The body of Vastu Shastra, including the Manasara and Mayamata, codified Indian rules for the siting and laying-out of buildings, temples and towns. They prescribe the vastu-purusha-mandala, a cosmological grid orienting settlements to the cardinal directions and reserving zones for deities, rulers and castes, alongside hierarchies of town types from the village to the royal capital. Town form is treated as a ritual diagram aligning the built world with cosmic order.
These treatises are the principal indigenous theory of Indian town planning, shaping temple-towns and royal capitals for centuries.
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