मूल Mūla

Stars of the Scorpion's tail. Burgess: 'if, as seems probable, λ is the star pointed out by the definition of position', the 'eastern' designation is strictly true only of the pair λ and ν (the Vedic vicṛtāu); ι, κ, and θ lie farther east.

SEVEN stars, SCORPION-SHAPED (vṛścika-saṃsthāna), deity Nairṛti, gotra Kātyāyanīya. This is the strongest single confirmation in the whole chapter, because the text names the constellation-figure outright — seven stars in the Scorpion's sting-curve. It corroborates Vicṛtau and Mūlabarhaṇa already on file, and Colebrooke independently glosses Sanskrit mūla in the Nānārtha section as 'an asterism (the Scorpion's tail)'.

See the ardra entry for the three-witness collation of this sūtra.

Named by Pāṇini himself at 4.3.28, beside Ārdrā (see that entry). The word mūla occurs many other times in the Aṣṭādhyāyī in its ordinary sense 'root' (3.4.34, 4.1.64, 4.4.91, 6.2.121 etc.) and in several gaṇas; only 4.3.28, where it stands among time-words and next to an asterism, is astronomical. The archaic Vedic alternative Mūlabarhaṇa/Vicṛtau does not occur in the Aṣṭādhyāyī.

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) 240°40', 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 9 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 Sco 239°43' / -13°48'. VAṬEŚVARA-SIDDHĀNTA VIII.2.1–2 (904 CE) puts the same junction star at Dhanus (Sagittarius) 1° (= 241°00' measured from the sidereal origin) with a śara of 9°00' south (VIII.2.5–6, direction by VIII.2.8). Sāmanta raises the latitude from the Sūrya Siddhānta's 9° S to 13°30' S, which is what λ Scorpii actually has (13°48' S) — one of his clearest corrections of an inherited error.

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. 19 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 Dhanus (Sagittarius) 1° — Vaṭeśvara states the dhruvakas as degrees WITHIN each zodiacal sign, not as absolute longitudes, so this is 241°00' from the sidereal origin — and its kṣepa (polar latitude, VIII.2.5–6) as 9°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 Sco 242°13' / -13°50'. For comparison Sāmanta (1869) gives 240°40' / 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, T21.0405a08: 「尾有七星，其形如蝎，一日一夜與月共俱，果以祭之，屬沙陀神，姓迦旃延。」 | 舍頭諫太子二十八宿經 T21n1301, T21.0415c09: 「根元宿者，有三要星，其形類蝎，低頭舉尾，行三十須臾而侍從矣，食于根果，主泥梨提天，姓號所乘。」 | Yang Jingfeng's interlinear note in T21n1299 at T21.0390a01: 「景風曰：中國天文，尾九星，主後宮士，東方之宿也」

Chinese lunar lodge (xiu) 尾 Wei; T1301 renders the name semantically as 根元 ('Root-Origin'). T1300 reproduces the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna's Mūla entry to the letter: SEVEN STARS and a SCORPION-FIGURE (尾有七星，其形如蝎 = saptatāraṃ vṛścika-saṃsthānam), with the Kātyāyana gotra. T1301 keeps the scorpion and sharpens it — 低頭舉尾 'head lowered and tail raised' — and names the deity 泥梨提 = NIRṚTI in transcription, matching nairṛtidaivatam, with roots-and-fruits food matching mūlaphalāhāram; but it counts only three stars. The Xiuyao jing has drifted furthest: two stars and a lion's-mane figure, though it too keeps Nirṛti (儞律) and Kātyāyana (迦底那). The seven-star scorpion sting-curve is therefore the oldest attested reading, corroborating λ Scorpii and the Vicṛtau/Mūlabarhaṇa material already on file. Chinese astronomy gives Wei nine stars.

CE reference R_6,004.046.

Same verse as the Nairṛta entry; recorded separately because the epic gives Mūla a sociological identification found nowhere else in the database — it is the tutelary asterism of the RĀKṢASAS, standing in exact opposition to Viśākhā as the tutelary asterism of the Ikṣvākus/Kosalas two verses earlier. This dynastic/ethnic assignment of nakṣatras is a distinctively epic datum and is the earliest form of the later 'janma-nakṣatra of a lineage' idea.