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कार्त्तिक Kārttika (Middle-Indic Kattika)

Alcyone (Pleiades) — the star that names the month · η Tauri · Taurus

nakshatra aliasidentification certainattestations 1 Alcyone η TauHIP 17702mag 2.85

Attestations

Chinese Buddhist witnesses · 764 CE (Yang Jingfeng's revision of Amoghavajra's 759 CE translation)
梵語昴星名迦提。西國五月十五日雨安居,至八月十五日滿已,後五月十五日滿已,後至九月十五日已來自恣,故號為迦提,但取星名而已。今中國迦提,即是事而妄者別為訓釋,蓋大謬焉

An interlinear commentator's note, not the translated sūtra text; it is attached to the words 九月為昴月 'the ninth month is the Mao month'.

"In Sanskrit the Mao star is named Jiati (Kattika). In the Western Country the rains-retreat [begins] on the fifteenth of the fifth month and is fulfilled on the fifteenth of the eighth; … thereafter up to the fifteenth of the ninth month is the pavāraṇā; hence it is styled Jiati, simply taking the star's name and nothing more. The Jiati now [spoken of] in China — those who take it as a matter of fact and glose it otherwise are greatly in error." — Literal rendering by the compiler

THE ONLY PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF AN INDIAN STAR-NAME I COULD FIND IN THIS TEXT. Yang Jingfeng's 764 CE note on the ninth month (昴月, the Mao/Kṛttikā month) states 「梵語昴星名迦提」 'in Sanskrit the Mao star is named Jiati (迦提)', and then explains that the Buddhist Kaṭhina season is called 迦提 for no reason other than that it takes the star's name (但取星名而已), rebuking Chinese writers who had invented other etymologies. The transcription 迦提 (Middle Chinese roughly ka-dei) renders the MIDDLE-INDIC form Kattika / Kattiya, not the Sanskrit Kārttika — a Prakrit or Pali name-form reaching Tang China through the same Indian informant who supplied the Xiuyao jing, and matching Pali Kattikā. The Sanskrit Kārttika/Kṛttikā is of course abundantly attested elsewhere; what is new here is the datable Middle-Indic form and the explicit statement that the month-name is simply the star-name. Set beside the database's Kṛttikā entry, it also confirms that in 8th-century Indian usage the month was still reckoned from the Kṛttikā full moon.

Taishō T21n1299 fasc. 2, interlinear note of Yang Jingfeng (楊景風) at T21.394c24–25 · text · translation

See also

Kṛttikā, Bahulā