आर्द्रा Ārdrā

Not individually named in ch. 8; single-star asterism covered by the position sequence (8.2, 8.6) and the sthūla rule (8.19). Burgess: 'impossible not to regard... α Orionis as the one here meant', despite 'very grave errors in the definition of its position'; the only star nearly matching the stated position is 135 Tauri (6th mag).

'The moist one', deity Rudra. Standard identification is Betelgeuse (the bright reddish star adjoining Mṛgaśīrṣa in the ecliptic sequence); a minority of older scholars (e.g. Weber) proposed Sirius because of the Rudra connection. The Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa (1.5.1.1) substitutes the dual name Bāhū 'the two Arms (of Rudra)'. Also AV 19.7.2, TB 3.1.1.3 ('ārdrayā rudraḥ prathamānaḥ eti').

ONE star, tilaka-shaped (a forehead-mark, i.e. a single point), deity Sūrya, gotra Hārītītāyanīya. The single-star count supports Betelgeuse over any multi-star reading. NOTE the deity: Sūrya, not the Rudra of the Brahmanical lists — a genuine Buddhist divergence, and one that weakens the Rudra-based argument sometimes used to identify Ārdrā with Sirius.

Devanāgarī from Sanskrit Wikisource; GRETIL's two IAST texts give 'pūrvāhṇa-aparāhṇa-ārdrā-mūla-pradoṣa-avaskarād vun' and 'pūrvāhṇa=aparāhṇa=ārdrā=mūla-pradoṣa=avaskar-āt=vun'. All three agree. The gaṇapāṭha line reads: 'अंशु। जन। राजन्। उष्ट्र। खेटक। अजिर। आर्द्रा। श्रवण। कृत्तिका। अर्ध। पुर। अंश्वादिः।'

Named by Pāṇini himself at 4.3.28 pūrvāhṇa-aparāhṇa-ārdrā-mūla-pradoṣa-avaskarād vun — a sūtra about the affix vun in the sense 'born therein', where Ārdrā and Mūla stand among words for divisions of time. That Pāṇini pairs an asterism with 'forenoon', 'afternoon' and 'nightfall' is itself evidence that asterism names functioned as time-words for him, which is the same principle as 4.2.3. Ārdrā also appears in the aṃśvādi gaṇa on 6.2.193 alongside Śravaṇa and Kṛttikā, but that is gaṇapāṭha and carries no independent date. No positional data, so the disputed identification is unaffected.

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) 65°00', śara (polar latitude) 15°40' 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 1 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: α Ori 65°05' / -16°03'. VAṬEŚVARA-SIDDHĀNTA VIII.2.1–2 (904 CE) puts the same junction star at Jituma 7° (= 67°00' measured from the sidereal origin) with a śara of 11°00' south (VIII.2.5–6, direction by VIII.2.8). ★ DECISIVE FOR THE DISPUTED IDENTIFICATION. Sāmanta's 65° / 15°40' S matches BETELGEUSE (α Orionis) to 5' of longitude and 23' of latitude. The Sūrya Siddhānta's 67°20' / 9° S is what forced Burgess to complain of 'very grave errors in the definition of its position' and to note that the only star nearly matching it is the 6th-magnitude 135 Tauri. Sāmanta's re-measurement of the latitude from 9° to 15°40' is precisely the correction needed to put the asterism on Betelgeuse, and XII.12 gives Ārdrā ONE star (rūpaṃ = 1), consistent with a single bright star rather than a group.

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. 6 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 Jituma 7° — Vaṭeśvara states the dhruvakas as degrees WITHIN each zodiacal sign, not as absolute longitudes, so this is 67°00' from the sidereal origin — and its kṣepa (polar latitude, VIII.2.5–6) as 11°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: α Ori 70°35' / -16°17'. For comparison Sāmanta (1869) gives 65°00' / 15°40' south. Vaṭeśvara's 7° of Gemini (= 67°) is close to Betelgeuse's longitude but his śara of 11° is 5° short of Betelgeuse's 16°17'. He has, however, already moved the latitude away from the Sūrya Siddhānta's 9° in the right direction.

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, T21.0404c15: 「參有一星，一日及月，須酥以祭，係在日神，姓則安氏。」 | 舍頭諫太子二十八宿經 T21n1301, T21.0415b13: 「生眚宿者，有一要星，其形類圓，光色則黃，行十五須臾而侍從矣，生酪為食，主音響天，姓號最取。」 | Yang Jingfeng's interlinear note in T21n1299 at T21.0389a04: 「景風曰：中國天文，參十星，主將軍，西方之宿也」

Chinese lunar lodge (xiu) 參 Shen; T1301 renders the name semantically as 生眚 ('Producing Blemish'). ONE star in all three witnesses, and T1299's 形如額上點 'shaped like the dot on the forehead' is a word-for-word rendering of the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna's tilaka-saṃsthānam. T1301 adds a detail the Sanskrit lacks: the single star is 形圓色黃 'round in form, yellow in colour' — a description that fits Betelgeuse. The 15-muhūrta value matches. THE DEITY IS THE INTERESTING DIVERGENCE: the Sanskrit Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna and the 3rd-century T1300 both give the SUN (日神 = sūrya-daivatam); the 8th-century Xiuyao jing has restored the Brahmanical RUDRA (魯達羅). So the Buddhist Sūrya reading is the older one and Amoghavajra's informant had re-Brahmanised it — which weakens any Rudra-based argument for identifying Ārdrā with Sirius. Chinese astronomy gives Shen ten stars.