A Vastu Text in the Modern Age:

Vishvakarma Darpan, 1969∗

VIBHUTI SACHDEV

1969 was a time of some introspection for the architectural profession in India.1 The visionof bold architecture that Nehru had nurtured so personally was now in full bloom. It was,after all, a decade since he had urged architects to break the shackles of tradition in supportof Chandigarh – an experiment to embolden the spirit of New India. There was a generalsense of relief from professionally trained architects, because for them this political supportmeant that they could now do what they did best. Not out of choice, but training, theywere freed from the burden of addressing tradition, and they could now address foreigndesign. This was also the time when many were ‘returning home’ after training in Europeanand American schools, and were putting into practice what they had learnt abroad.2 The‘foreign-returned’ were the ‘real’ architects who took upon themselves the task of educatingtheir clients, and changing the face of India. They were ‘real’ also because only they had hadfirst-hand experience of what was being taught from books in architecture schools all overIndia. With scholarship schemes set up by the Nehru government facilitating architects tostudy in America, it was there that many young architects went to complete their education.Once back they would set their euphoria in concrete and glass. And by 1969 there werealready quite a few examples of American-inspired designs in the portfolio of Modern India,and its novelty was beginning to wear off.

Meanwhile, away from the mainstream enthusiasm for Modern architecture, thepublication of the sixteenth edition of an illustrated text called the Asli or ‘real’ VishvakarmaDarpan in August 1969, although ignored by the ‘real’ architects, caught up with thepopularity of ‘American’ designs. Its publisher, Bhai Buta Singh - Pratap Singh of Amritsar,

∗ The illustrations shown here reflect the poor quality of the original.1 This article is an outcome of a workshop-based research project (2000-2001) funded by the Arts and Humanities

Research Board of the U.K. The project, convened by Partha Mitter and Craig Clunas at the University of Sussex,was devoted to considering ‘Textual Sources and Value Systems in the Arts of India and China’, bringing togetherscholars engaged in developing an indigenous critical approach to Indian and Chinese art, free from European-centred tools and values, to share their techniques and approaches to their material. The issues raised in discussionsrelated to professional and textual hierarchies, canons, golden ages, Sinology/Indology and Orientalism, notions ofthe indigenous, dominant texts and mainstream practices, relationship between theory and practice, and institutionalpatterns of scholarship. My article questions the model - set up by current art historians - of separate insular domainsof the textual tradition of theory, and its practice; and of the various specialists that participate in the wider intellectualand practical aspects of architectural design. I question the notion of hierarchy established by identifying mainstreamand dominant practices, which denies agency and authority to different streams of production. In doing so, I explorein detail a modern architectural text conceived in a stream that no longer enjoyed the privilege of institutional andpolitical support within the prevailing architectural scenario.

2 See: Vikram Bhatt and Peter Scriver for a full account of architectural practice in the 1960s-70s in, After theMasters: contemporary Indian Architecture (Ahmedabad, 1990), pp. 15-23.

JRAS, Series 3, 15, 2 (2005), pp. 165–178 C© The Royal Asiatic Society 2005doi:10.1017/S1356186305004979 Printed in the United Kingdom

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specialised in text books on subjects ranging from building construction, and drawing, toelectrical guides, and manuals on how to make your own radio set. The Vishvakarma Darpanadopts the generic title of the divine architect, linking itself to the Vishvakarma School,which had produced texts since at least the tenth century. Its author, Gyan Singh Mistri,presents himself as a builder, reminding one of Mandan Sutradhar, a fifteenth-century builderand writer of several texts on architecture and sculpture.

Let us look briefly at Mandan Sutradhar’s text on architecture. Called the Vasturajavallabh3

(also known as Rajavallabh), and written in Sanskrit, this work is composed of 14 chaptersand also belongs to the Vishvakarma School. The topics discussed in the text follow alayout roughly similar to earlier Vastu Shastras.4 Commencing with the usual invocation ofVishvakarma among other Gods, it proceeds to discuss site-shape, declivity of site, soil tests,units of measurement, Vastupurusha Mandala, Ayadi and astrological considerations, and theconstruction of forts, palaces and houses. The discussion of these topics, however, benefitsfrom its writer’s expertise as a Sutradhar or a draughtsman/builder. In fact, he devotes awhole chapter to geometrical construction of various shapes. The typology and buildingmaterials he discusses are what he was probably using, and were prevalent at the time he waspractising in the court of Rana Kumbha of Chitor, his king-patron.5

