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दक्षिणमार्गस्थाः सप्तर्षयः Dakṣiṇamārgasthāḥ saptarṣayaḥ

a southern counterpart of the Great Bear · — · far-southern sky; Crux and neighbours on the Gorresio conjecture, unidentified in the text

collectiveidentification unidentifiedattestations 1

Attestations

Mahābhārata & Rāmāyaṇa · Bāla Kāṇḍa, c. 1st–3rd c. CE
ṛṣimadhye sa tejasvī prajāpatir ivāparaḥ / sṛjan dakṣiṇamārgasthān saptarṣīn aparān punaḥ //

CE reference R_1,059.020 = vulgate Bāla Kāṇḍa 60.

Griffith: 'By penance-power and holy lore, / Like Him who framed the worlds of yore, / Seven other saints he fixed on high / To star with light the southern sky.' Dutt: 'And in the midst of the ascetics, like unto another Prajāpati, he created other seven Rishis on the Southern way; and also, overwhelmed with wrath created another set of stars.' — Ralph T. H. Griffith (1870-74) and Manmatha Nath Dutt (1892)

A second, SOUTHERN set of seven ṛṣis 'situated on the southern path' created by Viśvāmitra in fury — an explicit doubling of the Saptarṣi into a northern and a southern seven. This is a distinct sky-group name and has no counterpart anywhere else in the database. Griffith's footnote (quoting Gorresio) gives the standard reading: the seven original ṛṣis are Ursa Major, and 'the seven other new saints … should be seven new southern stars, a sort of new Ursa', the mythical fiction reflecting the fact that these southern stars became known to Indians only when they colonised the south. That is a conjecture, not a textual identification, and is recorded as such. The passage continues into a second nakṣatramālā (see the nakshatramala entry).

Rāmāyaṇa 1.59.20 (Critical Edition, Bāla Kāṇḍa) = Griffith Book I Canto LX · text · translation

See also

Saptarṣayaḥ / Ṛkṣāḥ, Nakṣatramālā (also nakṣatravaṃśa), Triśaṅku