मृगशीर्ष Mṛgaśīrṣa

Burgess: the faint cluster in Orion's head, λ φ¹ φ² Orionis; the northern (v. 16), λ Orionis, is the junction-star, 'although the Hindu measurement... is far from accurate, especially as regards its latitude'.

'The deer's head' = the compact triangle of faint stars forming Orion's head, chief star λ Orionis. The ŚB explicitly makes it 'the head of Prajapati', whose body (Orion) was pierced by the three-jointed arrow (Orion's belt) - see ŚB 2.1.2.9 and AB 3.33. Also TS 4.4.10.1 (deity Soma), AV 19.7.2 (mṛgaśiraḥ), TB 1.5.1.1 (called Invakā).

THREE stars, deer's-head-shaped (mṛgaśīrṣa-saṃsthāna), deity Soma, gotra Mṛgāyaṇīya — i.e. exactly the group Amarakośa calls the Ilvalāḥ, λ/φ¹/φ² Orionis. The Amarakośa also records three name-forms (Mṛgaśīrṣa, Mṛgaśiras, Āgrahāyaṇī), which Colebrooke glosses simply 'Orion'.

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) 60°15', śara (polar latitude) 13°30' 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 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: λ Ori 60°27' / -13°25'. VAṬEŚVARA-SIDDHĀNTA VIII.2.1–2 (904 CE) puts the same junction star at Jituma (Gemini) 3° (= 63°00' measured from the sidereal origin) with a śara of 10°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. 5 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 (Gemini) 3° — Vaṭeśvara states the dhruvakas as degrees WITHIN each zodiacal sign, not as absolute longitudes, so this is 63°00' from the sidereal origin — and its kṣepa (polar latitude, VIII.2.5–6) as 10°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: λ Ori 65°43' / -13°40'. For comparison Sāmanta (1869) gives 60°15' / 13°30' 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, T21.0404c14: 「觜有三星，形如鹿首，於一日中與月共俱，以果為祭，屬於月神，即姓鹿氏。」 | 舍頭諫太子二十八宿經 T21n1301, T21.0415b11: 「鹿首宿者，有三要星，形類鹿頭，行三十須臾而侍從矣，鹿肉為食，主善志天，姓號長育。」 | Yang Jingfeng's interlinear note in T21n1299 at T21.0388c28: 「中國天文，觜三星，主軍之士，西方之宿也」

Chinese lunar lodge (xiu) 觜 Zi; T1301 renders the name semantically as 鹿首 ('Deer's Head'). THREE stars, DEER'S-HEAD figure, SOMA as deity, MṚGA as clan, deer-flesh as food — all four independently matching the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna's tritāraṃ mṛgaśīrṣa-saṃsthānaṃ … soma-daivataṃ mṛgāyaṇīyaṃ gotreṇa. T1301 even translates the name itself as 鹿首 'deer's head'. Chinese astronomy also gives Zi three stars, so here Indian and Chinese counts coincide (λ, φ¹, φ² Orionis = the Amarakośa's Ilvalāḥ already on file).