पुष्य Puṣya

Burgess: the middle of three (with γ and θ Cancri) is the junction-star, 'shown by the position assigned to it to be δ Cancri (4)'; hypothetically, under the arrow figure alone, θ Cancri could be meant.

AV nakshatra hymn, verse 2; the AV series begins with the Krittikas (Pleiades) like the TS but comprises 28 asterisms including Abhijit (Vega). Whitney emends the corrupt turmiśaṁ of AV 19.7.1 to aṣṭāviṅśáṁ 'twenty-eight-fold'.

THREE stars, vardhamāna-shaped (an auspicious 'growing' diagram), deity Bṛhaspati, gotra Aupamanyavīya. Three stars = δ, γ, θ Cancri; matches Colebrooke's 'Stars in Cancer' for the Amarakośa's Puṣya/Sidhya/Tiṣya trio.

Devanāgarī from Sanskrit Wikisource, confirmed by GRETIL's independent 'alt' text 'puṣ-ya-sidh-yau nakṣatre'. GRETIL's Kāśikā-derived text prints 'puṣya-siddhyau nakṣatre' with a doubled d, which is against the other two witnesses and against the traditional reading sidhya. Patañjali's line reads: '(p_2,3.45) ka_i,460.2 {2/4} adya puṣyaḥ . {3/4} adya maghā iti .'

Puṣya is named by PĀṆINI HIMSELF at 3.1.116 puṣya-sidhyau nakṣatre — 'Puṣya and Sidhya, when they denote an asterism' — so the two words Tiṣya and Puṣya were both current in his language and he keeps them apart lexically. Both GRETIL recensions and the Devanāgarī Wikisource text agree on the reading sidhyau (not siddhyau) in this sūtra; the Kāśikā-derived GRETIL file alone prints siddhyau, which the other two witnesses correct. Puṣya recurs in Patañjali as a lived calendrical word: on 2.3.45 'adya puṣyaḥ' ('today is Puṣya'), and on 3.1.26 'puṣya-yogam jānāti, puṣyeṇa yojayati' ('he knows the conjunction with Puṣya; he joins [the moon] with Puṣya'). Vasu, translating the Kāśikā on 4.2.3, glosses the derived forms as 'the night in which the moon is in Pushya' and 'the month in which the moon is full in Pushya, i.e. December'. The gaṇapāṭha on 4.3.16 gives pauṣam beside taiṣam.

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) 104°00', śara (polar latitude) 1°15' 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: δ Cnc 104°43' / 0°05'. VAṬEŚVARA-SIDDHĀNTA VIII.2.1–2 (904 CE) puts the same junction star at Kulīra 16° (= 106°00' measured from the sidereal origin) with a śara of 0°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. 8 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 Kulīra 16° — Vaṭeśvara states the dhruvakas as degrees WITHIN each zodiacal sign, not as absolute longitudes, so this is 106°00' from the sidereal origin — and its kṣepa (polar latitude, VIII.2.5–6) as 0°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: δ Cnc 108°43' / 0°02'. For comparison Sāmanta (1869) gives 104°00' / 1°15' 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, T21.0404c18: 「鬼有三星，形如畫瓶，一日與月而共同遊，祭以桃花，屬乎歲星，姓烏波若。」 | 舍頭諫太子二十八宿經 T21n1301, T21.0415b17: 「其熾盛宿者，有三要星，形像鉤尺，行三十須臾而侍從矣，蜜餳為食，主舍天神，姓烏和若。」 | Yang Jingfeng's interlinear note in T21n1299 at T21.0389a19: 「景風曰：中國天文，鬼五星，主官寮，南方之宿也」

Chinese lunar lodge (xiu) 鬼 Gui; T1301 renders the name semantically as 熾盛 ('Blazing/Flourishing'). THREE stars in all three witnesses, matching tritāram; deity Bṛhaspati (transcribed 蘖利訶馺撥底 in T1299, translated 歲星 'Jupiter' in T1300), matching bṛhaspati-daivatam; gotra Aupamanyava (烏波若 / 烏和若), matching aupamanyavīyaṃ gotreṇa; food honey, matching madhu-maṇḍāhāram. The figure is the valuable point: T1299 has 瓶 'jar' and T1300 畫瓶 'painted jar', which fixes the sense of the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna's obscure vardhamāna-saṃsthānam — vardhamāna here is the covered VESSEL, not the auspicious diagram. Chinese astronomy gives Gui five stars; the Chinese lodge is the one containing Praesepe.

VULGATE ONLY, from Sanskrit Wikisource Bālakāṇḍa sarga 18. The Mahābhārata parallel is CE 06,003.012c 'dhūmaketur mahāghoraḥ puṣyam ākramya tiṣṭhati'.

Puṣya is the epics' favourite auspicious asterism for setting out and for consecration. Key occurrences: Rāmāyaṇa (vulgate) Bāla 18.15, Bharata's birth-star; Rāmāyaṇa Ayodhyā, where Rāma's abhiṣeka is repeatedly timed to Puṣya; MBh 6.3.12, a comet afflicting Puṣya as a war-omen; MBh 9.33.5, Balarāma's pilgrimage chronology 'I set out under Puṣya and returned under Śravaṇa' — a rare epic use of nakṣatras to measure elapsed time; MBh 3.261.15, Rāma's coronation-Puṣya in the Rāmopākhyāna. The name itself is standard and δ Cancri is imported; recorded for the Bharata birth-star datum, which pairs with Rāma's Punarvasu and the twins' Sārpa to give a complete dynastic nakṣatra set.

Devanagari from Sanskrit Wikisource; identical with GRETIL. Nandargikar cites the verse as XVIII.31 (a one-verse offset between the recensions).

A four-fold pun (the pauṣya tithi / the son named Pusya / apuṣyan 'they throve' / puṣya the asterism) whose last member is unmistakably the star: the people throve 'at his RISING' (udite) as at a second Pusya. udaya is a star-word; a tithi does not rise. Compare Brhat Samhita, where Pusya is among the most auspicious asterisms.

IAST from GRETIL (Peter Schreiner's e-text). Confirmed by the independent GRETIL 'alt' e-text of the Buddhacarita, which reads identically.

The earliest datable kavya star-reference found in this survey, and the birth-naksatra of the Buddha. Star-sense certain: Pusya is the grammatical subject of babhūva prasannaḥ, 'became clear/propitious', a predicate used of heavenly bodies, and it fixes the moment of the birth. NOTE that Asvaghosa writes Pusya, not the older Tisya - the database's Vedic entry records Tisya at Rgveda 5.54.13 and 10.64.8 only; by c. 100 CE Pusya has replaced it in literary use, and Tisya as a star does not occur anywhere in the kavya corpus searched here.