अश्विनी Aśvinī

Burgess: the northern of the pair β and γ Arietis; 'this is the star β Arietis (magn. 3.2), and not α Arietis (magn. 2), as assumed by Colebrooke', shown by comparison of longitudes.

TWO stars, HORSE'S-HEAD-shaped (turagaśīrṣa-saṃsthāna), deity Gandharva, gotra Maitrāyāṇīya. Two stars in a horse's head = β and γ Arietis, exactly the pair Burgess argued for against Colebrooke's α Arietis, and matching Colebrooke's own 'The head of Aries' for Amarakośa. NOTE the deity Gandharva where the Brahmanical lists have the Aśvins.

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) 8°45', śara (polar latitude) 10°30' north. 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 3 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: β Ari 6°43' / 9°05'. VAṬEŚVARA-SIDDHĀNTA VIII.2.1–2 (904 CE) puts the same junction star at Meṣa (Aries) 8° (= 8°00' measured from the sidereal origin) with a śara of 10°00' north (VIII.2.5–6, direction by VIII.2.8).

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. 1 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 Meṣa (Aries) 8° — Vaṭeśvara states the dhruvakas as degrees WITHIN each zodiacal sign, not as absolute longitudes, so this is 8°00' from the sidereal origin — and its kṣepa (polar latitude, VIII.2.5–6) as 10°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: β Ari 10°23' / 9°10'. For comparison Sāmanta (1869) gives 8°45' / 10°30' north. Vaṭeśvara's list is essentially the inherited Sūrya-Siddhānta/Brahmagupta set: it is a fourth independent witness to those values rather than a fresh observation.

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, T21.0405a26: 「婁宿二星，形如馬首，一日一夜共月俱行，乳糜用祭。」 | 舍頭諫太子二十八宿經 T21n1301, T21.0416a02: 「馬師宿者，有三要星，形類馬案，行三十須臾而侍從矣，食魚麥飯，主香神天，姓為馬師。」 | Yang Jingfeng's interlinear note in T21n1299 at T21.0390c08: 「景風曰：中國天文，婁三星，主林苑，西方之宿也」

Chinese lunar lodge (xiu) 婁 Lou; T1301 renders the name semantically as 馬師 ('Horse-Master'). THE GANDHARVA DEITY IS INDEPENDENTLY CONFIRMED. The Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna's most surprising divergence from the Brahmanical lists is that Aśvinī's lord is gandharva-daivatam and not the Aśvins; T1299 transcribes it 乾闥婆 = GANDHARVA outright and T1301 translates it 香神天, the 'deva of Fragrance', which is the standard Chinese calque for gandharva. Two independent Chinese witnesses, four centuries apart, therefore corroborate the reading. The HORSE'S-HEAD figure is in T1299 (馬頭) and T1300 (馬首), matching turagaśīrṣa-saṃsthānam, and T1300 gives TWO stars, matching dvitāram — i.e. the pair β and γ Arietis that Burgess argued for against Colebrooke's α Arietis. T1299 and T1301 have three, which is also the Chinese count for the Lou lodge (Yang Jingfeng: 婁三星).