रेवती Revatī

Burgess: 'The star intended is... the faint star ζ Piscium, of about the fifth magnitude, situated in the band which connects the two Fishes'; nearly all authorities make it mark the initial point of the sidereal sphere. It 'coincided in longitude with the vernal equinox in the year 572 of our era'.

In the upapatti to Bhagrahayuti vv.4-6 Bhāskara himself describes the observational procedure: at night one sights the Revatī star through the armillary sphere and sets the end of Pisces (Mīnānta, i.e. longitude 360°) on it, then reads off each yogatārā's dhruva and śara on the sighting-ring. Bhāskara assigns Revatī dhruva 0 and śara 0. The traditional identification ζ Piscium is printed in the 1861 PD volume ('Revati (ζ Piscium)', p.63); some modern scholars debate whether the faint ζ Psc can be the intended zero star, hence 'likely' rather than 'certain'.

ONE star, tilaka-shaped, deity Pūṣa, gotra Aṣṭabhaginīya ('of the eight sisters'). The single-star count matches the siddhāntic use of Revatī's yogatārā as the zero-point of the sphere; Pūṣan lordship agrees with the Vedic lists.

Two separate texts joined by an ellipsis and labelled: the first stretch is sūtra 4.1.146 from the Sanskrit Wikisource Aṣṭādhyāyī (GRETIL: 'revaty-ādibhyaṣ ṭhak'); the second is a verbatim excerpt from the gaurādi gaṇa in the separate Sanskrit Wikisource Gaṇapāṭha page (गणपाठ no. 46, on षिद्गौरादिभ्यश्च ४.१.४१). They are NOT continuous text. 4.4.122 reads ४.४.१२२ रेवतीजगतीहविष्याभ्यः प्रशस्ये ।

Revatī heads the revatyādi gaṇa named in Pāṇini's own sūtra 4.1.146 revaty-ādibhyaṣ ṭhak — the gaṇa NAME is Pāṇini's, though the membership list is gaṇapāṭha. She is also named at 4.4.122 revatī-jagatī-haviṣyābhyaḥ praśasye. Neither sūtra says nakṣatra outright, so on the sūtra evidence alone this could be the ordinary adjective 'rich, abundant'. Two things settle it in favour of the asterism: (i) the gaurādi gaṇa on 4.1.41 lists 'रोहिणीनक्षत्रे। रेवतीनक्षत्रे।' — Rohiṇī and Revatī explicitly marked 'in the sense of an asterism'; and (ii) the vārttika reported by Vasu on 4.3.34 says the feminine affix elided after Revatī and Rohiṇī by 1.2.49 is reordained because those words belong to the gaurādi class — a discussion that only makes sense if they are asterism names. Both of those are POST-Pāṇinian evidence (gaṇapāṭha and vārttika), so I rate the Pāṇinian attestation itself as likely rather than certain.

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) 0°00', śara (polar latitude) 5°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 32 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: ζ Psc 355°58' / -0°14'. VAṬEŚVARA-SIDDHĀNTA VIII.2.1–2 (904 CE) puts the same junction star at Mīna 30° (= 0°00' measured from the sidereal origin) with a śara of 0°00' north (VIII.2.5–6, direction by VIII.2.8). ANOMALY, RECORDED AS FOUND. Sāmanta keeps Revatī's dhruva at 0°, i.e. he uses it as the origin of his sidereal frame rather than as an observed value, but his śara of 5° NORTH cannot be reconciled with ζ Piscium, whose polar latitude is 0°14' S. Vaṭeśvara's 30° of Pisces / 0° latitude matches ζ Piscium exactly (0°00' / 0°17' S in his own frame). Either Sāmanta measured a different star or the printed śara is corrupt; the figure is reported here exactly as printed and is not emended.

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. 28 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 Mīna 30° — Vaṭeśvara states the dhruvakas as degrees WITHIN each zodiacal sign, not as absolute longitudes, so this is 0°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: ζ Psc 0°00' / -0°17'. For comparison Sāmanta (1869) gives 0°00' / 5°00' north. Vaṭeśvara's 30° of Pisces (= 360°/0°) with śara 0° matches ζ Piscium exactly in his own frame (0°00' / 0°17' S).

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, T21.0405a24: 「奎一大星，自餘小者為之輔翼，形如半珪，一日一夜共月而行，酪飯以祭，屬富沙神，姓八姝氏。」 | 舍頭諫太子二十八宿經 T21n1301, T21.0416a01: 「流灌宿，有一要星，形圓色黃，行三十須臾而侍從矣，鹿麋為食，主富沙天，姓曰妙華。」 | Yang Jingfeng's interlinear note in T21n1299 at T21.0390c02: 「景風曰：中國天文，奎十六星，主武庫，西方之宿也」

Chinese lunar lodge (xiu) 奎 Kui; T1301 renders the name semantically as 流灌 ('Flowing and Irrigating'). THE SINGLE BEST RECONCILIATION THE CHINESE WITNESSES SUPPLY. The Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna gives Revatī one star (eka-tāraṃ tilaka-saṃsthānam), the later Indian tradition gives it thirty-two, and the Xiuyao jing here prints 奎三十二星 — thirty-two — where every other entry gives a small number, so the 32-star Revatī is attested in a firmly dated 759 CE text. T1300 explains how both are true: 奎一大星，自餘小者為之輔翼 'Kui has ONE GREAT STAR, the remaining smaller ones serving it as wings' — i.e. one junction-star with a train of faint attendants, which is exactly the relation of ζ Piscium to the rest of the Revatī group. PŪṢAN is the deity in all three (甫涉 / 富沙 = pūṣadaivatam), and T1300's clan 八姝氏 'the Eight-Sisters clan' is a literal rendering of the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna's odd aṣṭabhaginīyaṃ gotreṇa, with curd-rice matching dadhy-āhāram. Chinese astronomy gives Kui sixteen stars.