The asterism at which the Vedāṅga Jyotiṣa begins the year and places the winter solstice — the oldest datable astronomical statement in Indian literature. Verified in two independent e-texts: the Sudhākara Dvivedī recension on Sanskrit Wikisource (Devanagari, cited here) and GRETIL's romanised Lagadha text, which reads 'prapadyete śraviṣṭhādau sūryācandramasāv udak / sārpārdhe dakṣiṇārkas tu māghaśrāvaṇayoḥ sadā // 6'. Colebrooke, Essays (1858) pp. 66–67: 'Sravish'ṭhā is given, in all the dictionaries of the Sanscrit language, as another name of D'haniṣh'ṭhā... Hence it is clear, that D'haniṣh'ṭhā and Aslesha are the constellations meant; and that when this Hindu calendar was regulated, the solstitial points were reckoned to be at the beginning of the one, and in the middle of the other: and such was the situation of those cardinal points, in the fourteenth century before the Christian era.' IMPORTANT: the name धनिष्ठा never appears in the Vedāṅga Jyotiṣa itself — only श्रविष्ठा; Dhaniṣṭhā enters solely through Sudhākara's 19th-century gloss.
श्रविष्ठा Śraviṣṭhā
Rotanev (Dhaniṣṭhā) · β Delphini (with α–δ Delphini) · Delphinus
Attestations
The older name of Dhaniṣṭhā, expressly equated with it by the lexicon ('Dhaniṣṭhāḥ are the same as Śraviṣṭhā'). Colebrooke's gloss 'The Dolphin' is decisive for Delphinus, and the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna's four stars in a śakuna (bird) figure agrees with the Delphinus quadrilateral. This is the name the Vedāṅga Jyotiṣa uses for the asterism that begins its year — Dhaniṣṭhā never appears in that text at all.
Same sūtra as the Bahulā entry; see that entry's note for the two GRETIL cross-checks.
Pāṇini's own word, first item in the ten-asterism list at 4.3.34; also treated at 4.3.34 by the Kāśikā's vārttika which adds an alternative affix after Śraviṣṭhā and Aṣāḍhā. This is the ARCHAIC form: the later name Dhaniṣṭhā occurs nowhere in the Aṣṭādhyāyī (sandhi-tolerant search of both recensions returns zero). Śraviṣṭhā also appears in the aśvādi gaṇa on 4.1.110 (as a base for the patronymic phañ), but that is gaṇapāṭha, not sūtra, and carries no independent date. Because 4.3.34 is Pāṇini's own sūtra, this is a firmly datable pre-Mauryan attestation of Śraviṣṭhā, older than the Vedāṅga Jyotiṣa attestation already in the database and far better dated.