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Sirius
Sirius · α Canis Majoris · Canis Major
names 16languages 12 Sirius α CMaHIP 32349mag -1.44
In the classical tradition this is लुब्धक Lubdhaka, attested in 5 texts.
The names
vernacular 1 · tribal 7 · borrowed 8
| Name | Language | Meaning | Register |
|---|---|---|---|
| লুব্ধক lubdhaka | Bengali Bengal | 'the hunter, the fowler' (also 'greedy one') The Sanskrit star-name surviving unaltered in the modern Bengali lexicon, with its hunter etymology still transparent in the same entry. | borrowed |
| Walsaldo | Garo the Garo Hills, Assam (now Meghalaya) | The star that set fire to the funeral pyre — the brightest star in the sky given the one office in the funeral that requires a flame. | tribal |
| Purad (Hola); Mes | Gondi Nagpur region: Chandrapur, Yavatmal, Gondia (Maharashtra), Adilabad (Telangana), Balaghat, Seoni, Mandla (Madhya Pradesh) | a bird; its eggs Orion throws a stone — the Pleiades — at the bird, so that the hunter can take the eggs. The survey does not record whether he hit it. | tribal |
| Tiva | Gondi Nagpur region: Chandrapur, Yavatmal, Gondia (Maharashtra), Adilabad (Telangana), Balaghat, Seoni, Mandla (Madhya Pradesh) | the stool a farmer stands on to winnow The implement from which grain is dropped into the wind so that the husk blows away. | tribal |
| ಲುಬ್ಧಕ lubdhaka | Kannada Karnataka (Mysore, Canara, Deccan) | the hunter | borrowed |
| Met | Kolami Kolam villages of Yavatmal and Chandrapur districts, Vidarbha, Maharashtra, and adjoining Adilabad, Telangana | the pole to which the bull is tied on the threshing floor The bull walks a circle (kalave) around the pole to tread the grain from the husk. Five of ten villages. | tribal |
| Pankheru | Korku Melghat, Amravati district, Maharashtra, and adjoining Betul and Khandwa districts, Madhya Pradesh | 'a bird' Magnitude −1.45. | tribal |
| लुब्धक lubdhaka | Marathi Maharashtra | hunter | borrowed |
| लोभी lōbhī | Marathi Maharashtra | greedy one | vernacular |
| व्याध vyādha | Marathi Maharashtra | huntsman | borrowed |
| ପ୍ରଶ୍ୱା Praṡwā | Odia Odisha | uncertain; Praharaj marks it ସଂ. and offers no derivation Praharaj identifies it flatly with Lubdhaka and with α Canis Majoris, and uses it as a fixed point elsewhere — Canopus is located 'in the southern sky, south of Praśwā' (p. 4095). | borrowed |
| Sukar, Sukkar, Shukrar Channi | Pardhi fourteen Pardhi villages of the Amravati and Yeotmal districts, Vidarbha, Maharashtra, surveyed 2016-2018 | The paper tables these names against Sirius with the qualification 'sometimes' — the same words the Pardhi use for Venus, applied on occasion to the brightest fixed star. | tribal |
| لڀڌَڪ labhadhak | Sindhi Sind; Baloch's dictionary is not dialect-marked at these entries | Sanskrit Lubdhaka, 'the hunter' Defined as the brightest star in the sky, and glossed with the dog, Arabic kalb, and — apparently in error — thurayā. | borrowed |
| لَڀْڌَڪُ labhdhaku | Sindhi Sind (Bombay Presidency); Mewaram's dictionary is not dialect-marked | — | borrowed |
| සාරමේය·තාරකාව sāramēya·tārakāva | Sinhala Sri Lanka | 'the dog star' (Sanskrit sārameya 'canine, son of Saramā') | borrowed |
| Ishtkati | Toda Nilgiri hills, Tamil Nadu | Corresponds to the Badaga etukadichi, 'bull deceiving': a Badaga once saw a star so bright he took it for the morning star and let his bulls out of the pen; when day did not come he said, let the star be called etukadichi. | tribal |
Sources
- Sailendra Biswas, Samsad Bengali-English Dictionary, 3rd ed., Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 2000 (DSAL digital ed.), s.v. লুব্ধ lubdha, sub-entry লুব্ধক, p. 930 link
- Major A. Playfair, The Garos (London: David Nutt, 1909), p. 86 link
- Vahia & Halkare, 'Aspects of Gond Astronomy', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 16(1), 29-44 (2013); preprint arXiv:1306.2416 link
- Kittel, F., A Kannaḍa-English Dictionary (orig. Mangalore: Basel Mission, 1894); cited from the revised and enlarged edition, [Madras] University of Madras, 1968-71, as keyed for DSAL, s.v. ಲುಬ್ಧಕ lubdhaka, p. 1440 link
- M.N. Vahia, Ganesh Halkare, Kishore Menon and Harini Calamur, 'The astronomy of two Indian tribes: the Banjaras and the Kolams', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 17(1), 65-84 (2014), Table 2, p. 71 link
- M.N. Vahia, Ganesh Halkare and Purushottam Dahedar, 'Astronomy of the Korku tribe of India', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 19(2), 216-232 (2016), Table 2, p. 221 link
- J. T. Molesworth, A Dictionary, Marathi and English, 2nd ed. rev. and enl. (Bombay: Bombay Education Society's Press, 1857), s.v. लुब्धक, p. 721 link
- J. T. Molesworth, A Dictionary, Marathi and English, 2nd ed. rev. and enl. (Bombay: Bombay Education Society's Press, 1857), s.v. लोभी, p. 725 link
- J. T. Molesworth, A Dictionary, Marathi and English, 2nd ed. rev. and enl. (Bombay: Bombay Education Society's Press, 1857), s.v. व्याध, p. 777 link
- G. C. Praharaj, Purnnachandra Ordia Bhashakosha: a lexicon of the Oriya language, Cuttack: Utkal Sahitya Press, 1931-1940 (DSAL digital ed.), s.v. ପ୍ରଶ୍ୱା Praṡwā, p. 5131 link
- Ganesh Halkare, Purushottam Dahedar, Wayne Orchiston and M.N. Vahia, 'Astronomy of the Pardhi tribe of central India', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 22(1), 179-194 (2019), Table 5, pp. 184-185 link
- Nabi Bakhsh Khan Baloch, Jāmiʻ Sindhī lughāt (Hyderabad: Sindhi Adabi Board), s.v. لڀڌَڪ, p. 1676 link
- Parmanand Mewaram, A Sindhi-English Dictionary (Hyderabad, Sind: The Sind Juvenile Co-operative Society, 1910), s.v. لَڀْڌَڪُ, p. 503 link
- Carter, A Sinhalese-English Dictionary (Colombo, 1924), s.v. සාරමේය·තාරකාව sāramēya·tārakāva, p. 674 link
- Rivers, The Todas (1906), pp. 594-595 link