Orion's Belt - Mintaka, Alnilam, Alnitak - as the 'three-jointed arrow' · δ, ε, ζ Orionis · Orion
Vedic corpus
तमभ्यायत्याविध्यत्स विद्ध ऊर्ध्व उदप्रपतत्तमेतं मृग इत्याचक्षते य उ एव मृगव्याधः स उ एव स या रोहित्सा रोहिणी यो एवेषुस्त्रिकाण्डा सो एवेषुस्त्रिकाण्डा।
The female deer is Rohini; the three-pointed arrow is the three-pointed arrow. [ŚB 2.1.2.9, tr. Eggeling: 'when they (the gods) on that occasion pierced him with what is called the three-knotted arrow, he abandoned that body'.] — A.B. Keith, Rigveda Brahmanas, HOS 25 (1920); Julius Eggeling, SBE 12 (1882)
The 'three-parted arrow' shot at Prajapati; the three aligned Belt stars piercing the deer's body. The same arrow appears in ŚB 2.1.2.9 ('iṣuṇā trikāṇḍena' - Eggeling: 'the three-knotted arrow') as the reason Prajapati abandoned the body that is Mṛgaśīrṣa's vicinity. Standard astronomical reading (Weber, Tilak); the text does not name the stars.
Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 3.33; cf. Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 2.1.2.9 ·
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translationVaṭeśvara & Sāmanta · composed 1869 CE (Śaka 1791); edited by Joges Chandra Ray, Calcutta 1899
तस्य चेशानभस्यादपि मध्यस्थिता-
स्तारकास्तिस्र ईष्वाभका इल्वलाः ।
एकषष्टि६१ध्रुवः स्थूलभस्याद्युग्-
वह्निपक्षाः२३ शरो याम्य आसां मतः ॥ २८ ॥
Devanagari transcribed by the compiler from the page FACSIMILE (archive.org scan leaf n220 = printed p. 118) because the archive.org OCR of this volume is unusable for Devanagari; the page image itself was fetched in this session at https://archive.org/download/in.ernet.dli.2015.292705/page/n220.jpg . Every numeral was re-read at full scan resolution. Cross-checked against a second, independent scan of the same Ray edition at https://archive.org/download/siddhantadarpanachandrashekarsimha1897_252_Z/ , which agrees character for character on the figures. Round brackets and the figures in them are the PRINTED EDITION'S own: (n) is the serial number of the asterism/star, the figure after it the edition's decoding of the preceding bhūtasaṅkhyā word-numeral, so no numeral has been silently converted here. A handful of the compound word-forms in this worn 1899 type are uncertain and are marked in this database as read, not emended; the FIGURES, which carry the astronomy, were verified at high magnification in both scans.
See the Ilvalāḥ entry for the translation of verse 28. — Literal rendering by the compiler
Sāmanta's phrase for the three Belt stars, tārakās tisra iṣvābhakāḥ, 'three stars, arrow-like', is an independent nineteenth-century echo of the Vedic name Iṣus trikāṇḍā for the same asterism, and it comes with coordinates for the first time: dhruva 61°, śara 23° south (XII.28), against true values in his frame of 59°51'–61°53' and 23°37'–25°20' south. See the Ilvalāḥ entry for the same verse.
Siddhānta Darpaṇa of Candraśekhara Sāmanta, Grahagaṇita, Tripraśnādhikāra, 12th prakāśa (Bhagrahayogavarṇana) 28 ·
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