kapha and sattva-rajas-tamas.
Samkhya Identity SvobodaFilledper txt-svoboda-vastu
⚑ The Vāstu Puruṣa is 'an earthly personification — and rendering — of puruṣa', the Formless Transcendent Awareness that resides at the centre of every Vāstu diagram; he is 'the embodiment of the spirit and the consciousness of the space we wish to define', the embodiment of raw matter (vastu=matter) made from the 'unenlightened' Five Great Elements (bhūta = both 'element' and 'being').
Wholeness EffectFilledper txt-svoboda-vastu
'When whole, Vāstu Puruṣa encourages the whole space he rules to be cooperative; when one of his limbs is missing or distorted, the space that that room represents is substantially compromised, and will need remediation.'

Connections (3)

embodies · 2
  • ←81-pada plot scheme (Brihat Samhita)Classical
    Origin myth (gods pin the Being; each presides over the limb he held) realized as the deity-bearing grid.
  • ←Paramasāyikā (9×9, 81-pada grid)Modern
    The Vāstu Puruṣa Maṇḍala IS the body of the Vāstu Puruṣa: Svoboda — 'The Vāstu Puruṣa lives within his Vāstu Puruṣa Maṇḍala' (PDF p.133); every cell symbolises an individual component (vessels/organs/joints), and his limbs (NE head, SE/NW knees-elbows, SW feet) indicate which space-portions suit which functions. The Paramasāyikā grid concretises/personifies him. (Parallel to Book-1's man-vastu-81 embodies dev-vastu-purusha.)
maps-to · 1
  • ↔Brahma Nābhi (divine navel — the maṇḍala's chief marma)Modern
    The Brahma Nābhi (divine navel) is the Vāstu Puruṣa's own navel at the maṇḍala centre — 'in terms of prāṇa, the most significant of the Vāstu Puruṣa's limbs'. It homologises the building-centre, the body-navel (the body's prāṇic centre, a nāḍī confluence), and the zygotic bindu/axis-mundi root. Building ↔ body ↔ cosmos navel-homology.

Sources

  • txt-brihat-samhita53.2–3Classical✓ verifiedOrigin myth: Being pinned face-down by gods; limbs assign presiding deities; ordained House-God
  • txt-brihat-samhita53.51Classical✓ verifiedLies prone on the site with head toward the north-east
  • txt-brihat-samhita53.66–68Classical✓ verifiedEffects of his limbs being absent from a plan; complete limbs bring honour, wealth, happiness

Notes from other books

  • txt-svoboda-vastuSvoboda's signature move on the House-God: the limb-body is recursive — laid over the whole property, over the house, AND over each individual room — and a room's deformed corner disfigures the corresponding limb of THAT room's Vāstu Puruṣa, transmitting the deformity to the residents' doṣas/guṇas. This both corroborates BS's complete-vs-incomplete-limb doctrine (53.66–68) and extends it (per-room recursion + explicit SE=right-hand) — captured, the extension flagged as a question, not asserted as classical.
  • txt-svoboda-vastuSvoboda's account directly corroborates Book-1's dev-vastu-purusha (NE-head posture, the pinning myth, the maṇḍala-as-body, limb→function homology) — he even quotes BS 53:51a in Sanskrit. His NEW contributions are (a) the explicit Samkhya overlay (Vāstu Puruṣa as the personification of puruṣa amid prakṛti) and (b) the 'adaptability / squaring' remedy doctrine. Corroboration flagged as a question, NOT merged.

Other attributes

Roles
["vastu-presiding-deity"]
Mandala Positions
[{"mandala":"man-vastu-81","position":"the entire grid is his prone body; head at NE, feet at SW","tag":"CLASSICAL"}]
View in graph →