There was no such royal patron for Gyan Singh Mistri, and how does his work comparewith that of his predecessor? Vishvakarma Darpan is in three colloquial languages: Gurmukhi,Hindi and Urdu. The textual part of the book is in the form of doha or couplets, chaupai orverses of four lines, and prose, without any use of Sanskrit. Opening with a long propitiationof Vishvakarma, his attributes and tools, the author then gives a brief account of theexamination of soil using the standard test involving a pit of one hasta6 in width, lengthand depth. The declivity of the site is considered, where its slope towards the northern andeastern directions are preferred. The land is categorised in terms of the four jatis or castesaccording to the colour, smell, and the taste of its soil. The author recommends sites thatmatch the owner’s jati. This is followed by the method of calculating the aya of the houseusing the owner’s hasta; calculation of the muhurta or the auspicious time for the laying ofthe foundation, and rahu vichar for placing the first door of the house; the effect on thehouse of the month of its commencement; and the auspicious time for the first entry intonew and old houses. This section of the text, albeit concise, has a strong resonance withother texts of the Vishvakarma school, such as the Rajavallabh. Next, he tabulates the weightof materials such as bricks, timber, concrete, plate glass and steel, in the unit of pounds persquare foot; and the compressive and tensile strength of materials. He then explains brieflythe techniques of stone and brick masonry; plastering; flooring of brick, Agra stone andtimber; roofing; and the calculation of rates per volume of mud and concrete. He ends thetext with recipes for the preparation of varnishes and paints.

3 Ramyatna Ojha (ed. and tr.),Vasturajavallabh,II edn. (Kashi,1934)4 See: Vibhuti Chakrabarti (Sachdev) for an overview of Vastu Shastra texts in, Indian Architectural Theory:

Contemporary Uses of Vastu Vidya (Surrey, 1998).5 See: Rima Hooja for more on Mandan and his patron in “Of Buildings and Books: The Theory and Practice

of the Architect Mandan” in Stones in the Sand: The Architecture of Rajasthan.Edited by Giles Tillotson, (Mumbai,2001), pp. 12-27.

6 Hasta or forearm is a standard measurement unit of about eighteen inches.

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Fig. 1. Tools. Fig. 2. Ganesh Chaal Dordaar.

What follows is the major part of the Vishvakarma Darpan, numerous illustrations, somecompetent and some weak. There are thirteen plates of illustrations of tools for buildingconstruction (Fig. 1), and how to use them. This is followed by sixty-six plates showing thegeometric construction of motifs (Fig. 2). Each of these plates is divided into three horizontalsections, with Vishvakarma positioned in the top section with his tools and holding theVishvakarma Darpan in one of his four arms. The middle section has the motif in its variousstages of geometric construction, and the lowest section has the generic name of the motifwith the rules of its construction in three languages. For example, the pattern of GaneshChaal Dordaar is explained in a drawing, that shows the various stages of its construction,and the rules of its subdivision are explained in the text in the lower section of the plate. Thename of the pattern is a standard reference to a particular design also indicating, to thosefamiliar with the indigenous terminology, a specific way of subdividing space. So this is anillustration of the method of a pattern, which could respond to the dimensions of any givenspace.

Next, are five plates of naag chakras motifs of intertwined serpents (Fig. 3), arranged withinthe same format of three sections. The next twelve plates of wooden joinery (Fig. 4) haveno textual explanation, and the various timber joints are in isometric drawing, in the styleof modern building construction books. This is followed by ten plates explaining the design

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Fig. 3. Naag Chakra. Fig. 4. Wooden Joinery.

of borders, twenty-five plates of various flowers, and a lion’s head, some indigenous namesare included. Some of these borders and stylised flowers are standard features of traditionaldesign, and their names represent the technical vocabulary followed by craftsmen of northernIndia today. For example, pohchi (Fig. 5), or ‘lower border’ is used as a plinth marker (Fig. 6);while a motif called the chugga ka phool (Fig. 7) is a particular flower that marks the centreof an arch. Then, there are six plates of decorative door surrounds (Fig. 8); ten plates onthe headboards of beds, and chairs and their backs (Fig. 9). The author resumes the earlierformat of three horizontal sections with textual explanation of rules for the next eighteenplates on pinjara or jaalis (Fig. 10). The next nine plates are on door panels and ventilators(Fig. 11); followed by twenty-four plates on chairs, tables, bureaux, and ‘fancy’ furniture(Fig. 12); one plate on tools for laying floors, and seven plates on flooring patterns; sevenplates on tools for masonry and on brick masonry. All these are arranged in a loose formatwith minimal textual explanation.

