Marma Points in Vastu: What They Are and What to Do About Them

Marma points in Vastu are the vital points of the plot, the crossings of the lines of the mandala grid, which the classical texts ask a builder not to pierce or disturb. The modern version says to keep beams, pillars, drilling and heavy objects away from them. The old instruction is real. How it applies to a flat, and how many points there are, is far less certain, and anyone who gives you an exact figure should be asked for the source.

The idea behind marma

The Vastu Purusha is a body lying across the plot, and a body has places where a wound does most damage. The Sanskrit word marma means exactly this: a vital spot. Indian medicine uses the same word for the vital points of the human body, which is a separate subject with its own long literature. Vastu applies the word to the plot.

In the Brihat Samhita the relevant verses are 53.57 to 53.64, as this site’s mandala guide cites them. The verses locate the sensitive points at the crossings of the lines of the grid and warn against building so that a post, a pillar or a nail pierces them, and against burying or heaping what should not lie there. The remedies guide cites verse 53.57 in the same way, as the instruction that what lies at the vital points should be left undisturbed. We have read these verses in English translation and not in Sanskrit, and we have not seen the full detail of every point.

How many points are there

This is the question most pages answer with a confident number, and it is the one where the honest answer is shorter.

A square grid of nine by nine squares has eight lines running each way inside its border, so there are 64 crossings inside the border. That is arithmetic and not a claim about any text. Which of those crossings the texts treat as marma, and whether they count the crossings of diagonals as well, is something the translations we read do not settle for us. Popular guides give different counts, and some give a count for each of several grids. We could not trace any of those figures to a verse, so we do not repeat one.

Piercing, in a traditional building

To see what the instruction meant, it helps to picture the buildings it was written for. Traditional construction used timber posts and beams, stone footings and earth. A post sunk into the ground is a very literal piercing. A nail in a beam holds the structure. So the advice reads like a rule about where a structure rests its weight and what is buried under it, and the deity-and-body language is how a ritual culture expressed it. That is our own reading, given as such.

It also suggests why the advice fits poorly with a modern building. A flat’s columns are placed by structural calculation and fixed by the frame of the whole tower. Nothing about where they land has anything to do with a grid drawn across your floor plan.

What modern practice adds

The modern layer has three ideas.

1. Beams and pillars. Avoid having a pillar, a beam, a column or a heavy hanging fixture at a marma point.
2. Drilling and nails. Avoid hammering, drilling or digging at the marma points, particularly at the time of foundation.
3. Weight. Avoid heavy furniture, a safe or a stack of boxes on a marma point.

The first is the one most often applied to flats, and it is the one least within a resident’s power. Columns and beams are part of the structure. Do not remove or alter them on the advice of a Vastu consultant. Any change to a column or a load-bearing wall needs an engineer’s drawing and the building’s permission.

A practical checklist

• Check what you are actually being told. Ask which grid, which lines, and which text.
• Leave structure alone. Never cut, drill into or modify a column or beam on Vastu advice.
• Sleeping and sitting. If you are free to place a bed or a desk, keep it out from under a heavy exposed beam. That is good sense, and the bed advice in bedrooms in Vastu agrees.
• Foundations on a new plot. If you are building, a first-stone ceremony in the north-east is classical (53.112). Tell your engineer about any ritual spot so that it does not clash with the footing plan.
• Nails and shelves. Hanging a picture is harmless. Do not worry about it.
• Do not buy fixes. Nothing needs to be installed at a point.

What cannot be changed and what helps

A beam over your sofa cannot be moved. A column in the middle of a room stays where it is. A plumbing stack stays put. None of the texts we read asks you to alter these, and a mistaken change can harm a building.

Three things help, and they cost nothing. First, arrange the furniture so that you sit and sleep away from heavy beams. Second, keep the structural heart of the home, the middle, clear and tidy, in the spirit of the brahmasthan. Third, if you are building anew, discuss the foundation ritual and the marking of the grid with the architect early, so that the site plan and the ritual plan agree.

Marma in Ayurveda is a different thing

It is easy to confuse the two. Ayurvedic marma therapy is a practice of working on vital points of the body, and it has its own texts and its own teachers. The Vastu marma is a point on a plot. Some modern pages join the two by mapping the plot’s points to the organs of a person. We did not find that mapping in the verses we read. It is a modern idea, and it is not a reason for anyone to worry about their health because of where a wall stands. If you have a health concern, see a doctor.

How this fits with the rest of the system

The marma idea sits beside the entrance padas as a second use of the same grid. One judges a door, the other marks the points of a structure. It is easy to overstate both. A flat that has a door in a cautioned pada and a pillar on a crossing is an ordinary flat, and the remedies guide says what to do about that: very little, and nothing structural.

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