शतभिषज् Śatabhiṣaj

Not individually named in ch. 8; its junction-star is the brightest of its hundred (sthūla rule, 8.19). Burgess: 'This, from its defined position, can only be λ Aquarii (4)'. Some later scholars have proposed other Aquarii stars; al-Bīrūnī could not identify it.

ONE star, tilaka-shaped, deity Varuṇa, gotra Tāṇḍyāyanīya. The single-star count is striking against the 'hundred physicians/stars' the name suggests: the Buddhist tradition evidently took only the yogatārā. Varuṇa lordship agrees with the Vedic lists. Note the name-form Śatabhiṣā rather than Śatabhiṣaj, matched by the Pali Satabhisaja.

No Sanskrit text: al-Bīrūnī wrote in Arabic, and the passage survives here only in Sachau's English.

AL-BĪRŪNĪ COULD NOT IDENTIFY IT — independent evidence that the disputed status on file is not a modern artefact. His table leaves the note 'Unknown. Most likely identical with the upper part of the hip-joint of Aquarius', a guess that does not obviously land on λ Aquarii. He is equally defeated by Viśākhā, Pūrvabhādrapadā, Ārdrā, Āśleṣā and Dhaniṣṭhā, while being confident and correct wherever the Arabic manzil tradition gave him an anchor (Kṛttikā = al-Thurayyā, Rohiṇī = Aldabarān, Maghā = al-Jabha, Citrā = al-Simāk al-Aʿzal, Jyeṣṭhā = the Heart of Scorpio, Mūla = al-Shaula, and so on). Śatabhiṣaj sits precisely in the gap between the two systems, which is why it defeated him.

See the ashvayuj entry for the three-witness collation. The gaṇapāṭha line reads: '… रोहिणीषेणः, रोहिणीसेनः। भरणीषेणः, भरणीसेनः। शतभिषक्षेनः। इतिसुषामादिः।'

Named by Pāṇini in his own sūtra 4.3.36, in the archaic -bhiṣaj form (not the later Śatabhiṣā / Śatatārakā). The gaṇapāṭha on 8.3.98 (suṣāmādi) independently records the personal name śatabhiṣak-ṣenaḥ, showing the asterism name in onomastic use — but that is gaṇapāṭha, not sūtra, and cannot carry the Pāṇinian date. Pāṇini gives no positional information, so the star identification is unaffected and remains as in the database.

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) 317°45', śara (polar latitude) 0°20' 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 100 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: λ Aqr 317°43' / -0°25'. VAṬEŚVARA-SIDDHĀNTA VIII.2.1–2 (904 CE) puts the same junction star at Ghaṭa (Aquarius) 20° (= 320°00' measured from the sidereal origin) with a śara of 0°00' north (VIII.2.5–6, direction by VIII.2.8). ★ DECISIVE FOR THE DISPUTED IDENTIFICATION. Sāmanta's 317°45' / 0°20' S matches λ Aquarii to within 2 ARCMINUTES of longitude and 5 arcminutes of latitude — the closest agreement anywhere in his whole catalogue. He lowers the inherited Sūrya-Siddhānta value (320°) by 2°15', and the correction moves the figure onto λ Aquarii, not away from it. Al-Bīrūnī left this station 'unknown'; Sāmanta's re-observation removes the doubt. Note also that XII.13 still reckons the asterism at 100 stars (khābhrabhuvaḥ = 100), i.e. the 'hundred physicians' of the name, while the yogatārā is the single star measured here.

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. 25 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 Ghaṭa (Aquarius) 20° — Vaṭeśvara states the dhruvakas as degrees WITHIN each zodiacal sign, not as absolute longitudes, so this is 320°00' from the sidereal origin — and its kṣepa (polar latitude, VIII.2.5–6) as 0°00', north 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: λ Aqr 321°42' / -0°23'. For comparison Sāmanta (1869) gives 317°45' / 0°20' south. Vaṭeśvara's 20° of Aquarius (= 320°) with śara 0° agrees with λ Aquarii's latitude exactly (0°23' S in his frame) though his longitude is 1°42' short of it. Together with Sāmanta's far more precise 317°45' / 0°20' S this makes λ Aquarii secure.

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, T21.0405a19: 「危宿一星，一日及月粳米為祭，屬于水神，姓單茶延。」 | 舍頭諫太子二十八宿經 T21n1301, T21.0415c24: 「百毒宿者，有一要星，形圓色黃，行十五須臾而侍從矣，以粥為食，主養育天，姓乘魅。」 | Yang Jingfeng's interlinear note in T21n1299 at T21.0390b11: 「景風曰：中國天文，危三星，主墳墓，北方之宿也」

Chinese lunar lodge (xiu) 危 Wei; T1301 renders the name semantically as 百毒 ('Hundred Poisons'). ONE star in all three witnesses — a striking agreement given the name's 'hundred physicians/stars', and an exact match for the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna's eka-tāraṃ tilaka-saṃsthānam; T1301 adds the 15-muhūrta value and 'round in form, yellow in colour'. T1299 transcribes the deity 婆魯拏 = VARUṆA and the gotra 丹茶耶 = TĀṆḌYA, both matching varuṇadaivataṃ tāṇḍyāyanīyaṃ gotreṇa; T1300 has 水神 'Water deity' for Varuṇa and 單茶延 Tāṇḍāyana. T1301's name 百毒 'hundred poisons' shows bhiṣaj was construed through the poison/antidote sense c. 307 CE. Chinese astronomy gives Wei three stars.