The next sixteen plates on the construction of arches (Fig. 13), and the thirty-two plateson building features make use of both text and drawing, and of indigenous names. There aretwo plates on fireplaces (Fig. 14), and six plates on staircases and railings. The next section

A Vastu Text in the Modern Age: Vishvakarma Darpan, 1969 169

Fig. 5. Pohchi.

Fig. 6. Pohchi and Chugga in the Ramachandra Temple, Jaipur.

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Fig. 7. Chugga Flower. Fig. 8. Door Surround.

is largely of text and a few drawings on carpentry (Fig. 15), lathe work and the preparationof colours, followed by ten plates on the art of drawing (Fig. 16). Next, are eight plates onbuilding elements such as an angrezi (English) window (Fig. 17), brackets, and a curious clocktower with a cross, called a bangala. The illustrations culminate in a series of forty-four plateson ‘American’ designs in perspective and plan, fulfilling the promise made on the cover ofthe book “included in this edition are many new American building designs” (Fig. 18).

The degree of competence with which Gyan Singh Mistri explains the designs seemsdirectly proportional to his familiarity with the subject, and to some degree capturesthe aspirations of local builders ‘looking up to’ the trained Modern architects. He hasincluded examples of wooden joinery imitating details in building construction books,‘fancy’ furniture, an English hearth, and around four dozen examples of modern Americanbuildings. In dealing with these less familiar subjects, Mistri adopts an isometric view forillustration and avoids any discussion of their method of design. It would be near impossiblefor any aspiring builder to learn about ‘foreign’ design from these illustrations, although theirinclusion may provide a touch of Modernity for builders working on the fringes of urbanarchitectural practice.

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Fig. 9. Chair. Fig. 10. Pinjara.

Books like the Vishvakarma Darpan are still in circulation amongst some carpenters andmasons. Not everyone in India can afford the services of an architect, or feels the necessityto employ one. Often in the urban fringes, the mason in consultation with the owner of thehouse is the designer, which is where such reference manuals are used. For the practitionerthis collection of drawings works both as a catalogue of possibilities, and a portfolio of hisexpertise, giving him credibility and association with the Vishvakarma school. The text underdiscussion was in use in 1995 by a builder, originally from Rajasthan, constructing a housein Delhi. His client, who was not familiar with indigenous traditional design terminology,could, by referring to the book, understand what the builder meant if he said, for example,that he could make the trellis in Ganesh Chaal Dordaar. Therefore, the purpose of the text isthree fold: dissemination, promotion, and discussion.

This is very similar to what the Bombay architect Claude Batley had imagined the roleof his published album on Indian architecture to be.7 In 1934, he and his students produceda collection of measured drawings in “an endeavour to meet a need which everyone whohas set out to study the elements of Indian Architecture must have felt”. Moreover, the

7 Claude Batley, The Design Development of Indian Architecture, (London, 1973) (Ist edn. 1934).

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Fig. 11. Trellis for light. Fig. 12. ‘Fancy’ Furniture.

album was to provide inspiration to architects practising in India, by treating the subject notfrom an “archaeological”, but from the “architectural or constructional viewpoint”.8 Thedrawings are of a superlative quality, and the plates provide plans, elevations and sectionsof various ‘Hindu’ and ‘Mohamedan’ buildings drawn to scale in feet and inches. Plate 47(Fig. 20) is composed of 12 panels of patterns in elevation and plan from the so-called RajaBirbal’s house in Fatehpur Sikri. “The patterns are similar to those used for the piercedstone jails throughout India by the Mohamedans”.9 These are very accurate pictures of thepanels, but for an understanding of the derivation of the patterns the reader will have toinfer and speculate, because the drawings do not explain how these patterns were arrivedat. The emphasis is on accuracy and appearance and not on method of design, so that the‘inspiration’ it promises to provide could barely stretch beyond imitation. Incidentally, mostof these designs are included in the Vishvakarma Darpan, with the indigenous names of thepatterns and their derivations. Although not of comparable quality, Gyan Singh Mistri’sdrawings succeed in the aim of imparting the method of design, which is what Batley’scompilation falls short of.

