What it does
To find buried bones and other harmful objects before building on or treating a plot.
Where
Any raw plot or existing building, at the spot where the rod turns anti-clockwise
When
Before construction on raw land
Samagri used
See every other use of:
Cautions
Explanation and notes
The depth of the bone can also be worked out, but that method was not covered in this class. Other shalya such as kaudi, coal or a buried furnace are also found by dowsing, and any shalya produces a vibration (spandan) in the body of the person checking. Whether a bone is present can also be judged from a lagna chart cast for the moment of the question (prashna), or by asking a small girl to place her finger with her eyes closed; where she places it gives the answer. In the class case the rod turned anti-clockwise in the middle of the right-hand side of an industrial plot; digging there brought out a horizontal bone about one foot long at roughly 3 to 4 ft depth, and more bones were said to remain.
An ashtang nimitta method that reads where on the body the person asking about a plot feels itching. The spot tells whether the buried bone is of an animal or a human, male or female, and which animal.
A bone buried in a plot is the biggest land defect (shalya). It changes the chemistry of the surrounding soil, becomes a home for spirits and slowly destroys the peace, health and business of whoever builds there.
The full purification done where a bone has been dug out, the land's equivalent of the rites after a death: vastu registry with five coconuts, removal of the affected soil, agni sanskar with mango wood, water, gomutra and cow-dung purification, lime and sulphur, a 24-hour lamp and mercury.
When bones remain under a plot, mercury mixed into the soil changes its chemistry and can remove up to 75 percent of their harmful effect, including the spirit trouble attached to them.
If at least 6 ft of soil is filled above the place where a bone lies, even a cremation ground beneath causes no trouble, provided the 16 sanskars of the land are then performed on top.
Besides bones, coal, ash, some animal fossils and kaudi in the ground act as shalya. A furnace (bhatti) left buried under a building ruins the family and the business, and kaudi must never be buried, although gomti chakra can be.
The corners of a plot are its biggest sources of energy, and energy flows diagonally from corner to corner through the brahmasthan like a highway. Piling or filling a huge mass over a whole corner zone creates a serious defect.
On tilted plots, directions and zones must be read in degrees with a compass. Vedic vastu never says to treat any corner as Ishaan or to accept a direction however tilted it is, and a wrong reading leads to costly and harmful changes.