Samarangana sutradhara is a similar text as “The ten books on Architecture” by Vitruvius. The text describes about expressions, paintings, construction, natural elements like Sun, water, land etc. “The ten books on Architecture” by Vitruvius were written in 15 BC responding to that time, knowledge of physics, chemistry, astronomy and language.
Samaranganq Sutradhara is written by Parmara King Bhoj OF Dhar (1000–1055 AD) in Sanskrit language. Raja Bhoj was a successful ruler of Malwa and promoted literature and Arts in his reign. He was theoretician, writer, and philosopher. He had knowledge of war, politics and architecture. He built city, lakes, temples schools, hospitals, step wells, pavilions and palace in Dhar and other states also. He helped other kings to restore many ancient temples also. Shiva temple in Dhar and Bhoj pathshala are renowned examples of the construction excellence by Raja Bhoj.
The text is translated into English from Sanskrit and published by T.Ganpati Sastri in 1924-25. There are two volumes of the book. Raja Bhoj describes the answers of Lord Vishwakarma to his four sons’ about construction technology and colonization of earth. There are 83 chapters and 7500 verses (shlokas) related to Vastu starts with invocation of the Earth and the need of lots of engineering. The first chapter describes why the book is written and methods and principles of construction follows in later chapters.
Literal translation of Samarangana Sutradhara is beholder of the string of battlefield. But it can be interpreted as the person-leader controlling the battlefield. The battlefield also can be interpreted as an act of building or town planning. The reason why an architect is interpreted here as leader because in medieval time the cities were started establishing from military camps. Another possibility can be assumed that city was established for mortals and dwellings for mortals as a model. This text describes about principles of town planning, Architecture, sculptural art, mudra and yantra. Architecture of temples, residences, palaces etc has been explained through verses (Shloka). The technique of sculptural arts and gestures of different sculptures through mudra are discussed in the text. Yantra explains mechanical and functional techniques through descriptions of flying machine, robots and dancing dolls.
In the text, metaphorically the system of human body and nature are described to understand quality of life. City planning aspect such as traffic flow, transportation infrastructure is explained by the example of blood circulation system through veins and arteries. quality of construction is described in form of verses and not by drawings. He found the necessity of good and bad both constructions to be discussed. Methods of construction with mathematical principles are also explained to get good quality of construction.
The text includes three types of squares- 64, 81 and 100 for sixteen house types with varying dimensions (hasta). Kailasha and Sarvatrobhadra are the concepts of haveli with respective lifestyles. So the architect can design within a framework with his creativity from clearly given requirements.
The other texts by him describe how to measure time with the help of water and sound, ship building (Yukti kalpataru), flying machine design with mercury, four basic elements of earth, air, fire, water etc. Baudhayana Sutra explains about eleven emotions (rasa), drama and daily rituals. These texts reinforce the idea that the architecture involves multidisciplinary knowledge.
The purpose behind writing the text could be to convey or pass on unadulterated knowledge from one generation to another or to educate the people. It is seen that Raja Bhoj encouraged the education in his kingdom. But the language Sanskrit is not known by common people today and because of which the text is not in the practice presently.