8 Ibid., p. 7.9 Ibid., p. 35.

A Vastu Text in the Modern Age: Vishvakarma Darpan, 1969 173

Fig. 13. Arches. Fig. 14. ‘Angrezi’ Angithi.

Before Batley, Swinton Jacob had compiled a portfolio of building details from the regionof Jaipur, the famous Jeypore Portfolio (1890–1913). The aim – which the Vishvakarma Darpanachieves without a conscious assertion – was that of educating the craftsman, and presentingdrawings of parts of old buildings that could be used in new design. Jacob’s portfolio isinvaluable as an accurate documentation of building details in the units of feet and inches,but lacks any engagement with the design method and theory that produced the wonderfulexamples of buildings he so admired.

Through their drawings, Batley and Jacob engaged with Indian architecture from withinthe prevailing mainstream – and that is clearly visible from their tools of documentation.Their level of engagement with traditional architecture, in so far as it tells us anything aboutthe method of design, is similar to Mistri’s engagement with modern design. Like Batleywho hoped to inspire architects through images that evoke surprise and amazement, Mistritoo hoped to astonish and amaze his colleagues with American design. Each worked withintheir individual streams of Modern architecture and Vastu Vidya respectively.

If the mainstream is to be determined by the institutional and the political supportthat a professional practice enjoys, then Gyan Singh Mistri’s work is easily ignored. Theinformation on Modern architecture that he projects in his book is ill-digested, useless as

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Fig. 15. Carpentry. Fig. 16. Art of drawing.

a tool for training in Modern design. But the work is mainstream if what is considered isthe stream of Vastu Vidya. The chosen format with a clear echo of Rajavallabh and othertexts of the Vishvakarma school indicates Mistri’s bid to place himself in the centre of thatmainstream – and to include the latest developments and trends of Modernism around him.It is a measure of Mistri’s training in Vastu Vidya as the prevailing mainstream that he canmake a space within it for new fashions of design. There are many masons in India who arenot trained as architects, many who have learnt their skills from master craftsmen, trainedwithin the world-view of Vastu Vidya, who are hopeless at pouring concrete but remarkablydexterous at carving intricate panels, who are successful in satisfying their near-rich clientscatering to their architectural fantasies, who are not a threat to architects’ monopoly over theprofession, but who have the potential to flower if allowed to work on their own ground. Itis the needs of such fellow builders that this book addresses.

So, what kind of buildings do these fellow builders build? The architect and writerK.T. Ravindran eloquently sums up their architecture as “a monster baby of the popularparadigms of the main city and a fractured version of the traditional sensibilities with its owncharacteristic vocabulary drawn from the immediate historic and cultural contexts. It ranges

A Vastu Text in the Modern Age: Vishvakarma Darpan, 1969 175

Fig. 17. ‘Angrezi’ three sided window. Fig. 18. American Design with ‘plan’.

from the most boring, drab nondescript box to a celebration of kitsch and bizarre . . .”10 Butthat is not how their clients would describe them, who after all have commissioned thesedesigns. To them it is an extension of their hopes and aspirations. These buildings respondto the images of Modern design, disengaged from its language – images that are collated bythem in their trips to the city, from architectural journals, and locally from the written andprofessional works of fellow builders. Their practice of modern design is no more bizarrethan the cultivated responses to traditional architecture that their city-counterparts exercise.But, just as not all Modern design is about sticking jharokhas and chhajjas over a clean concretebox, so not all of Mistri’s works are about rendering a cacophony in a modern manner. Withthe guild system collapsed, and the demand for old style low, work is hard to come by. Oncein a while, in the context of a conservation project, one can witness the talents of a Mistrishine. One can see them slake lime so fine that it takes over six months to prepare. And, whena lack-lustre dado panel is revived to its former glory and polished with coconut oil, theresult is a finish that competes in brightness with the glitter of hope. In two closely studiedconservation projects in Amber and Jaipur in the 1990s, I found that the craftsmen involvedin restoring the buildings used terminologies and processes, some of which are elaborated

