आश्लेषा Āśleṣā

Colebrooke pointed to α Cancri; Burgess rejects this ('α Cancri is not the eastern member of any group of five stars') and places the asterism in the circular group in Hydra's head, 'and ε Hydrae, its brightest star... is the junction-star', while conceding the latitude error is 'very considerable'.

ONE star, tilaka-shaped, deity Sarpa (the Serpent), gotra Maitrāyaṇīya. The single-star count conflicts with the later five- or six-star Āśleṣā of the siddhāntas and supports taking the yogatārā (ε Hydrae) as the whole asterism in the older reckoning — which is some support for Burgess against Colebrooke's α Cancri. The Sarpa deity matches Sārpa already on file.

Devanagari transcribed by the compiler from the page FACSIMILE of the Ray edition (Calcutta 1899), scan leaf n216 = printed p. 114–115: https://archive.org/download/in.ernet.dli.2015.292705/page/n216.jpg . The archive.org OCR of this volume is unusable for Devanagari, so no verse here is taken from the OCR text; every figure was re-read at full scan resolution and cross-checked against a second independent scan of the same edition (https://archive.org/download/siddhantadarpanachandrashekarsimha1897_252_Z/page/n217.jpg). Round brackets and the figures in them are the PRINTED EDITION'S own: (n) is the serial number of the asterism/star and the figure following it is the edition's decoding of the bhūtasaṅkhyā word-numeral that precedes it. These are the two printed segments of the dhruva list (vv. 2–6) and the śara list (vv. 7–10) that carry this asterism's own figures; the complete verses are given under db_id 'yogatara-catalog'.

SIDDHĀNTA DARPAṆA XII (Sāmanta, 1869): dhruva (polar longitude) 108°00', śara (polar latitude) 12°00' south. The direction comes from XII.11, which makes the śara southern for the asterisms numbered 4, 5, 6, 9, 13, 14, 16–21 and 24 and northern for all the rest; XII.12–13 give the asterism 5 star(s). TRUE VALUES for 1870 CE, reduced to Sāmanta's OWN sidereal zero (his Citrā = 179°, i.e. Spica; implied ayanāṃśa 22°12'), as polar longitude / polar latitude: ε Hya 105°22' / -11°30'; δ Hya 103°08' / -12°47'. VAṬEŚVARA-SIDDHĀNTA VIII.2.1–2 (904 CE) puts the same junction star at Kulīra 18° (= 108°00' measured from the sidereal origin) with a śara of 7°00' south (VIII.2.5–6, direction by VIII.2.8). Sāmanta's 108° / 12° S supports ε Hydrae (105°22' / 11°30' S) over δ Hydrae (103°08' / 12°47' S) on longitude, and his re-measurement of the latitude from the Sūrya Siddhānta's 7° S to 12° S is exactly the correction needed for either Hydra star — the inherited 7° fits neither.

This is the printed segment of the continuous dhruvaka list (VIII.2.1–2) that carries this star's own figure; the star's kṣepa is item no. 9 of the unbroken numeral run of VIII.2.5–6, which cannot be split, so the whole passage is also given verbatim under db_id 'yogatara-catalog'. Devanagari transcribed by the compiler from the page FACSIMILE of K. S. Shukla's INSA edition of the Sanskrit text, scan leaf n317 = printed p. 293: https://archive.org/download/VatesvaraSiddhantaSanskritText/page/n317.jpg . The archive.org OCR is unusable for Devanagari. The SQUARE brackets and the figures inside them are the EDITION'S own decoding of the bhūtasaṅkhyā word-numerals, reproduced here so that no numeral is silently converted. Shukla's English translation and notes are in copyright: they are neither quoted nor relied on here — only the constituted mūla text and the edition's numeric glosses.

VAṬEŚVARA-SIDDHĀNTA VIII.2 (904 CE) gives the junction star's dhruvaka (polar longitude) as Kulīra 18° — Vaṭeśvara states the dhruvakas as degrees WITHIN each zodiacal sign, not as absolute longitudes, so this is 108°00' from the sidereal origin — and its kṣepa (polar latitude, VIII.2.5–6) as 7°00', south by the rule of VIII.2.8 (a verse the edition notes is identical with Brahmagupta's Khaṇḍakhādyaka I.9.13). TRUE VALUES for 904 CE reduced to Vaṭeśvara's own sidereal zero (his Citrā = 3° of Libra = 183°), as polar longitude / polar latitude: ε Hya 110°20' / -11°22'; δ Hya 108°11' / -12°40'. For comparison Sāmanta (1869) gives 108°00' / 12°00' south. Vaṭeśvara's list is essentially the inherited Sūrya-Siddhānta/Brahmagupta set: it is a fourth independent witness to those values rather than a fresh observation.

Verbatim parallels from the two earlier Chinese versions of the same Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna material, and the Tang commentator's note on the Chinese star-count: 摩登伽經 (Mātaṅga-sūtra) T21n1300, T21.0404c20: 「柳宿一星，半日共月不相捨離，祭之用乳，屬於龍神，因姓龍氏。有此七宿，在於東方。」 | 舍頭諫太子二十八宿經 T21n1301, T21.0415b19: 「不覲宿者，有五要星，形如曲鉤，行三十須臾而侍從矣，乾魚為食，主醍醐天，姓曰慈氏。是為七宿，屬于東方。」 | Yang Jingfeng's interlinear note in T21n1299 at T21.0389a25: 「景風曰：中國天文，柳八宿，主廚饍之任，南方之宿」

Chinese lunar lodge (xiu) 柳 Liu; T1301 renders the name semantically as 不覲 ('Not Beheld'). A three-way DISAGREEMENT worth recording. The Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna gives Āśleṣā one star (eka-tāraṃ tilaka-saṃsthānam); the 3rd-century T1300 agrees exactly — 柳宿一星 — and adds half a day (15 muhūrta), matching pañca-daśa-muhūrta-yogam. But T1301 has five stars in a curved hook and the 759 CE Xiuyao jing has six in a snake-figure. The single star therefore looks original and the multi-star hook/snake secondary — which supports the DB's ε Hydrae yogatārā reading against the later five- or six-star Āśleṣā. The SARPA/Nāga deity is constant in T1300 (龍神, 龍氏) and implicit in T1299's snake-figure, matching sarpa-daivatam; T1301's clan 慈氏 = Maitra matches maitrāyaṇīyaṃ gotreṇa. Chinese astronomy gives Liu eight stars.