Vastu Dosh Remedies (Nivaran): What the Old Texts Prescribe

The old Vastu texts give only a few remedies for a vastu dosh, and none of them is an object you place in the house. They are: take out anything buried in the ground, plant good trees among the trees the texts warn against when those cannot be cut, keep a road or pillar opposite the door at a distance, perform rites for a damaged part of the house, and do the vastu puja. Below are these remedies of Vastu Shastra (Vaastu) with their verses, what people sensibly do today, and where popular nivaran items such as pyramids and yantras come from.

The remedies in the old texts

• Take out the buried object. The Matsya Purana says to remove the shalya, a buried nail, bone or other object, from the part of the site where it lies: a site with a shalya brings fear, one without it brings good (253.49-50). The Vishvakarma Prakasha gives a whole chapter (12) to this rite, shalyoddhara, and applies it to a house already lived in; it counts an obstruction at the door or on the road as a kind of shalya too (12.34).
• Plant good trees among the bad ones. If thorny trees, trees with milky sap or fruit trees close to the house cannot conveniently be cut down, the Brihat Samhita says to plant good trees among them: punnaga, ashoka, arishta, bakula, jack, shami and shala (53.86-87), and the Matsya Purana gives the same rule without naming the trees (255.21-22). M. Ramakrishna Bhat's note reads this as planting between the house and the bad tree. Cutting comes first in both texts; planting is the course when you cannot cut.
• Keep the distance. An obstruction opposite the main door does no harm once it is farther away than twice the height (Brihat Samhita 53.76); the Vishvakarma Prakasha says twice the height of the house (7.97-98). The Vishvakarma Prakasha also lists cases where it is no fault at all: far away, standing at an angle rather than straight ahead, behind a wall, across water or hills (14.49-54).
• Rites for a damaged part. The Samarangana Sutradhara, attributed to King Bhoja in the eleventh century, has a chapter of pacification rites (ch. 42, Shantikarma-vidhi). If a part of the house breaks, find the deva who rules that part of the Vastu grid, make offerings to him and do an expiation, prayashchitta (42.56-57). For a door frame damaged during new work it names the deva by the door's square: Indra for a door on Mahendra's square (east), Yama for one on Grihakshata's (south), Varuna for Pushpadanta's (west), Soma for Bhallata's (north) (42.62-65).
• A protective rite for pillars. The Matsya Purana warns that pillars set up anticlockwise bring fear, and asks for a protective rite against trouble from the pillars (256.25-26).
• The vastu puja itself. The Matsya Purana says the vastu sacrifice is done on five occasions: when the cord is laid out, when the pillars are raised, when the door frame is raised, at entry into the house, and for vastu-upashamana, pacifying the site (256.10-11). One old English translation turns that fifth occasion into a remedy for defects; the Sanskrit lists it as one of the five regular occasions.

Why the vastu puja matters in the tradition

The Matsya Purana tells how the Vastu Purusha, pinned face down by the gods, asked how he was to live. They gave him his food, among it the offering made at the centre of a site and the offerings at the start of sacrifices and festivals (252.15-18). From then on, it says, the vastu sacrifice has been done for shanti, peace (252.19).

The later texts make the same point. The Manasara says the offerings must be made when a site is laid out, "to avoid this defect" (VIII.62-64), and the Mayamata counts the offerings to a building's tutelary deities among the rules for finishing it (18.216). In the tradition, the puja is how a house avoids a dosh in the first place; if you moved in without it, purohits perform it in a home already lived in too (see below).

What the texts do not have, including a "nivaran puja"

No classical text we checked has a remedy for a main door, room or kitchen that is simply in the wrong place. The Brihat Samhita states a result for each door position and each defect and prescribes nothing to cancel them; its only mitigations are the trees and the distance rule above. The Samarangana Sutradhara's rites are for damage and bad omens: its rite for the south door frame is for one damaged during building, not a remedy for having a south door. A separate "vastu dosh nivaran puja" for a finished home is not a named rite in these texts; the nearest are those shanti rites and the shalyoddhara.

What you can do today

1. Use the room differently. The texts give each direction a use: the shrine in the north-east, the kitchen in the south-east, household goods in the south-west, the treasury and grain in the north-west (Brihat Samhita 53.118). No text prescribes changing a room as a remedy; this is plain sense. The use of a room is the one thing you can change without breaking a wall: a north-east room used as a store can take the prayer corner, and a room you are uneasy about as a shrine can become a store.
2. A Vastu Shanti. The tradition performs the vastu puja while a house is built, when it is entered, and to pacify the site (Matsya Purana 256.10-11); purohits also perform it after a major alteration or when a worry about the house will not settle. A purohit performs it as the Vastu Shanti havan, on its own or inside a griha pravesh. It is a prayer for the house and the people in it, not a repair; our Vastu Shanti guide explains what the havan involves.
3. Nothing. If the "dosh" appears only on modern lists - a north-east toilet, wall colours, mirrors - there is nothing in the old texts to correct (the list is in our guide to what vastu dosh means). The Vishvakarma Prakasha even tells the owner of an old house not to worry over its measurement formulas (aya-vyaya) and the choice of month (2.93).

Where the popular remedies come from

None of the following is in the Brihat Samhita, the Vastu chapters of the Puranas or the later Vastu treatises we checked. We do not sell any of these items.

Remedy	Where it comes from
Vastu pyramids	The Western "pyramid power" movement, begun in the 1930s and popular in the 1970s. One Indian pyramid-Vastu brand dates its method to the 1970s and calls it "a new age science".
Wind chimes	Feng Shui, the Chinese placement tradition; chimes were among the "cures" in Feng Shui books published in the United States in the 1980s.
Crystals	Western New Age crystal healing.
Laughing Buddha	Budai, a Chinese Chan monk who died in 917 CE by a temple record, later honoured as Maitreya; sold in India as a Feng Shui charm.
Bagua and convex mirrors	Chinese: the eight trigrams of the I Ching, used in Feng Shui.
Bowls of sea salt	A Feng Shui practitioner's own history traces the salt-water cure to English-language Feng Shui books of the late 1990s.
Horseshoe	A European folk charm: iron to keep away evil spirits.
Money plant	Usually the golden pothos, a vine native to Mo'orea, an island in French Polynesia in the Pacific.
"Vastu dosh nivaran yantra"	Yantras as worship diagrams are old. A copper plate sold to cancel a vastu defect has no source we could find before modern teleshopping and online shops. The Advertising Standards Council of India upheld complaints against vastu and yantra teleshopping ads in 2012, 2013 and 2014.

Remedies for a north-east toilet and for the kitchen

Toilet in the north-east. None of the texts discusses an attached toilet, so none gives a remedy for one in the north-east; the pyramids and salt bowls sold for it are in the table above. Keep it clean, dry and aired, and if you are building, keep the north-east for the shrine, the Brihat Samhita's rule for that corner (53.118). Where the "never north-east" rule comes from is in our toilet and bathroom guide.

Kitchen. The Brihat Samhita puts the kitchen in the south-east (53.118), and the Vishvakarma Prakasha agrees (2.94). The "north-west as second choice" and "cook facing east" rules on modern sites are not in the texts we checked, and none of them gives a remedy for a kitchen in another direction: no colour, object or yantra. If you are building, the south-east follows the text; if you are not, there is nothing the texts ask you to place in it. More in our kitchen guide.

When to call a purohit

Call a purohit when you move into a home, finish a renovation or an extension, dig up something during work, or when a worry about a dosh will not leave you. Tell the purohit what you see at the door, the centre and the corners, and what has changed in the house. For what a purohit usually charges, see how much a purohit costs.