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बहुला Bahulā

Alcyone (the Pleiades) · η Tauri · Taurus

nakshatra aliasidentification certainattestations 1 Alcyone η TauHIP 17702mag 2.85

Attestations

Pāṇini & Patañjali · c. 500–350 BCE (Pāṇini)
४.३.३४ श्रविष्ठाफल्गुन्यनुराधास्वातितिष्यपुनर्वसुहस्तविशाखाऽषाढाबहुलाल्लुक् ।

Devanāgarī from Sanskrit Wikisource. Cross-checked against two independent GRETIL IAST e-texts, which give 'śraviṣṭhā-phalguny-anurādhā-svāti-tiṣya-punarvasu-hasta-viśākhā-aṣāḍhā-bahulāl luk' (Kāśikā-derived, sa_pANini-aSTAdhyAyI.txt) and 'śraviṣṭhā-phalgunī=anurādhā=svāti-tiṣya-punarvasu-hasta-viśākhā=aṣāḍhā-bahul-āt=luk' (independent 'alt' text, sa_pANini-aSTAdhyAyI-alt.txt). All three agree on the ten names and their order.

34. The affix denoting 'born therein' is elided by luk, after the words 'sravishtha', 'phalguni', 'anuradha', 'svati', 'tishya', 'punarvasu', 'hasta', 'visakha', 'ashadha' and 'bahula', all denoting asterisms. ... The 'Bahula' is another Name of the asterism [Kṛttikā]. — Śrīśa Chandra Vasu (1896)

THE HEADLINE FIND. Bahulā is Pāṇini's own name for the asterism the later tradition calls Kṛttikā, and it is not otherwise present in this database (the database has krittika and krittika-seven but no bahula). Pāṇini names it in the sūtra text itself, as the last item of the ten-asterism list at 4.3.34, so it is not a commentator's supplement. The identification Bahulā = Kṛttikā is the unanimous reading of the tradition: Vasu, translating the Kāśikā on this very sūtra, glosses 'The Bahula is another Name of the asterism [Kṛttikā]' (his Devanāgarī gloss is lost in the archive.org OCR but the English is intact). The name is transparently the plural-ish 'the abundant/manifold ones', matching a star-cluster, and Kṛttikā is likewise a plural in the Vedic lists. Pāṇini does elsewhere derive the full-moon name Kārttikī (4.2.23), which presupposes a base Kṛttikā, so both names were current for him; Kṛttikā itself never appears in his sūtras. Verified identical in both independent recensions (Kāśikā-derived and 'alt') and in the Devanāgarī Wikisource witness. Note that 'bahula' also occurs ~39 times in the Aṣṭādhyāyī as the ordinary metalinguistic term bahulam 'diversely'; only the 4.3.34 occurrence is the asterism.

Aṣṭādhyāyī 4.3.34 · text · translation

See also

Kṛttikā, Anala, Kārttika (Middle-Indic Kattika), Ambā, Dulā, Nitatnī, Abhrayantī, Meghayantī, Varṣayantī, Cupuṇīkā