10 K. T. Ravindran, “Indigenous India”, The Architectural Review, CLXXXII. 1086 (London, 1987), pp. 63-64.

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Fig. 19. American Design with ‘plan’.

in the Vishvakarma Darpan. It is not as if they were referring to the text on-site to remindthemselves of the vocabulary, but it indicates that the text shares the same knowledge-basethat they had internalised through their training. It does not make the text redundant butenhances our chances of understanding those buildings. For us, it adds another source oflearning that complements the buildings themselves and the practitioners. For the buildingsof the more remote past, it is not possible to speak to their creators, and in that context, itmakes the role of the available texts even more valuable, if not fundamental, to our study ofpre-modern design.

Apart from the role of such texts today, Vishvakarma Darpan sheds light on the role ofVastu Shastras in general. The inclusion of drawing as a part of the text, though novel for itsgenre, is facilitated by the ease of printing, and compensates for the growing lack of a sharedvisual language. It questions the model that Vastu Shastras are written by Brahmins in asecret code of Sanskrit to be shared with other Brahmins. Of course, Brahmins may havebeen the writers of some of the Vastu Vidya texts, but Mandan Sutradhar, like Gyan SinghMistri, was first and foremost a builder. Texts on the ritual ceremonies conducted duringvarious stages of building are as much a part of the corpus of Vastu Vidya as are texts on the

A Vastu Text in the Modern Age: Vishvakarma Darpan, 1969 177

Fig.

20.

Plat

e47

(Bat

ley,

1973

).

178 Vibhuti Sachdev

construction of houses. Their authors may not have understood each other, or may not evenhave read each other’s work, but they are both equally valuable as writers on architecture.After all, how many building contractors understand the nuances of a post-modern designeven if they are involved in building one? Equally, how many architects would be able toinstall electrical fittings into the buildings that they, themselves, design? Each has a differentrole in the profession, and if they are also writers, may write different types of texts. A textby a Sutradhar is not more important than a text by a Brahmin scholar, but may emphasisedifferent aspects of the practice. Therefore, a hierarchical view of a body of texts on a sharedsystem of architecture misreads the nature of the profession, and misjudges the relationshipbetween theory and practice.

This is not to suggest that one can project the use of a text like the Vishvakarma Darpan11

onto the uses of the texts of the past. But, if what links the theory and practice is theknowledge base of their expressions as texts and buildings, then there remains little groundfor dismissing the role of one or the other in our understanding of architecture – of anyperiod. And if against all odds of political and institutional marginalisation, a text like theVishvakarma Darpan is, with whatever degree of success, able to carve a niche for itself, thenthe chances are that in a climate of a shared world view and under a strong patronage, therole of theoretical texts in the past will have been no less important.

References

Bhatt, Vikram and Peter Scriver, After the Masters: Contemporary Indian Architecture (Ahmedabad, 1990).Batley, Claude, The Design Development of Indian Architecture (London, 1973), III edn., Ist edn. (1934).Chakrabarti Sachdev, Vibhuti, Indian Architectural Theory: Contemporary Uses of Vastu Vidya (Surrey,

1998).Hooja, Rima, ‘Of Buildings and Books: The Theory and Practice of the Architect Mandan’, in Stones

in the Sand: The Architecture of Rajasthan, ed. Giles Tillotson (Mumbai, 2001).Jacob, Samuel Swinton, The Jeypore Portfolio of Architectural Details (London, 1890–93).Ojha, Ramyatna (ed. and tr.), Vasturajavallabh, Kashi (1934), II edn.Ravindran, K.T., ‘Indigenous India’, The Architectural Review, CLXXXII. 1086 (London, 1987).Sachdev, Vibhuti, ‘In a Maze of Lines: the theory of design of Jaalis’, South Asian Studies, Vol. 19,

(2003).Singh, Mistri Gyan, Vishvakarma Darpan (Amritsar, 1969).

11 For a study of three other indigenous texts on Jaali patterns (Jaal Kaumudi,1891; Geometrical Patterns, 1893; JaalVigyan, 1953), see Sachdev, 2003, pp. 141-155.