ब्रह्मराशिः Brahmarāśi

Transcribed from the Devanagari OCR of the printed edition at shloka_source_url (Achyuta Nand Jha ed., vol. 1) and checked word-for-word against two further independent scans of two different printed editions of the same commentary — Krishna Chandra Dvivedi's (https://archive.org/download/brihatsamhitawithbhattotpalavivrittipartidr.krishnachandradvivedi/Brihat%20Samhita%20%20with%20Bhattotpala%20Vivritti%20Part%20I%20-%20Dr.%20Krishna%20Chandra%20Dvivedi_djvu.txt) and A.V. Tripathi's (https://archive.org/download/JiUm_brihat-samhita-part-1-of-varaha-mihira-by-avadh-bihari-tripathi-saraswati-bhavan-granthamala/Brihat%20Samhita%20Part%201%20of%20Varaha%20Mihira%20by%20Avadh%20Bihari%20Tripathi%20-%20Saraswati%20Bhavan%20Granthamala_djvu.txt). Only glyph-level OCR artifacts that all three scans show to be artifacts (e.g. OCR रद्वव for रद्गव, श्व for श्च) have been normalised; every substantive reading is as scanned, and the two places where the scans genuinely differ are flagged in identification_notes. Extract from the longer Parāśara passage given in full under db_id 'brahma-nakshatra'.

'Brahmā's heap/group.' Occurs once in the whole commentary, in the Parāśara comet passage quoted on BS 11.33–36, in the sequence 'dhruvaṃ brahmarāśiṃ saptarṣīn' — i.e. an item between the pole star and the Big Dipper along a comet's northward track. Varāhamihira's own verse at that point lists only Saptamuni, Dhruva and Abhijit, so Brahmarāśi is an EXTRA figure preserved only in the lost Parāśara. Position in the list suggests something in the circumpolar Draco/Cepheus region — i.e. plausibly part of the Śiśumāra figure the database already records — but nothing in Utpala identifies it, and no attempt at a modern identification is warranted. It is NOT Brahmahṛdaya (Capella), which is far from the pole and which Utpala's commentary on the Bṛhat Saṃhitā never mentions. Flagged as a distinct name from Brahma-nakṣatra (= Abhijit), which occurs in the same sentence.

Two verses from two different works, quoted together because the name occurs in each only once. MBh CE lines 06,003.017a/017c (GRETIL mbh1-18u.zip); Rāmāyaṇa CE R_6,004.043 (GRETIL sa_rAmAyaNa.txt). Griffith's canto numbering for the Rāmāyaṇa passage follows the vulgate: Book VI Canto IV; Dutt's 1893 prose has it in the same chapter.

A genuinely obscure sky-object named INDEPENDENTLY in both epics, which is why it deserves an entry. In the Mahābhārata (Bhīṣma 6.3.17) Mars, after going retrograde, 'stands enveloping the Brahmarāśi'; in the Rāmāyaṇa (Yuddha 6.4.43) Lakṣmaṇa reports 'the Brahmarāśi is pure, and pure are the supreme ṛṣis; blazing, they all shine circling Dhruva clockwise'. The Rāmāyaṇa context is unambiguously circumpolar (paramarṣayaḥ = the Saptarṣi, pradakṣiṇa around Dhruva), which argues for a northern object; the Mahābhārata context is a planet-conjunction and so must be near the ecliptic. Traditional glosses diverge accordingly: (a) Abhijit, whose deity is Brahmā, giving Vega; (b) a 'heap of Brahmā' = the Prajāpati figure; (c) the whole rāśi ('heap') of nakṣatras. Ganguli declines to render the word at all ('stayeth in a line with the constellation Sravana'); Griffith folds it into 'the pole-star'; Dutt reads the Rāmāyaṇa clause as 'Dhruva is without blemish'. Because three competent translators produce three different results, the entry is recorded as disputed and unidentified rather than forced onto a star.