The 81 square Vastu Purusha Mandala holds 45 devatas: 32 on the outer ring and 13 inside, with Brahma at the centre. This explorer draws the grid with north at the top. Tap a square, or choose a name, to read the devata who holds it, where it stands, the class the Brihat Samhita gives it, the other spellings and, for the outer ring, how the entrance table reads a door in that square. It is built from our guide to the 45 devatas, with each square placed by the verses that name it. Squares the verses do not name one by one are left blank, and the tool says so when you tap one.
How it works
The outer ring. The 32 squares round the edge are the entrance padas. Their names and order follow the Brihat Samhita (53.43 to 53.45) as our guide gives them: the east wall from the north-east corner southwards, then the south wall from the south-east corner westwards, the west wall from the south-west corner northwards and the north wall from the north-west corner eastwards. Each wall has eight, and the corner square is the first of the wall that begins there. The numbers 1 to 32 on the grid are the numbers in our guide’s table.
The inside. The Brihat Samhita numbers the 81 squares with east at the top, so its square 1 is the north-east corner, and names the squares of the inner deities one by one, in N. Chidambaram Iyer’s 1884 translation. Brahma holds the nine central squares, 31, 32, 33, 40, 41, 42, 49, 50 and 51. Aryaman holds square 23, due east of Brahma. The alternate squares round Brahma, 25, 43, 61, 59, 57, 39 and 21, hold Savita, Vivasvan, Indra, Mitra, Rajayakshma, Prithvidhara and Apavatsa (53.46 to 53.47). The inner corner squares 11, 17, 71 and 65 hold Apa, Savitra, Jaya and Rudra (53.48). The tool turns those numbers into places on a grid with north at the top. The names and the inner zones are our guide’s, and each inner zone agrees with the square the verses give.
The classes. The verses sort the devatas by how many squares they hold (53.49 to 53.50). The five at the north-east corner, squares 1, 2, 10, 11 and 21, are Padikas, and the verse says the other three corners hold similar groups of five, which gives 20. The remaining 20 are Dvipadas. Aryaman, Vivasvan, Mitra and Prithvidhara are Tripadas. The words mean holders of one, two and three squares.
Reading the result
Tap a square and the result gives the devata’s number and name, where it stands, and its class with the verse. For an outer square it also says whether the classical entrance table rates a door there as favourable, mixed or cautioned, read from the same table the entrance checker uses, so the two tools always agree. The corner squares carry a note on how other lists name them.
Of the 49 squares inside the ring, the verses name 21: Brahma’s nine and one each for the twelve deities around him. The other 28 are blank on the grid. The verses’ counts add up to 81 only if those 28 are the second squares of the Dvipadas and the extra squares of the Tripadas, but the verses read for this site do not say which square is whose, so the tool does not guess. Tap a blank square and it names the devatas on its sides.
Where traditions differ
Our guide marks three places where lists differ. At the corners, it follows the Brihat Samhita’s names, Shikhi, Anila, Pitri and Roga, while many popular tables put the guardians of the quarters there, Ishana, Agni, Nirriti and Vayu, and some give Agni as the first name in the north-east. Names are spelled in more than one way: Grihakshata for Brihatkshata, Kusumadanta for Pushpadanta, Naga for Ahi, Mahendra for the east wall’s Indra. And Indra appears twice, on the east wall and in the inner south-west, which some lists separate by name.
How much ground each deity holds also depends on the translator and the way of counting, and our guide gives no square counts for that reason. Diagrams that fill every square follow one way of counting. This tool shows only the squares the verses state and the classes they give. The Manasara and the Mayamata, the two south Indian treatises, set out their own grids in their seventh chapters, and this tool follows the Brihat Samhita alone.
What it does not do
It does not assign meanings to rooms. In the texts we read, the deities of the outer ring are used to judge doors, Brahma’s squares are kept apart, and the whole list is used for offerings at the time of building. Assigning one of 45 qualities to each room of a flat is a modern practice, and the tool does not do it. It makes no forecast and asks for nothing to be changed. To read your own door, use the entrance checker; to find the centre of your own plot, the brahmasthan finder.
Frequently asked questions
↳ How many devatas are in the Vastu Purusha Mandala?
Forty-five in the 81 square grid: 32 on the outer ring and 13 inside, with Brahma at the centre. The grid in this tool shows all of them.
↳ Why are some squares blank?
The Brihat Samhita names one square for each of the twelve deities around Brahma and nine for Brahma. It does not say which deity holds each of the other 28 inner squares, only how many squares each class holds, so the tool leaves them blank rather than guess.
↳ What do Padika, Dvipada and Tripada mean?
Holders of one, two and three squares. The Brihat Samhita calls the five devatas at each corner Padikas, the other twenty Dvipadas, and the four on Brahma's sides Tripadas (53.49 to 53.50).
↳ Which devata is at the north-east corner?
Shikhi in the Brihat Samhita's list, as our guide gives it. Many popular tables put Ishana, the guardian of the north-east, there instead, and some give Agni.
↳ Does each devata decide what a room should be used for?
Not in the verses we read. The outer ring is used to judge doors, Brahma's squares are kept apart, and the list is used for offerings. Room by room assignment of the 45 is a modern practice.
↳ Why is Indra on the grid twice?
One Indra is the fourth square of the east wall and the other stands in the inner south-west. Our guide shows both, as the lists it follows do. Some lists tell the two apart by name.