Unlike English and the other ‘modern’ languages, the beauty of Sanskrit is that, with intelligent and patient practice, one can navigate to new shores of meaning without the help of a dictionary. This Paper on conventional beliefs, myths and Västû, begins with an etymological deconstruction of the word that should open the door to revisit, possibly meditate upon, and reinterpret the basics.
When it is now possible to build cities floating on the sea, or in the air, Västû Vidyä remains encrusted with many myths and dissonances. How must it be approached, understood, taught and practiced today? In a world where geostationary space-stations and interplanetary human travel are feasible, where astronauts routinely see 16 sunrises and sunsets in 24 hours, where kits are available to make houses that can revolve 300o, what do the words ‘north’, ‘south’, ‘east’ and ‘west’ really mean? Can there be directions that can really be called ‘up’ and ‘down’?
Despite overwhelming and conclusive proof to the contrary, Euclidian and Västû myths persist - and are propagated blithely to the next generation - about what really a point, a line, a plane or a solid is. Is Västû limited to just one hemisphere? Hoary axioms ought to be periodically re-checked; if necessary, recalibrated, revised; and, if desirable and useful, reintroduced to our young through innovated syllabi.
With the brief and preferred deconstruction – followed by a few comments that the scope of this paper allows on bindû, rekhä, and piñda, - I aim to show that Västû Vidyä, when studied and practiced in a certain way can, at the very least, be spiritually liberating. Beyond serving the mundane but relevant bread-&-butter functions, a sharper focus, denser concentration and, above all, a dedicated application to the discipline, can offer its students and emagineers insights into the elegance that engulfs the Universe and an understanding that is liberating. Yä Vidyä sä vimûkteyé
OVERVIEW
Before they can become conventional beliefs and myths, thoughts establish deep, sinuous roots in the social psyche. A speculative journey - exploratory, eclectic and occasionally faltering - to them may, or may not, take one to the real beginnings of words and meanings, but it can summon up from within the understanding that asks for courage in discarding that which has been cherished and has served its timely function, but now shows itself as timed out and, therefore,inadequate.
An over-arching motivation for this essay is my affirmative and unapologetic svadéshô-bhûvanatrayam variety of matriotism. I believe India has the wherewithal to reacquire intellectual leadership of the human species. But for that preeminence to occur in the foreseeable future much that is internally Augean has to be swept and cleaned up.
In our zeal to protect our ancient-memories-&-experience-based smärt-a-ness we are insufficiently attentive to fifteen other components of the minds of our young that are inexorably getting corrupted by the detritus of a world whose organizing systems are falling apart. This is dangerously contrary to our culture. Will we succumb to those who - terrorized into vain and witless violence and exhibiting arrogant infallibility - say ‘vayam rakshämah’ to us this time? For the Hindu mind and culture, it is not enough now to survive; it must once again prevail if the Védic diktät, Kriñvantô vishvamäryam is to be obeyed.
Leaving those myths and beliefs prevailing in the design, construction and usage of human habitations and communities to those more familiar and competent in that area than I, this Paper attempts to address conventional beliefs and myths in the light of a meaning of the word ‘Västû’ that is at once more basic and holistic. As I have never been a tenured or temporary teacher anywhere, my agenda is somewhat different from mere academic kite flying.
Architects in modern India, frequently run into practitioners of Västû Vidyä. This is because both do
deal with buildings and habitations - with directional locations, orientations, inter-relationships, functions, modules, entities, components, material-use, timing and sequencing of various shapes and forms, and so on.
How these shapes, forms, angles, frequencies and magnitudes come to acquire three-dimensionally habitable and useable architectural reality - a preferred and modulated enclosure of space - is a process that, in the case of Västû Vidyä today could accept better illumination. It is clear that at a conceptual and planning level, the västûkärs and sthapatis of the past sparingly, if at all, used so-called ‘plane geometry’ that is dinned into school-age children who later become architects, draftsmen and engineers; yet what they chiseled and hewed out, sculpted and assembled in stone is awesome.
A house is one of the most easily identifiable, minimal manifestations of civilization, which word, coincidentally, shares a common etymological root with ‘civil engineering’. Ten thousand years after Civilization – allegedly, The Era of Man: The Builder – is supposed to have begun most people own a house only in their daydreams. Even as Early Man was discovering Fire and inventing the Wheel, his search for the House Beautiful had begun. And, as his perennially transient descendant-dwellers of slums and shantytowns are never allowed to forget, the search for the Enclosure Ideal is still not over.
Enclosures are so basic, it is impossible to think of fulfilling the basic rôti-kapadä-makän-shikshä-chikitsä-rozegär needs of our species without them. Grains and fertilizers need storage. Sheds and shops are required for making and selling cloth. Human families need homes. Schools and hospitals are necessary for education and medical support. Factories, offices, studios, workshops, laboratories, are enclosures where people work. People also need such enclosures as stadia, auditoria, restaurants, plazas, condominiums, art galleries, discotheques, dance halls, temples, gômpäs, churches, mosques and synagogues for the fulfillment of their commercial, cultural, social and emotional needs. Mausoleums such the Pyramids and the Täj Mahal even ensure (supposedly) immortal life after death.
Today it is more au courrant to speak of the ‘Built Environment’. But there is more – much, much more - to it than just land, brick and stone. In ways seldom discussed, much less understood, this ‘Built Eenvironment’ is able to insinutate itself into our very beings to influence our perceptions, thoughts, behaviors and even insights. In his book A Guided Tour of R. Buckminster Fuller author and professor of English literature, Hugh Kenner says, “…(Architectural analogies) locate the conditioned reflexes by which we value…virtually all human behavior and, in fact, Reality…We get our everyday language, hence our criteria, from what we understand of the visible environment, especially from what we understand to be the successful human gestures, the structures that last. But what if we have been misreading architecture…?” Maybe we, too, have been misreading - and ill-practicing - Västû Vidyä.
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