Zone / Roomdraftschool: pan-indian· Bṛhat Saṁhitā
Kitchen
mahānasa
zon-kitchenDefinition
The cooking room (mahānasa); BS 53.118 prescribes it in the southeast (āgneyī) of a four-halled house.
Classical
Prāṇa relevance
The hearth-room of the Agni chain: kitchen → cooked food → jatharagni → bodily prana (see cnx-0001 family). Its SE prescription is now CLASSICAL-verified in BS itself — the load-bearing upgrade of this session.
Cross-book attributes (2) — fill / concur / diverge
Bs ConcurrenceFilledper txt-svoboda-vastu
⚑ Svoboda QUOTES Bṛhat Saṁhitā 53.118 (Sanskrit 'mahānasaṁ cāpi kāryam āgneyyām', + translation 'the kitchen in the southeast', attributed 'Bṛhat Saṁhitā 53:118, p. 495') and CONCURS: kitchen SE. He footnotes the disagreement: the 16th-c. Manuṣyālaya Candrikā allows NW; the Mānasāra advises N or NE ('cooking is a sacred activity').Placement SvobodaFilledper txt-svoboda-vastu
South side of the house, PREFERABLY the SOUTHEAST ('some call it the home's stomach'); may occupy the centre of the E or W side; should NEVER be NE or the centre of the N side. Stove best on the EAST wall (aligns the cooking blaze with the sun, cook faces the sun's ascent); NE kitchen-corner kept empty/clutter-free (no utensils, racks, brooms, dusters, wastebaskets). Sink ideally N of the stove (cook's left hand). Natural gas > electricity; classical Vāstu praises dried cow-dung as best fuel, then wood.Connections (3)
maps-to · 1
- Svoboda overlays each room with its own Vastu Purusha Mandala, so a room sits on the limb-body of its Vastu Purusha. The kitchen in the SE sits on the right HAND (the SE corner = 'the hand he uses to perform auspicious activities'); a disfigured SE corner deforms that hand.
placed-in · 2
- Stated directly by Varahamihira; the verse's own direction-name — āgneyyām, "in Agni's quarter" — carries the fire-direction logic inside the prescription itself.
- Svoboda places the kitchen on the south side, preferably the southeast (the Fire/Agni quarter), and explicitly QUOTES Brihat Samhita 53.118 (Sanskrit 'mahanasam capi karyam agneyyam') to license it; the stove is best on the east wall to align the cooking blaze with the sun. SE=Fire=pitta, so the household's fire-function belongs in the fire-direction (cnx-0001 family).
Sources
- txt-brihat-samhita53.118Classical✓ verifiedkitchen in the SE of a catuhshala
Notes from other books
- txt-svoboda-vastuHEADLINE CORROBORATION: Svoboda's kitchen-SE matches BS 53.118 (which he quotes and locates) AND the BS dir-agneya prana-chain (cnx-0001 family: kitchen → cooked food → jatharagni → bodily prāṇa). The stove-on-east-wall + cook-faces-sunrise detail ties the household cooking fire to the solar/Sun→prāṇa doctrine of ch. 6. Flagged as the strongest room-placement concurrence in the substrate; the Manuṣyālaya Candrikā (NW) / Mānasāra (N/NE) divergences are residue (promote? in Phase 2 when those texts are read).
Other attributes
- Function
- cooking; the household hearth
- Recommended Directions
- [{"direction":"dir-agneya","school":"pan-indian","tag":"CLASSICAL","locus":"BS 53.118 (Sanskrit read visually: mahānasaṁ kāryam āgneyyām)"},{"direction":"dir-agneya","school":"unknown","tag":"CLASSICAL","locus":"Kiranakhya-tantra via Utpala on 53.118 — independent convergence"}]
- Grhadevata Note
- Per the commentary's per-room scheme, the kitchen's house-deity type is Dhūpa (Bhat queries: for dhvāṅkṣa?) [CLASSICAL — txt-utpala-vivrti]