Introduction (the five fundamental pillars)

In the preceding pages we have already covered a sufficient ground to enable us to proceed now with the foundation of the edifice of the Science. The question is; What are the fundamental pillars on which this great edifice of Hindu Science of Architecture stands? We shall see (vide Pt. III House-Architecture) that the central post was the prime regulator of house-construction in India. It was as fundamental as the trunk of a tree. Tree-model was the primordial model of a house-plan (cf, the story of the birth of human home—the śālā-house Pt. III) and the abundant application of pillars was one of the chief features of an Indian building whether a residential house or a palace, a sabhā or a temple (or more correctly a temple-pavillion, Prāsāda-maṇḍapa). Naturally you cannot say which pillar or pillars are more basic than others. But if you ponder over the problem and visualise the basic importance of the structure, you must come to the conclusion that as many as five pillars carry cardinal worth with them. These are the four cordinal and one central posts.

Similarly sustaining the analogy, to my mind, there are the following five fundamental pillars of the stable edifice of our science and we can call them the fundamental canons:

1. Diṅnirṇaya, Doctrine of Orientation.
2. Vāstu-pada-vinyāsa, the Site-planning
3. Māna, (Hastalakṣaṇa), the proportionate measurements of a structure,
4. Āyādi-Saḍvarga [Ṣaḍvarga?], the Six Canons of Hindu Architecture.
5. Patākādi-Saṭ-Chandas [Ṣaṭ/Sacchanda?]—the character of the building aspect and prospect etc.)

The standard manuals of Hindu Science of architecture expound a large number of canons of architecture. This we have already seen. But selection has to be made to bring home to the readers, the unique character of our Vāstu-śāstra, which, though on par with many an ancient cognate treatises like the one attributed to Vitruvius, the great Greek-architect-wrtiter has its own character which gives to it a unique importance in the context of cultural content of Hindu civilization which has always been glorified (or more correctly damned) as a spiritual civilization and hence devoid of any civil sense, in the matters of house-planning. We are misrepresented that we could only build great temples and there was no civil or popular or secular architecture in India. A brief exposition of all these fundamentals must dispell the darkness shrouding our vision. Let us take these one by one.