Spica · α Virginis · Virgo
Spica (4 names)
Burgess: 'This is the beautiful star of the first magnitude α Virginis, or Spica, constituting an asterism by itself.' Named again in 8.21 as the reference star for Apāṃvatsa.
ONE star, tilaka-shaped, deity Tvaṣṭṛ, gotra Kātyāyanīya. The single-star count is decisive for Spica; the Tvaṣṭṛ lordship agrees with the Vedic lists.
IAST verbatim from the GRETIL Mahābhāṣya plaintext (text in pausā).
IMPORTANT DISTINCTION: Citrā is NOT in Pāṇini's sūtra text (the only citra- forms there are 3.1.19 namo-varivaś-citraṅaḥ kyac, 3.2.21 and 3.3.150 citrīkaraṇe, all non-astronomical). The astronomical attestation is Patañjali's, in his discussion of the feminine affix ṅīp under 1.1.62: 'ṅīp : citrāyām jātā citrā' — 'ṅīp [is added in] citrā, "a female born under Citrā"'. A vārttika reported in the Kāśikā on 4.3.34 (paraphrased by Vasu) likewise adds Citrā to that sūtra's list for the feminine. Datable c. 150 BCE.
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) 179°00', śara (polar latitude) 2°10' 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 Vir 179°00' / -2°13'. VAṬEŚVARA-SIDDHĀNTA VIII.2.1–2 (904 CE) puts the same junction star at Tulā (Libra) 3° (= 183°00' measured from the sidereal origin) with a śara of 2°00' south (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. 14 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 Tulā (Libra) 3° — Vaṭeśvara states the dhruvakas as degrees WITHIN each zodiacal sign, not as absolute longitudes, so this is 183°00' from the sidereal origin — and its kṣepa (polar latitude, VIII.2.5–6) as 2°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 Vir 183°00' / -2°09'. For comparison Sāmanta (1869) gives 179°00' / 2°10' south. 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, T21.0404c29: 「角有一星，一日及月，以花為祭，屬咀吒神，姓質多延。」 | 舍頭諫太子二十八宿經 T21n1301, T21.0415c01: 「彩畫宿者，有一要星，形圓色黃，行三十須臾而侍從矣，主細滑天，姓伊羅所乘。」 | Yang Jingfeng's interlinear note in T21n1299 at T21.0389b28: 「景風曰：中國天文，角二星，主天門，東方之宿也」
Chinese lunar lodge (xiu) 角 Jiao; T1301 renders the name semantically as 彩畫 ('Coloured Painting'). ONE star in the two 3rd–4th-century witnesses, matching the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna's eka-tāraṃ tilaka-saṃsthānam and decisive for Spica; T1301 adds 形圓色黃 'round in form, yellow in colour'. The 8th-century Xiuyao jing has two, which is the CHINESE count for the Jiao lodge (Yang Jingfeng: 角二星) — a clean case of the Tang recension drifting toward the Chinese lodge. The deity in T1300 (咀吒) answers to tvaṣṭṛ-daivatam and its gotra 質多延 is built on the star-name itself. T1301's name 彩畫 'coloured painting' is a semantic gloss on citrā c. 307 CE.
CE lines 06,003.011c and 06,003.016c, quoted together; they are five verses apart.
Three omen occurrences (MBh 6.3.11, 6.3.16, 5.141.9). The one of real value is 6.3.16c, which locates a planet 'in the interval between Citrā and Svāti' — an interval statement, and therefore the closest the epic comes to a positional datum for either asterism. Nothing new in the name itself; recorded because the Citrā–Svāti pairing is the only epic evidence for the relative order of these two.
Devanagari from Sanskrit Wikisource; verified word-for-word against the GRETIL IAST e-text (A. Scharpe, Kalidasa Lexicon, Brugge 1964), which reads 'kāpy abhikhyā tayor āsīd vrajatoḥ śuddhaveṣayoḥ / himanirmuktayor yoge citrācandramsor iva' - GRETIL's 'candramsor' is a typo for 'candramasor'.
Star-sense, not the common adjective citra 'bright/variegated': the word stands in a dvandva with candramas- ('Citra-and-the-moon') and is governed by yoga-, the technical term for a lunar conjunction, and by hima-nirmukta- ('released from frost'), i.e. seen clear of the winter haze. Kalidasa is describing Dilipa and Sudaksina walking together. Nandargikar's 1897 edition renders it 'the constellation Chitra and the Moon when they meet'.