Book excerpt: In this ground-breaking study the traditional Indian science of architecture and house-building,Vastu Vidya, is explored in terms of its secular uses, at the levels of both theory and contemporary practice. Vastu Vidya is treated as constituting a coherent and complete architectural programme, still of great relevance today. Chakrabarti draws on an impressive amount of textual material, much of it only available in Sanskrit, and presents several extremely valuable illustrations in support of the theories expounded. Each chapter deals with one architectural aspect, and chapters are divided into three sections. For each aspect, the first section explains the prescriptions of the traditional texts; the second section deals with the rather arbitrary use of that aspect by contemporary Indian architects trained in the western manner but striving to relate to Indian roots; while the last section in each chapter explores the selected use of that particular aspect by contemporary Vastu pundits, with their disregard for architectural idiom.