तिष्यः Tiṣya

Tiṣya, deity Bṛhaspati, is the archaic name that the AV (19.7.2) and all later lists call Puṣya; Whitney's note to AV 19.7 flags this TS/AV name difference explicitly. A faint asterism: identification rests on its fixed position between Punarvasū (Castor/Pollux) and Āśleṣā, hence 'likely' rather than 'certain'. Also TB 3.1.1.5, TB 3.1.4.6 (Bṛhaspati-Tiṣya offering).

One of only two occurrences of tiṣya in the whole Ṛgveda. Macdonell & Keith, Vedic Index (1912) i.312: 'Tisya occurs twice in the Rigveda, apparently as the name of a star, though Sayana takes it to mean the sun. It is doubtless identical with the Avestan Tistrya. Later it is the name of a lunar mansion', citing 5.54.13 and 10.64.8. Here Tiṣya is a byword for a star that never fails to appear — an observational, not a calendrical, use.

The second and last Ṛgvedic occurrence. Notable because Tiṣya is invoked here alongside Kṛśānu the archer (कृशानु, astṛ 'archer'), which Macdonell & Keith flag explicitly: '5.54.13; 10.64.8 (with Krsanu as an archer)'. Kṛśānu is the celestial bowman who shoots at the soma-eagle in RV 4.27.3; Tilak and others connected this archer-and-target tableau with the Orion/Sirius myth complex (Mṛgavyādha), but NO Vedic text calls Kṛśānu a star, so that link is speculation, not attestation.

The classical lexicon still preserves the Vedic Tiṣya as a live synonym of Puṣya, some 1500 years after the Ṛgvedic attestation on file — and Colebrooke's gloss 'Stars in Cancer' fixes it in Cancer, not (as sometimes proposed for the Vedic form) at Sirius.

Already on file from the Ṛgveda and the Amarakośa; SS 9.15 shows the archaic name surviving in a siddhānta, placed in the faintest class (21°) 'owing to their faintness' (saukṣmyāt). Al-Bīrūnī's parallel list likewise puts Alnathra (the Praesepe region of Cancer) in his faintest 20° class.

IAST verbatim from the GRETIL plaintext of the Mahābhāṣya (Kielhorn 1880–85, rev. Abhyankar, e-text by George Cardona), which prints the text in pausā (segmented, sandhi resolved). The GRETIL reference markers ka_i,231.14-232.7 are Kielhorn volume,page.line. Ellipses mark omitted intervening sentences of the same passage; nothing inside the quoted stretches has been altered. The underlying sūtra reads १.२.६३ तिष्य-पुनर्वस्वोर् नक्षत्र-द्वंद्वे बहुवचनस्य द्विवचनम् नित्यम् (Sanskrit Wikisource; GRETIL IAST: tiṣya-punarvasvor nakṣatra-dvandve bahuvacanasya dvivacanaṃ nityam).

Pāṇini's default name for this asterism, used in three of his own sūtras: 1.2.63 tiṣya-punarvasvor nakṣatra-dvandve… (expressly nakṣatra), 4.3.34 (in the ten-name list), and 6.4.149 sūrya-tiṣya-agastya-matsyānāṃ ya upadhāyāḥ (the rule giving taiṣa from tiṣya). CRUCIALLY, Patañjali's discussion of 1.2.63 gives the explicit synonymy with Puṣya, in the Bhāṣya's own words: 'tiṣya-puṣyayoḥ nakṣatrāṇi yalopaḥ vaktavyaḥ' and 'tiṣya-punarvasu-paryāya-vācinām api yathā syāt: puṣya-punarvasū sidhya-punarvasū' — i.e. the rule must be extended to words SYNONYMOUS with tiṣya and punarvasu, namely puṣya and sidhya. Patañjali also states flatly 'ayam tiṣya-punarvasu-śabdaḥ asti eva jyotiṣi vartate' — 'this word tiṣya-punarvasu does indeed refer to a luminary' — distinguishing the star-sense from the personal-name sense (tiṣyaḥ ca māṇavakaḥ, 'and Tiṣya a boy'). This is the strongest single confirmation in the database that Tiṣya = Puṣya, and it is datable to c. 150 BCE, with the sūtra behind it c. 500–350 BCE. The gaṇapāṭha on 4.3.16 (sāndhyādi) further gives 'nakṣatrebhyaḥ: taiṣam, pauṣam' — the two derived forms side by side.

CE lines 03,188.087a/087c. CE Vana 3.188 = Ganguli's vulgate Vana Parva Section CLXXXIX. The Rāmāyaṇa parallel is R_5,055.001 'tiṣyaśravaṇakadambam abhraśaivalaśādvalam'.

Two epic uses. (a) Mahābhārata 3.188.87, the famous yuga-turn verse: 'when the moon and the sun and Tiṣya and Bṛhaspati come together in ONE RĀŚI, then the Kṛta age will begin' — the earliest Sanskrit epic use of rāśi in a positional sense and a key witness for the archaic form Tiṣya still being current alongside Puṣya (which the same text uses elsewhere). Ganguli, translating the vulgate, renders it 'the constellation Pushya', confirming the equivalence. (b) Rāmāyaṇa 5.55.1, in Hanumān's sky-as-lake simile, 'having Tiṣya and Śravaṇa for its kadamba flowers'. NOTE a third, non-stellar use: at MBh 12.327.76, 12.337.42 and Rāmāyaṇa 6.26.13, Tiṣya is the name of the KALI YUGA, and the Bhīṣma Parva's yuga-list (6.11.3) even reads 'kṛtaṃ tretā dvāparaṃ ca puṣyaṃ ca' — Puṣya as the fourth age. Those are age-names, not star-names, and are recorded here only as context. δ Cancri comes from the Sūrya Siddhānta entry.