How to know if the Land you buy is suitable to you or not... Tips from Traditional Utkaliya Silpa Sastra collected by Basudev Mahapatra

Soil Selection for dwelling purpose

There are four classes of soil according to Orissan Silpa Sastra named after four major category of Hindu caste system.

The Brahmin Soil is white in colour that smells like clarified butter and is astringent to the taste. The Kshatriya soil is blood red in colour and is bitter to the taste. The Vaisya soil is yellow in colour with smells like alkaline earth and is sour to the taste. The Sudra category soil is black in colour which gives the smell of dead snails and has a wine-like taste.

If there is difficulty in deciding the category of soil by colour and taste, just prepare a small piece of ground with the plough (utter Savitri Mantra during the whole process) and sow sesamum seeds therein. If sprouts appear after the third night, it is Brahmin soil. If sprouts appear after 4, 5 or 6 nights, the soil can be determined as Kshatriya, Vaisya and Sudra respectively.

If the sprouts appear after seven nights then it belongs to the Pisachas (Devils). Such soil is considered unsuitable for housing or any good work.

If someone lives on the soil belonging to his own caste or on one lower than his own, then he/she shall live happily with friends, relatives and attendants.

A place cool and undisturbed, spacious and full of fragrant plants, close to water bodies is often good for dwelling purpose. But the place with human hairs, gravel, bones, sand or thorns is fearsome where misfortune reigns.

Great Hindu Pioneers of Science, Read more...

MASTER ASTRONOMER AND MATHEMATICIAN
Born in 476 CE in Kusumpur (Bihar), Aryabhatt's intellectual brilliance remapped the boundaries of mathematics and astronomy. In 499 CE, at the age of 23, he wrote a text on astronomy and an unparallel treatise on mathematics called "Aryabhatiyam." He formulated the process of calculating the motion of planets and the time of eclipses. Aryabhatt was the first to proclaim that the earth is round, it rotates on its axis, orbits the sun and is suspended in space - 1000 years before Copernicus published his heliocentric theory.