पूर्वाषाढा Pūrvāṣāḍhā

Burgess: 'The former group must comprise δ (3.4) and ε (3.2) Sagittarii, the former being the junction-star; this is shown by the... comparison of positions'. Called āpya (of the Waters) in 8.4.

FOUR stars, shaped like a cow's stride (govikrama-saṃsthāna), deity Toya ('the Waters' = Āpas), gotra Darbhakātyāyanīya. The Toya deity is the Buddhist form of the āpya lordship the Sūrya Siddhānta uses. The paired cow-stride/elephant-stride figures for the two Āṣāḍhās are a Buddhist speciality.

See the bahula entry for the three-witness collation. Patañjali's citation reads '(p_5,1.97) ka_ii,362.2-11 {8/22} viśākhāṣāḍhāt aṇ manthadaṇḍayoḥ iti .' — note that the GRETIL Mahābhāṣya's sūtra-number markers do not always match the vulgate numbering (here 5,1.97 for vulgate 5.1.110), so the Kielhorn volume/page reference is the reliable pointer.

Pāṇini uses the bare form Aṣāḍhā, without pūrva/uttara, at 4.3.34 (ten-name list) and 5.1.110 viśākhā-aṣāḍhād aṇ mantha-daṇḍayoḥ, where āṣāḍha is a 'staff' — a wholly non-calendrical derivative that shows the word was ordinary vocabulary. Filed here under purva-ashadha but the attestation covers the pair as an undivided unit; Pāṇini nowhere distinguishes Pūrvāṣāḍhā from Uttarāṣāḍhā. The Kāśikā's vārttika on 4.3.34 adds an alternative affix after Śraviṣṭhā and Aṣāḍhā. Patañjali quotes 5.1.110 verbatim (Kielhorn ii.362.2-11).

Devanagari transcribed by the compiler from the page FACSIMILE of the Ray edition (Calcutta 1899), scan leaf n216 = printed p. 114–115: https://archive.org/download/in.ernet.dli.2015.292705/page/n216.jpg . The archive.org OCR of this volume is unusable for Devanagari, so no verse here is taken from the OCR text; every figure was re-read at full scan resolution and cross-checked against a second independent scan of the same edition (https://archive.org/download/siddhantadarpanachandrashekarsimha1897_252_Z/page/n217.jpg). Round brackets and the figures in them are the PRINTED EDITION'S own: (n) is the serial number of the asterism/star and the figure following it is the edition's decoding of the bhūtasaṅkhyā word-numeral that precedes it. These are the two printed segments of the dhruva list (vv. 2–6) and the śara list (vv. 7–10) that carry this asterism's own figures; the complete verses are given under db_id 'yogatara-catalog'.

SIDDHĀNTA DARPAṆA XII (Sāmanta, 1869): dhruva (polar longitude) 250°00', śara (polar latitude) 6°30' south. The direction comes from XII.11, which makes the śara southern for the asterisms numbered 4, 5, 6, 9, 13, 14, 16–21 and 24 and northern for all the rest; XII.12–13 give the asterism 4 star(s). TRUE VALUES for 1870 CE, reduced to Sāmanta's OWN sidereal zero (his Citrā = 179°, i.e. Spica; implied ayanāṃśa 22°12'), as polar longitude / polar latitude: δ Sgr 250°43' / -6°28'. VAṬEŚVARA-SIDDHĀNTA VIII.2.1–2 (904 CE) puts the same junction star at Dhanus 14° (= 254°00' measured from the sidereal origin) with a śara of 6°00' south (VIII.2.5–6, direction by VIII.2.8).

This is the printed segment of the continuous dhruvaka list (VIII.2.1–2) that carries this star's own figure; the star's kṣepa is item no. 20 of the unbroken numeral run of VIII.2.5–6, which cannot be split, so the whole passage is also given verbatim under db_id 'yogatara-catalog'. Devanagari transcribed by the compiler from the page FACSIMILE of K. S. Shukla's INSA edition of the Sanskrit text, scan leaf n317 = printed p. 293: https://archive.org/download/VatesvaraSiddhantaSanskritText/page/n317.jpg . The archive.org OCR is unusable for Devanagari. The SQUARE brackets and the figures inside them are the EDITION'S own decoding of the bhūtasaṅkhyā word-numerals, reproduced here so that no numeral is silently converted. Shukla's English translation and notes are in copyright: they are neither quoted nor relied on here — only the constituted mūla text and the edition's numeric glosses.

VAṬEŚVARA-SIDDHĀNTA VIII.2 (904 CE) gives the junction star's dhruvaka (polar longitude) as Dhanus 14° — Vaṭeśvara states the dhruvakas as degrees WITHIN each zodiacal sign, not as absolute longitudes, so this is 254°00' from the sidereal origin — and its kṣepa (polar latitude, VIII.2.5–6) as 6°00', south by the rule of VIII.2.8 (a verse the edition notes is identical with Brahmagupta's Khaṇḍakhādyaka I.9.13). TRUE VALUES for 904 CE reduced to Vaṭeśvara's own sidereal zero (his Citrā = 3° of Libra = 183°), as polar longitude / polar latitude: δ Sgr 254°02' / -6°20'. For comparison Sāmanta (1869) gives 250°00' / 6°30' south. Vaṭeśvara's list is essentially the inherited Sūrya-Siddhānta/Brahmagupta set: it is a fourth independent witness to those values rather than a fresh observation.

Verbatim parallels from the two earlier Chinese versions of the same Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna material, and the Tang commentator's note on the Chinese star-count: 摩登伽經 (Mātaṅga-sūtra) T21n1300, T21.0405a10: 「箕宿四星，形如牛步，一日一夜而與月俱，尼俱陀果，以用為祭，屬於水神，姓迦旃延。」 | 舍頭諫太子二十八宿經 T21n1301, T21.0415c12: 「前魚宿者，有四要星，其形類象，南廣北狹，尼拘類樹皮師為食，行十五須臾而侍從矣，主於木天，姓財所乘。」 | Yang Jingfeng's interlinear note in T21n1299 at T21.0390a07: 「景風曰：中國天文，箕四星，主妃后，東方之宿也」

Chinese lunar lodge (xiu) 箕 Ji; T1301 renders the name semantically as 前魚 ('Former Fish'). A THREE-POINT MATCH in T1299 and T1300 with the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna's catustāraṃ govikrama-saṃsthānaṃ … toyadaivatam: FOUR stars, an OX'S-STRIDE figure (牛步 = govikrama, in both), and the WATER deity (水神 = toya, in both). T1300 adds the nyagrodha offering, matching nyagrodhakaṣāyāhāram, and T1301 keeps the nyagrodha too. The paired cow-stride / elephant-stride figures for the two Āṣāḍhās survive intact in the Chinese, confirming they are old and not a Sanskrit copyist's invention.