Rotanev · β Delphini · Delphinus
Burgess: the diamond in the Dolphin's head, β α γ δ Delphini; 'The junction-star, which is the western (v. 17), is β'.
FOUR stars, BIRD-shaped (śakuna-saṃsthāna), deity Vasu, gotra Kauṇḍinyāyanīya. Four stars in a bird-figure = the Delphinus quadrilateral (α, β, γ, δ Del), agreeing exactly with Colebrooke's 'The Dolphin' for Śraviṣṭhā. Vasu lordship agrees with the Vedic lists and the siddhāntic epithet Vāsava.
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) 285°30', śara (polar latitude) 36°00' 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 5 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 Del 283°18' / 33°03'. VAṬEŚVARA-SIDDHĀNTA VIII.2.1–2 (904 CE) puts the same junction star at Makara 20° (= 290°00' measured from the sidereal origin) with a śara of 36°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. 24 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 Makara 20° — Vaṭeśvara states the dhruvakas as degrees WITHIN each zodiacal sign, not as absolute longitudes, so this is 290°00' from the sidereal origin — and its kṣepa (polar latitude, VIII.2.5–6) as 36°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 Del 289°51' / 32°38'. For comparison Sāmanta (1869) gives 285°30' / 36°00' 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, T21.0405a17: 「虛有四星，形如飛鳥，一日一夜共月而俱，豆糜為祭，屬婆藪神，姓憍陳如。」 | 舍頭諫太子二十八宿經 T21n1301, T21.0415c21: 「貪財宿者，有四要星，其形像調脫之珠，行三十須臾而侍從矣，食卑豆羹，主居寐天，姓曰造眼。」 | Yang Jingfeng's interlinear note in T21n1299 at T21.0390b05: 「景風曰：中國天文，虛二星，主宰相位，北方之宿也」
Chinese lunar lodge (xiu) 虛 Xu; T1301 renders the name semantically as 貪財 ('Greedy for Wealth'). T1300 matches the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna on every point: FOUR stars, a FLYING-BIRD figure (形如飛鳥 = śakuna-saṃsthānam), VASU as deity (婆藪 = vasudaivatam), BEAN-GRUEL as food (豆糜 = kulatthapūpāhāram) and KAUṆḌINYA as gotra (憍陳如 = kauṇḍinyāyanīyaṃ gotreṇa). The four-star bird is the Delphinus quadrilateral, so this is direct 3rd-century support for the DB's β Delphini. T1301 keeps four stars and thirty muhūrta but has a strung-pearl figure; T1299 keeps four stars and Vasu but has a myrobalan-fruit figure. NAME-FORM FINDING: T1301 translates the name 貪財 'greedy for wealth', i.e. it read DHANIṢṬHĀ (dhana 'wealth') and not Śraviṣṭhā — pushing the Dhaniṣṭhā form back to c. 307 CE, which bears on the DB's open Śraviṣṭhā/Dhaniṣṭhā question. Chinese astronomy gives Xu two stars.
CE lines 03,219.010a and 010c. Ganguli's vulgate is looser here and reverses the sense of the second pāda.
The half-verse immediately after the Abhijit verse is the single most important chronological statement about the nakṣatra series in the epic: 'time was then fashioned by Brahmā beginning with Dhaniṣṭhā; formerly it began with Rohiṇī; thus the reckoning came about'. It records BOTH the Vedāṅga-Jyotiṣa Dhaniṣṭhā-ādi list (which the database already documents from the Vedāṅga Jyotiṣa) and, as a still older stratum, a Rohiṇī-ādi list — a list-head otherwise attested only obliquely. No identification data is given here; β Delphini comes from the Sūrya Siddhānta entry. Note that this is the form Dhaniṣṭhā, not the older Śraviṣṭhā, which is the form the Vedic corpus uses.