Twenty-Four Prohibitions on the Site

What a Site Must Not Be

This chapter is a list, and its logic never changes: each line names one concrete configuration of land, water or neighbourhood and states what it does to the household. The ideal is given first — stream on the left, long road on the right, pond in front, hills behind — and then the prohibitions, from houses at a crossing-mouth or on temple and battlefield ground, to new ponds at the gate, water that drains away like tears, and ground that ends in a sharp tail.